This exhaustive bilingual dictionary is the culmination of years of collaboration between educators, linguistic scholars and community informants from the White Mountain Apache Tribe. It also includes dialectical variants from other communities, including the San Carlos Tribe.

The dictionary has been compiled with the goal of creating a living, working dictionary that will be of value for cultural, educational, and practical purposes. Among these are the teaching of Western Apache to children, the retention and expansion of the oral and written languages, and the preservation of traditional ceremonial songs and oral history.

More widely, the dictionary will be useful to Apaches and non-Apaches in practical applications such as medicine, social work, education, and human services. It also provides through its definitions a wealth of culture, history, and lore supplied by the many community informants.