nessun titolo diapositivaveneto.antrocom.org/veneto/pdf/navajo_weavers.pdf · development of silver...
TRANSCRIPT
NAVAJO WEAVERS
Sandra Busatta
A Short History of Navajo Weaving
DINETAH
The Navajos began to exist historically at the
end of the 15th century, just before the Spanish
entradas, and as a nation in the European
sense, through a series of interactions with the
USA in the 19th and 20th centuries.
In the mythic genesis, after some
catastrophe the Navajo spirits climb
through four or more layered worlds
until they get to the present world.
The first founding event of the Navajo
nation, is the deportation to Fort
Sumner, NM between 1864 and 1868.
This trauma is a catastrophe that
gives birth to the new Navajos.
Back to their
country they
began thriving:
while all the
tribes had their
lands shrunk,
the Navajos
broadened
them fourfold.
Fort Sumner, NM (1864-68)
THE BIRTH OF THE DINE’
The emersion of the Diné H.B. Molhausen: Navajos 1853
THE STOCK REDUCTION (1933)
“Old records mention Hopi farming in Canyon the
Chelly, Havasupais living along the Echo Cliffs
north of Tuba City, and Paiutes around Navajo
Mountain. Did they join the Navajos freely? Did
any become slaves? Where did they go?”
Navajo Rocky Point Community School , 1982
The Navajos did not share
the same fate, but they
could not colonize new
pastures, since the arrival of
the railroad had brought
new people to the
Southwest. The result was
the second catastrophe that
hit the Navajo world: the
Stock Reduction and the
imposition of a modern
animal husbandry (1933).
This way the Navajos
entered the capitalist
market as they never had
before.
THE NAVAJO GOLDEN AGE
“The ancient arts of Navajo culture probably bloomed
brightest in the years between the Long Walk back from
Fort Sumner and Stock Reduction in the 1930’s. Navajo
Country had peace, livestock and little interference from the
outside world. That had never happened before and might
never happen again” (Navajo Rocky Point Community School, 1982).
During these years they
abandoned most of their use
goods and began entering the
market, buying items from
licensed traders and producing
for the capitalist market.
Cameron, AZ woolsacks for sale
Going to the Gallup Ceremonial
1938-39
Shonto Trading Post
THE SANTA FE RAILWAY AND FRED HARVEY CO.
In the Southwest writers, artists, Santa Fe
Railway’s and Fred Harvey Co.’s marketing
geniuses polished the formerly despised
Spanish past in the so called Santa Fe style,
which relied on an architecture inspired to the
pueblos and the haciendas, and could exhibit
picturesque deserts, Mexicans and Indians
and a noteworthy crafts tradition for the
tourist to consume.
The railway favored the
development of silver jewelry.
Between the late 1880s and the
early 1890s the Navajos began
using turquoise stones, but silver
items were not marketed before
1899. That year Fred Harvey
Company, related to the Santa
Fe Railway, asked the trading
post dealers to have lighter
silverware produced. The
Navajos had to set cut and
polished stones from Persia,
supplied by the company itself,
in the objects. These items were
to be sold in the East and in the
Indian curio shops.
Silverware for the Harvey Co. hotel shops
Influences on Navajo silversmiths
SILVER JEWELRY
SILVER SWEATSHOPS
Silversmithing is the only craft
job organized according to
factory standards: expanding
tourism has made small size
factories common, ranging
from 2-3 to 40-50 silversmiths.
At Gallup, NM there are
factories where Indians and
non Indians are employed to
manufacture items labeled
“Indian crafted”. Sometimes
Indian workers are supplied
molded silver pieces and stones
to assembly, but often they buy
the pieces from wholesalers and
assemble them as cottage
industry workers, involving all
the family, children included.
Tuba trading post
THE TRADING POSTS
A landmark event in the making of the
Navajo nation is the coming of the
traders into the reservation in the
1880s. The trading post is more than a
place where goods are bought and sold
for the Navajos. It is a social center, a
post office, an employment agency, a
pawnbroker’s shop and a local bank.
Shonto Trading Post. Trading a Rug Dinnebito Trading Post. Shopping women
The traders first began with
the barter and cash money,
then used due bills and moved
on to traders’ tokens, later
preferred credit secured by
pawn jewelry and finally
unsecured credit based on
futures, that is the future
production of woolen rugs,
silverware, sheep, cattle and
wages. Babbitt Brothers Trading Post
Dinnebito Trading Post. Rugs and Pawn Vault 1999.
“With the unsecured credit institutionalized, Navajos became debt peons to
traders, a relationship that existed for many Navajos in the 1970s, while the
traders themselves came increasingly under the control of large wholesalers.
Thus the traders transformed the Navajos into customers for consumer goods
and producers of carpet wool, livestock, and luxury crafts. The railroad
provided the means for this traffic to expand. The increasing indebtedness of
the Navajos suggests increasingly unfavorable terms of trade, but quantitative
studies are lacking”. (Aberle 1983:642)
Tec Nos Pos Trading Post Hubbell Trading Post
John Lorenzo
Hubbell was a very
influent trader; he
called silversmiths
from Mexico to teach
their craft to “his”
Navajos, invented the
Ganado rugs and was
a favorite partner of
Fred Harvey
Company. He was
well aware of the
dealer’s role:
merchant and
confessor, peace
judge, jury, shaman
and de facto absolute
master of his domain.
His son defined
himself “the king of
northern Arizona”
THE “KING” TRADER
Most traders’ licenses expired in the decade 1980-
1990 and the tribal government took over many
trading posts. Yet also the Navajo trading posts
work in the same way: the system by which the
Navajo “ricos” (wealthy) have traditionally
exploited the landless poor’s services according to
the traditional semi-feudal Hispanic New Mexico.
NAVAJO TRADING POSTS
TOURISM AS A CONDITION OF MODERNITY
Specialized production of Indian souvenirs and ethnicity as a selling strategy began
early in the Northeast of America. By 1830 the American Grand Tour and the Northern
Tour led admired throngs to visit the paramount tourist site: Niagara Falls.
When the Santa Fe Railway came to the Southwest in the 1880s it was the right
moment: the elitist tourist and the wealthy collector could go away from the
maddening crowd to Navajo and Pueblo country, where the Grand Canyon offered a
“sublime” alternative to Niagara Falls.
TOURISM AND ANTITOURISM
Elite tourist consumption is
contradictory because to be
economically viable, Indian art
must be manufactured in
multiples but consumers must
suppress this awareness and
imagine Indian objects as unique.
“Antitourism”, promotes the
“real” travel and condemns
“tourist” art and mass tourism as
plebeian. Commodified Indian
items commemorated an
anticipated disappearance of the
Indian himself but, after Native
American demographic boom,
they today commemorate the old-
time Indian, more “authentic”
and less “spoiled” by modernity.Jim Abeita, Navajo painter
TRADERS AND WEAVERS
“After 1890, rugs began to take the place of blankets. Until about
1910 there was a “dark age” in Navajo weaving, quality fell off,
and the native designs almost ceased; bordered specimens
predominated. Then came a change for the better, due largely to
efforts of the traders to raise the standard of Navajo weaving. Art
lovers and scientists did their part, too.” (Bertha P. Dutton 1975)
Hopi House Grand Canyon VillageOld Navajo blankets
1890 is a landmark date for
the Navajos: weavers
stopped weaving for home
consumption and began to
produce for the outside
market, using commercial
yarns. The traders showed
the weavers samples with the
patterns to copy: J. B.
Moore, owner of the Crystal
trading post, who also ran a
large mail order business,
commissioned copies of
Oriental carpets to his
weavers. He had some
problems with the “stubborn
and conservative women”,
but he managed to overcome
their “foolish opposition”.
Oriental carpet and Navajo rug
Hubbell Trading Post: rug samples to copy
NAVAJO ORIENTALISM
The traders did not favored the birth of
modern wool processing plants in the
reservation but they sent the wool to the
Eastern plants to be washed and dyed,
then they imported it into the
reservation and sold it to their weavers
who produced rugs as piece workers.
They created a market for mass
consumers for the rugs woven with
commercial yarns and dyes, but sold to
elitist buyers, that associated the notion
of “Indian” with that of “natural”, hand
spinned woolen rugs dyed with natural
colors, less gaudy than aniline colors.
The primitivist paradigm also chained
the weavers to their prehistoric vertical
looms.
THE PRIMITIVIST PARADIGM
The influence of the customers – either traders,
collectors or museums – has favored “pictorial”
rugs, portraying naïf scenes of Navajo everyday
life, “life trees” with flowers and birds,
sandpainting rugs reproducing religious
subjects, but has discouraged the free
development of the weavers’ creativity for a
long time.
The American flag, woven as early
as 1873, has been appreciated only
recently, as well as the NRA eagle of
the New Deal, the Santa Fe trains,
the alphabet letters and phrases
such as “NRA member”, “US We Do
Our Part”, “Jesus Saves” or “Go To
Hell”. Much before Andy Warhol,
Navajo weavers were inspired by
labels and signs: Conoco gasoline,
Ivory soap, Folger coffee. The
purists shivered: a square or five
striped American flag? Ridiculous! A
clear evidence of a degenerate art.
ANDY WARHOL’S
GRANNIES
Only a far-sighted collector appreciated
these rugs; the Girard Collection, however,
is exhibited not in an ethnographic museum,
but at the Museum of International Folk Art
in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
The new colored yarns
triggered Navajo weavers’
creativity. Unfortunately,
the merry rugs decorated
with small trains, Arbuckle
coffee’s little angels,
airplanes, Christmas trees
and did not appeal to the
tastes of the Eastern
customers. The Eastern
clientele favored the
Oriental carpets or at least
a Navajo imitation.
INDIAN ART
OR FOLK ART?
AUTHENTICITY AND TRADITION
The wooden spindle and the prehistoric
vertical loom must guarantee ethnic
autenticity, which means being pre-modern
and even pre-medieval, suggesting untold
antiquity lost in the mists of a primitive world,
not without contradictions.
“A weaver might create a
rug with a computer-
generated design, but it is
woven with the same
techniques as that of the
grandmothers” (Kally
Keams Navajo weaver 1996).
Contrary to silversmithing,
where the use of electricity,
modern machines and factory
work organization is common
(though not advertised far and
wide), Navajo weaving has a
primitivist trademark of ethnic
authenticity it cannot give up:
the prehistoric loom.
“No Navajo weaver can earn a
living at her craft. Neither can a
non Indian earn a livelihood by
knitting socks. Both crafts
continue as avocation rather
than occupations”. (Tom Bahti 1973)
“At the present some outstandingly fine
weaving is being produced by a few
Navajo, but in general the work seems to
bespeak an approaching demise of the
weaving art. Fewer looms operate. The
situation may be compared to fancy
work”. (Bertha P. Dutton 1975)
HOW MUCH DOES A NAVAJO WEAVER EARN?
A 1973 survey made by
the Navajo Community
College at Many Farms,
Arizona, determined the
length of time it took a
good weaver to make a
rug, from catching and
shearing a sheep to selling
the rug: 350 hours. The
survey does not consider
both possible time of
transportation and car
expenses. The rug, about
90x150 cm., had been sold
to a local trader for $105,
less than 30 cents per
hour.
HOW MANY PEOPLE WORK ON A RUG?
“The process of weaving is communal rather than individualistic. It involves more than
the weaver(). It is literally a family affair. The wool and mohair used to make warp
and weft come from sheep and goats maintained by the family members, some of whom
are sheepherders. Children of all ages help gather plants and vegetables for dyes;
siblings help process the wool and mohair in various phases of preparation.” (W. Thomas 1996)
The ideology of a superior “wholeness” of Navajo life hides
economic relations within the extended family and obscures the fact
that only 30 cents per hour “pay” for the work of many people.
CHILD LABOR IN NAVAJO COUNTRY?
“For all the trouble I made with the sheep and lambs, my mother used to whip me
sometimes (). I worked so hard at home! () I worked on blankets too () My
mother was selling the blankets. () She tried to make me work the way I used to, and
she was still whipping me ().” (Interview to a Navajo woman in 1940, D. C. Leighton 1982)
The famous Elle of Ganado,
Arizona worked together with
her very young daughter who
began weaving when she was five
years old. Another child weaver,
Tuli, was also regularly engaged
at the blanket rooms at the
Alvarado hotel. Yet, most child
weavers were as unknown as
their mothers.
Nine- and ten-year olds were learning to
make the family’s bread and to card and
spin wool. Children of both sexes were
sent out to herd sheep at an early age.
They were held responsible for the herd
and were often severely punished if the
sheep wandered away.
Elle of Ganado and her daughter at the Alvarado Hotel, Albuquerque
A child weaver
AMERICAN INDIANS VS. ASIAN INDIANS
Isn’t it true that children in poor countries must work to feed themselves and their
families? RUGMARK: Children would not have to work if employers paid their
parents a living wage and if governments made affordable education for all
children a priority (RUGMARK, against child labor in handknotted carpet industry of India, Nepal and Pakistan).
This is also true for Navajo children.
R.B. Burnham & Co. Trading Post: Virginia Bru’s first rug Nepal child carpet weavers
In many countries, carpet weaving
is an ancient and honored craft.
Why deny children this form of
cultural and intellectual
expression? RUGMARK:
Children who weave carpets are
usually given the most boring,
repetitious tasks because they are
too young to execute complex
designs.
Dinnebito Trading Post. Stella Bahe’s first rug
Child shepherds
Won’t the weaver’s craft
disappear if children don’t learn
it? The weaver’s craft will
disappear if weavers aren’t paid
a living wage. Though there are
many differences, this is
obviously also true for Navajo
apprentices and weavers.
EVEN A GOOD CAUSE HIDES CHILD LABOR
“Hand made rugs and blankets have always
been an important part of Native American
culture and economy.(). Adopt an Elder
Program sponsors rug sales directly from the
weavers who get one hundred per cent of the
profits. Young and talented Navajo children
living in the Navajo nation did all the rugs and
blankets in this exhibit. The collection is on loan
from Adopt an Elders Program”.
Utah Arts Council Visual Arts Program “Navajo Children
Weaving the Future”
WHO ARE THE WEAVERS ?
Occasional weavers learned to
weave in their youth but did not
continue, though sometimes they
may earn much needed money
weaving a rug. They represent the
most numerous group. Revival
weavers weave out of strong
ideological motivation, because
they think is a marker of their
ethnic identity.
Household weavers, the most conservative
group sell approximately one rug of various
quality every one or two months, providing a
modest, but steady income to the family.
Professional weavers place their craft above
everything, work full time to superior quality
rugs and sell for thousands of dollars to
collectors who know them well.
Elle of Ganado and two child weavers
Weaver Kathy TabahaDinè College ad
WEAVING THE ETHNIC PRIDE
By romanticizing work
organization, the ethnic
nationalists mute the dire
fact that in an area where
unemployment peaks to 50-
70%, weaving usually
supplies one of the few
income sources, often
already sucked in by
unsecured credit and
pawns. Weaving, however,
may be enough interesting
economically, that some
men have become weavers.
From a traditional weaver’s point of view, the act
of weaving and the whole process of preparation
and laboring is exhilarating. To a Navajo,
weaving is an act of love and desire – desire in the
sense of wanting and longing” (W. Thomas 1996)
Lena Atene, : “I only went to four years of
school because I had to do weaving at home
to help make a living”. Stella Cly, learnt
weaving from her father when she was 14
years old: “He would say: it is food. It will
be your livelihood”. Elders of the Ndahoo’aah Project at
the Monument Valley High School, Utah (1995)
ART OR
WORK?
“A quick survey of American
Indian Art issues published over the
past two decades reveals two
things. First, almost nothing is
mentioned about the economic
conditions under which Native
American artists or craftworkers
produce and/or sell their objects.
Second, the lack of attention to the
economic underpinnings of artistic
production is accompanied by
lengthy reports on auction sales
and glossy advertising copy
hawking Native wares through chic
galleries” (Albers 1996).
NAVAJO RUGS VS. TRADE BLANKETS
Navajo women bought factory blankets made with Jacquard looms and sold
the trader their handmade blankets, and later rugs, woven on their
prehistoric looms, that would bring them cash and credit at the store, in a
circular way. As the 1927 Pendleton catalog puts it: “These Indian Blankets
were originated for the Indian – not by him”.
Shiprock Agency 1910Harrison Begay: Yebichay Dance
Until about 1875 the Navajos produced blankets for
their own use and for trading to other Indians. By
1880s inexpensive, machine made blankets from
Pendleton, Oregon and other companies, appealed to
women who before might spend half a year weaving
a blanket of similar size.
Navajo family at Cameron Trading Post 1930s
While Navajo weavers are
still far from stepping into
the Industrial Revolution,
the tribe is well into the 21st
century for the home
market. Navajo Textiles
Mills, based in Mesa,
Arizona, buys almost all its
wool on the Navajo
reservation and outsources
the work contracting with a
group of mills in the
Southeastern United States
to manufacture blankets for
the Indian market.
“A blanket is still one of the most special gifts
for Indian people. You see people buried with
blankets, and people give them to newborn
children. The trade blanket is a part of all
Indian life” (Al Pooley, Navajo Textiles Mills)
POST-MODERN
NAVAJOS
THE ETERNAL COMPETITOR: THE HOPI FIGHTS BACK
Ramona Sakiestewa, Hopi designer of trade blankets
Very successful trade blanket company
Sakiestiewa Textiles Co. also
outsources production outside the
Southwestern reservations.
NAVAJO RUGS: A GLOBAL CRAFT?
Wool yarns imported from:
1870s-80s Germantown, Pa;
1860s-70s: (cotton yarns) North
Carolina, Kentucky;
1930s Pendleton, OR;
1970s-80s New York, NY, Portland,
OR, Stamford, CT;
1970s-80s: Universal Textile and
Machinery Inc, Johnsonville, South Carolina
1980-2003: Brown Sheep Co.,
Mitchell , Nebraska; John Wilde &
Brother, Inc., Manayunk,
Pennsylvania; William Condon &
Sons, Prince Edward Island, Canada;
Britain;
Possible importations from:Australia, New Zealand, Oaxaca
(Mexico), Canada.
Raw Sheep’s fleece imported
from: United Kingdom, New
Zealand, Nebraska, Colorado,
Wyoming.
«However, the purist’s approach - favoring
exclusively hand-processed materials is hardly
practical or logical today. () Trade materials (
) have, in fact, become a genuine part of the
tradition of weaving. Moreover, they are key to
the continuation of the craft ()» Hedlund 2003.
THE ZAPOTECS VS. THE NAVAJOS
“Thus far, the Oaxaca product has
not proven to be more than a
threatening nuisance ” said
Dockstader in 1978 (page 205); he
was wrong. Long known for their
copies of Navajo rugs, the Zapotecs
are now even hosted by Native
Peoples magazine: “With handspun
churro wool, vegetal and aniline dyes
() the Zapotecs’ skill and artistry
rival those of the best Navajo and
oriental rug weavers” (Fischgrund Stanton
1999)
TEOTITLAN DEL VALLE
OAXACA, MEXICO
During the second US-Mexican bracero
program a large number of Zapotecs
emigrated to the USA, and when men
returned home, they invested their savings
in land, animals and very often in looms
and wool. Beginning in the 1970s, women
and girls began to weave in great numbers;
by late 1980s a few merchants had achieved
petty capitalist employer status and a
semipermanent division between weavers
and merchants developed. By the mid-
1980s, significant capital accumulation had
taken place in Teotitlan as well as in the
communities of Santa Ana del Valle and San
Miguel, where the looms were also put in
motion by the weaving boom.
Also Mexico capitalized on Indian ethnicity in order
to launch its tourist market, as well as an "Indian"
identity connected to the Revolution. Though
competing with that ideology, Zapotecs exploited
well their political connection with the government
party and invested the savings from immigration to
the USA in order to develop a flourishing textile
industry. Even if also Zapotec weavers are not yet
allowed to abandon their medieval upright pedal
looms by the market, they seem better positioned to
compete with Navajo textiles because they are less
dependent on welfare and government support and
more on commercial capital.
ETHNIC
RIVALRIES
WHO WILL WEAVE THE FUTURE?
The Indian-land nexus, constructed by the Santa Fe calendars in the early 20th
century, is still at the heart of the southwestern tourist industry. Indian
producers have been involved into market economy but they earned little in
return. The history of the Navajo Nation has prevented the birth of a class of
Navajo capitalists, though there is social stratification between landed and
landless people. Most rich Navajos belong to the politically connected tribal
bureaucracy. While fewer and fewer looms are working in Navajo country,
more and more looms are producing textiles in Oaxaca. In Texas Maya
immigrants weave factory made imitation Navajo saddle blankets.
A 100% AMERICAN
AND INDIAN ART
Perhaps the only way for
Navajo rugs to survive
competition is keeping on
being an icon of Navajo AND
American identity, well
embedded in the nativist
tradition.
THE END