Jim Chee

Jim Chee
First appearance	People of Darkness
Last appearance	The Shape Shifter
Created by	Tony Hillerman
Portrayed by	Lou Diamond Phillips Adam Beach
Information
Gender	Male
Occupation	Navajo tribal police officer
Nationality	Native-American

Jim Chee is one of two Navajo Tribal Police detectives in a series of mystery novels by Tony Hillerman. Unlike his superior Joe Leaphorn, the "Legendary Lieutenant", Chee is a staunch believer in traditional Navajo culture; indeed, he is studying to be a traditional healer at the same time that he is a police officer.

Jim Chee is an acting sergeant in the Navajo Tribal Police when we first meet him in People of Darkness, working in the Crownpoint, NM office. He has two older sisters, and his mother and his mother's brother (his little father) and her two sisters (his little mothers) are still alive and part of his life. His uncle, Hosteen Frank Sam Nakai is frequently helpful to Chee, whose advice runs through Chee's mind, and whose tapes of the words for various Navajo rituals aid Chee in memorizing them. From childhood on, Chee is remarked for his excellent memory, detailed and exact.

Chee's uncle has told him that he cannot actively choose to be Navajo until he understands the culture of the whites who surround and interact with the reservation. He is in this process of learning when he first asks Mary Landon out in People of Darkness. She is a white schoolteacher at a primary school on the reservation. He is in love but slowly realizes that they will never be compatible. At first, she wants him to give up many of his Navajo ways and live in her home state, away from the Navajo people, which he cannot do. Then, in The Ghostway, she realizes she does not want to change him, and goes home to Wisconsin to figure out if their love could make them a couple. In Skinwalkers, she sends him a letter saying she is not returning to Crownpoint, but getting her master's degree in Wisconsin. Also in Skinwalkers, Chee meets Janet Pete, a half-Navajo, half-white lawyer attached to the local prosecutor's office. In Talking God, Mary Landon writes to Chee not to visit her again, and then they end their relationship by telephone. Also in Talking God, he spends the vacation meant to be in Wisconsin to visit Janet Pete, who seems afraid because someone is following her. She followed her lover to Washington D.C., so she and Chee are just friends, thus far. Pete returns to the reservation area in Coyote Waits, where their connection goes a step beyond friendship when she sees Chee in a new light after the case of Hosteen Ashie Pinto. Though this romance starts out strong, it, too, disintegrates. Janet cannot give up many of her ways, yet wants Chee to leave the reservation, in The Fallen Man. Eventually she betrays him in The First Eagle, and they part ways. Chee's third, and final romance is with Bernadette Manuelito, a full-blooded Navajo and member of the Tribal Police. She works for Chee in Shiprock, learning to be a detective, in The Fallen Man, where she has her first success in finding and arresting the cattle thieves. She transfers to another office because she has a crush on him. For different reasons, they are both back in the Shiprock office in Hunting Badger, where Chee begins to notice her as she asks him for aid regarding another police officer and also is sent to aid him when he injures his ankle, putting them together for the final scene with Leaphorn and the perpetrators of the main crime. They marry at the conclusion of Skeleton Man.

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