Navajo Textiles

The Crane Collection at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science

Laurie D. Webster, Louise Stiver, D. Y. Begay, Lynda Teller Pete

• Publisher: University Press of Colorado
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781607326724
• eBook ISBN: 9781607326731
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Art General
• Index: History

Navajo Textiles provides a nuanced account the Navajo weavings in the Crane Collection at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science—one of the largest collections of Navajo textiles in the world. Bringing together the work of anthropologists and indigenous artists, the book explores the Navajo rug trade in the mid-nineteenth century and changes in the Navajo textile market while highlighting the museum's important, though still relatively unknown, collection of Navajo textiles.

In this unique collaboration among anthropologists, museums, and Navajo weavers, the authors provide a narrative of the acquisition of the Crane Collection and a history of Navajo weaving. Personal reflections and insights from foremost Navajo weavers D. Y. Begay and Lynda Teller Pete are also featured, and more than one hundred stunning full-color photographs of the textiles in the collection are accompanied by technical information about the materials and techniques used in their creation. An introduction by Ann Lane Hedlund documents the growing collaboration between Navajo weavers and museums in Navajo textile research. 

The legacy of Navajo weaving is complex and intertwined with the history of the Diné themselves. Navajo Textiles makes the history and practice of Navajo weaving accessible to an audience of scholars and laypeople both within and outside the Diné community.

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Introduction

Consultations, Collaborations, and Curation by Navajo Weavers: A Celebration and History

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Ann Lane Hedlund

In 1973, the Denver Museum of Natural History was among the first museums in the United States to establish a Native American Advisory Group and invite local Indian people from many tribes to participate actively in its exhibitions, programs, and policies.¹ When visitors walk into the museum’s Crane Hall of North American Indian Cultures today, a video greets them with a series of Native American people speaking their indigenous languages. As in insightful museums worldwide, first-person voice appears in text panels and artifact labels, presenting native views directly. This present volume reflects the museum’s continuing dedication to involve Native Americans in interpreting its collections. It represents a signal effort to invite the expert views of two foremost Navajo weavers, D. Y. Begay and Lynda Teller Pete, who worked alongside Anglo textile specialists Laurie Webster and Louise Stiver to interpret the Diné textile collections at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.

Since the mid-twentieth century, connections among Native American weavers, artists, educators, and other leaders have grown. Many museums now share personal and tribal perspectives with their visitors. In museums across the United States, we have seen growing collaboration between native consultants and museums, hiring of indigenous staff members, and expansion of tribal community museums and cultural centers.² The passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 opened new lines of communication between tribes and museums. The establishment of the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) on the Smithsonian Mall in Washington, DC, in 2004, following twenty-four years of planning, championed such networks. Some would say that museums still have a long way to go, and I agree that, despite some progress, there is surely room for further inclusion and innovation.

My intent in this essay is to explore connections between Navajo weavers and museums (including my own) and to underscore the importance of expanding these endeavors in the future. Three areas seem relevant to address. First, when and where have Navajo weavers responded to museum collections on their own terms and participated in curatorial processes? Second, how have museums and weavers collaborated on reaching their audiences, with more inclusive native perspectives? And third, what opportunities exist for weavers to meet with each other and share their work as part of a larger community of artists—away from their looms, off the printed page, and into assembly with one another (and with others)?

In this selective review of trends, my goal has been to document and celebrate significant efforts that champion Diné voices, views, and artistic efforts. The history of museum/weaver connections during the past half-century underscores significant changes in how weavers view themselves—from craft workers supporting their families to artists expressing their visions and making a creative living. It also parallels how consumers, curators, and other observers have treated the woven works through the decades—from anonymously made decorative items to titled works of valuable fine art.

Diné Weavers Connecting with Museums

The first suitcase held an indigo-blue woman’s dress, a chief-style blanket, and a girl’s red-bordered shawl.³ Seven women circled and cautiously drew out the biil, hanoolchaadi, and manta, hand-woven more than a century before. We spread each item on the sheet-shrouded tables in the Ganado Chapter House in Arizona. The weavers stood back to look at their ancestors’ garments—then they stroked the fine fabrics, seemed to breathe them in, and gently wrapped the attire around their shoulders. Their daughters and nieces stood alongside, ready to translate, eager to see more. Some recalled their great-grandmothers’ stories of the Long Walk and times of enforced livestock reductions. They conferred with each other about family and clan relations. From my field notes of that day in August 1979: “[One woman’s] gr gr mo [great-grandmother] was at Bosque Redondo. She remembers hearing about Spider Woman’s holes in center of some old blankets—people hid under those blankets and that hole was to watch their enemies thru.” Connecting to the past brought tears and the flow of memories.

The contents of the second suitcase I brought out differed—rugs from the 1960s and early 1970s, bright with synthetic colors or subtly hued with vegetal dyes. Women who viewed them remembered themselves, their mothers, and their grandmothers making such items. They named native dye plants, described patterns and techniques, traced flaws, and admired ingenuity. Wordplay revolved around certain designs. Jokes emerged about the Indian traders known by many weavers and depended on by some.

For that summer of 1979, the Navajo Tribal Museum had hired me to document its collection of several hundred Navajo blankets, garments, and rugs. According to the original grant agreement, “documentation” meant closely analyzing the textiles with magnifiers and measuring tools, compiling and studying the museum’s written records, and comparing the pieces with others in well-known museums and books. What evolved, however, was an invitation for reservation-wide weavers to view the museum’s treasures in Window Rock, Arizona, and my travel to Navajo communities with textile-filled suitcases like those I shared in Ganado.

In most Navajo communities at the time, the federal Comprehensive Employment Training Act (CETA) was sponsoring weaving work programs. Through my visits to chapter houses, many CETA participants saw museum-quality blankets, dresses, and rugs for the first time. At weavers’ homes, relatives and neighbors often gathered to see the museum’s rugs. Wanting even more impact, we advertised in the Navajo Times and families visited us at the Window Rock museum.

Considering the estimated 12,000 Navajos who wove during the 1970s and 1980s, relatively few sought the limelight or consorted with urban art galleries in those days. Many spoke articulately in Navajo but used little English. Most extended weaving families worked in relative isolation, apart from other communities and from eventual owners of their rugs. Few knew about museums and their collections. Still fewer had seen nineteenth-century blankets woven by long-ago relatives. The oldest textiles most had seen dated to the early twentieth century—rugs made in their grandmothers’ and aunts’ generations. Exposure to other woven work was generally limited to the “rug room” at a local trading post and to book and magazine illustrations. Although the nationwide 1960s arts and crafts ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Plates
• Foreword
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction Consultations, Collaborations, and Curation by Navajo Weavers: A Celebration and History
• 2 Francis and Mary Crane and the Making of a Navajo Textile Collection
• 3 Changing Markets for Navajo Weaving
• 4 Crossroads and Navajo Weaving A Weaver’s Narrative
• 5 A Weaver’s Path From Generations of Traditional Artistry to Blending New Innovations
• Plates and Commentaries
• Plate Notes
• Appendix: Textile Technical Information
• About the Authors
• Index