The Navajo Interactive Museum in Kayenta offers the broader historical and cultural context that helps make sense of everything else you'll see in the area. Exhibits trace the history of the Diné people from their origins and the Long Walk of the 1860s — when the US Army forcibly relocated nearly the entire Navajo Nation to Bosque Redondo in New Mexico, a catastrophe the Navajo call Hwéeldi — through the treaty that allowed their return, the 20th-century struggles over land and resources, and the cultural renaissance of recent decades.
Interactive displays cover Navajo weaving, silverwork, and sand painting traditions, and there are exhibits on the creation story and the significance of the four sacred mountains that define Diné cosmology. The museum is modest in scale but well put together, staffed by Navajo educators who can answer questions that panels cannot.
Visiting here before heading into Monument Valley or out onto the Navajo Nation roads enriches everything you see. The landscape looks different when you understand that every prominent formation has a name, a story, and a place in a living cultural tradition — not just a geological description.