OK, what’s done is done. Despite the fact that we weren’t treated fairly in the past, we survive, we keep going. Now it’s time to look forward and plan for the future. - Nicole Horseherder
On travels through New Mexico or Arizona we are bound to run across “trading posts” and stores with signs exclaiming “Indian Jewelry,” “Pottery,” “Baskets,” and “Navajo Rugs.” Inside will be customers looking through showcases of turquoise and silver bracelets, necklaces, and belt buckles or shelves of beautiful black ceramics or stacks of woven rugs and blankets. In his profoundly thought-provoking documentary WEAVING WORLDS, filmmaker Bennie Klain ushers us out of the stores and into the homes of the weavers, who take us on a fascinating journey into their minds, memories, hearts, and deep cultural roots.
A Brief History of the Navajo
According to anthropologist Clyde Kluckhorn, Spanish missionaries had their first contact with the Navajo people in 1626, by which time they were agriculturalists rather than nomadic hunter/gatherers. By the early 18th century new reports indicated that the Navajo had herds of sheep and goats traded with Spanish colonialists or secured in raids on various indigenous and European settlements which were appearing in New Mexico. By that time the Navajos were already weaving blankets and clothing for the women.
Despite some attempts at forcing Christianity on the Diné, most of the Navajo maintained their own ancient religious beliefs and customs and considered Christianized Diné as enemies.
Upon the transition to American rule in 1846-1848, the relatively quiet status quo that had existed for two centuries between Spanish/Mexican colonialists and Navajo was destroyed. The American military established various forts and outposts within the large territory of the Navajo and began a systematic war against “the people.” Certainly the Navajo fought back when possible and made raids on settlements, but the power was on the side of the Americans in the long run as more settlers moved westward. Never understanding the loose socio-political structure of the Diné in the first place (scattered settlements unlike the apartment-house villages of the Pueblo), American commanders were constantly confused and angry when they thought they had made a treaty “with the Navajo” when all they had done was secure an agreement with the headman of a particular clan. There simply was no chief of all the Navajo, but Americans retaliated against all Navajo as if there were. The treatment of the Diné is yet one more awful chapter in the bloody history of White/Indian relations in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Colonel Kit Carson was ordered in 1863 to destroy all the crops of the Navajo and take their livestock. Some bands of Navajo escaped to Black Mesa or the Grand Canyon, but others surrendered to American troops at Fort Defiance. In March 1864, 2400 Navajo began the infamous “Long Walk” from Fort Defiance to Fort Sumner, in New Mexico, 300 miles of rough, inhospitable terrain. They were the “enemy combatants” of their day, punished for being Navajo, with no trials or advocates, victims of an American form of “ethnic cleansing.” Later that year others made the same forced march until 8,000 Navajos were held captive in the fort. In less than 20 years the Diné had gone from a very proud, independent, self-sufficient nation to prisoners served unfamiliar food, deprived of land, animals, freedom, and a richly spiritual homeland, and subject to new illnesses. Naturally some died in the fort, perhaps as much from humiliation as from sickness.
In 1868, nearly broken, they were “allowed” to return home, to a reduced territory of 3,500,000 acres, a land without homes and corrals and gardens. The federal government took an inordinate amount of time in providing seed, tools, and some livestock, so for a while the people had to depend on rations from neighboring forts. They were forever scarred by their mistreatment at the hands of the White soldiers and government officials. As if this weren’t enough, when the railroads started moving across America, the federal government granted enormous property concessions to the bloated railroad bosses. The Navajo were forced to give up some of their best land and watering spots. Once more it is made clear that much of America was stolen over and over again – yes, “legally” but through documents based on self-serving laws passed by White legislators in federal, state, and territorial governments. Promises and treaties were continually broken when new economic opportunities appeared for White entrepreneurs. Kluckhorn indicates that with the arrival of the railroad crews came alcohol, disease, and other disruptive factors. As White settlements grew in New Mexico and Arizona, the Navajo were continually hemmed in and subject to extreme racism in many encounters with White tradesmen, missionaries, and government officials. Only after World War II did the federal government attempt to right some of the wrongs committed against the Diné, partially because of the great service performed by Navajo interpreters who sent important radio communiqués in the Navajo language between American military units. No one in Japan understood Navajo and could not interpret the messages. Through various land claims and purchases, the Navajo Nation today covers 27,000 square miles of some of the most strikingly beautiful land in the Southwest.
Weaving Nature into Art
According to legend, the Navajo learned to weave from the appropriately named Spider Woman, but historically it is thought that the Navajo learned weaving from the village-dwelling Pueblos along the Rio Grande River in New Mexico in the mid-17th century, by which time the Pueblos had learned the art from Spanish colonizers.
The relationship between the Navajo weavers and Nature is deep and long-lasting. Nature in the Southwestern US provides the land, grass, and water for the sheep, which in turn provide food and, most importantly for the weaver, wool. Once the wool is sheared from the slightly complaining sheep, it is then carded and methodically spun into long strands of yarn, which can then be soaked in dyes made from plants native to the area. With a wooden loom set up, often outside the home, the weaver then begins the long, painstaking process of creating a rug or blanket which embodies designs drawn directly from Navajo culture – the striking storm pattern, the distinctive “Two Grey Hills,” geometric “dazzlers,” “the tree of life,” dancers, and replicas of healing sandpaintings. Through the weaver the sheep outside in the corral or grazing in the pasture eventually “becomes” (or contributes to) a beautiful rug or wall-hanging. Navajo weaving embodies the very essence of the creative human mind – using natural products and human artistry to add beauty to our existence, all organically related to Nature.
The Economy of Weaving
Rather than simply celebrating the beauty of the weavings, however, Klain’s documentary deeply explores the economy of weaving and dealing (“how the West was spun”). It all started with the trading posts, the Western variation on “company stores” in mining towns of the Northeast and West and plantations in the South. Whereas workers in other regions earned credit at the stores, based on their labor or agricultural goods, the Navajos, relegated to the reservations, came to the store to trade for goods. Instead of picking cotton or pickaxing coal, the Navajo brought in goat meat, animal pelts, handmade silver jewelry, and woven blankets (initially striped saddle blankets) to trade for food and other necessities. Doubtlessly some traders, having such a captive market, would pay the lowest prices for Navajo goods and overcharge on the American goods desired by the Navajo. It was a closed economy benefiting the trader often at the expense of the Native American.
Even after the weavers, potters, basket makers, and silversmiths began exchanging their creations for cash rather than goods, the prices they were offered remained pitifully low. Only when collectors of Native American art began to appear in the 50s or 60s did the pricing structure begin to get shaken up. But the weavers and other artists were still dependent on local traders to buy their art and traders naturally wanted to “buy cheap.” Even when cars and trucks and passable roads came to the reservations, the weaver often sold close to home rather than drive farther away in hopes of getting a better price.
If one were to calculate all the hours going into weaving (at least 300 hours for a good-sized rug) and additional hours for shearing the sheep and preparing the yarn (spinning and dying), an hourly wage would be much less than minimum wage. While the rugs may sell for tens of thousands of dollars back East, a weaver receiving $1000 is remarkable even today. The markup goes off the chart the farther the fine weaving moves from the Desert Southwest to the East or West Coast. But there is rarely a way for a weaver, especially the older women, to cut out all the middle people and sell directly to an art dealer in metropolitan areas.
So, for the longest time the trader had a near-monopoly on the Navajo weaving business. Trading post owners such as Perry Null and Elijah Blair are seen in a variety of ways in this film, depending on who is talking about them, but they are perhaps their own worst enemies in revealing their personalities. For the longest time Blair was the only trader in the Hard Rock, Arizona area. When introduced in the documentary, he initially seems like a somewhat good-hearted “good ole boy,” who enjoys the Navajo people, their culture, and language. In several scenes he is speaking short bits of Navajo (something the other Anglo traders in the film don’t do). But he makes no attempt to hide the fact that he came to the Navajo reservation to make money – “I didn’t come here for altruistic reasons.” Were his prices fair to the weavers, so he could still make a profit without robbing local artists? Weaver Helen King says, “Yes, he was a fair trader. He kept his prices low. Everything we needed we bought from him.” Helen Bedonie, who first learned weaving by watching her grandmother, took her traditionally patterned striped saddle blankets – still popular in her youth – to the trading post nearest her home – Dinebito, which was run by Blair, nicknamed “Little Ears” by his Diné customers. Her first rugs sold for $10, but over the years she and others received $30, $40, and finally $50 before Blair sold that store and moved to Page, AZ, 155 miles away and near the Glen Canyon dam which had been built on land traded by the Navajo elders for land in Utah adjacent to the Navajo Nation territory.
In the course of the film “Little Ears” runs into an old Navajo man who seems genuinely glad to see him, as do some of the older women. But then Blair begins to reveal a much less savory side. When he talks about the Navajo women all his sexism and unrecognized racism come tumbling out. One silent woman is sitting in the store that Blair used to own, and he blatantly says to the camera with a smile, “I know this one. That’s Jane Russell.” She stares at him and then away, never smiling. He doesn’t even try to greet her but instead talks about her as if she were a photograph. Later after he has gotten hugged by a few of the older women, he talks about how much he loves the hugs. “And they were sincere,” he adds. But another woman warns him, “You don’t have the stamina to ‘chase the ladies.’” In just a few short scenes Klain gives us a very clear picture of the complex relationship between the White trader and his Navajo artist/customers. Paternalistic colonialism – with a smile, a joke, and an elbow in the ribcage – is made disturbingly clear in this insightful portrait.
Perry Null, with a large store in Gallup, New Mexico, also considers himself “an important part of Navajo culture,” but he is rather somber and hesitant without any of the good-ole-boy gregariousness of Little Ears. We don’t really get to see Null interacting with the weavers who provide goods for his store. Null defensively says, “A lot of people depend on me to buy these rugs, but there’s not enough money in the world to buy everything that’s made around here.”
Nicole Horseherder, who is French on her father’s side and Navajo on her mother’s side as a member of the Chiricahua Apache Clan, understands the underpinnings of this economic system quite clearly. “Traders are more concerned with
making a profit. They sell the rugs for two, three or four times what they pay.” One can’t help but wonder why these rugs and blankets aren’t treated the same way as paintings in galleries with the store owner getting a commission of 30 or 40% of sales price rather than a profit of 200, 300, 400%. The entire system seems outdated and very wrong, despite the tired old statement that “that’s the way it’s always been.”
But Horseherder and other weavers have begun to see other ways of selling to collectors. In Klain’s documentary we see the economic system begin to change from local traders to lively auctions, which allow collectors to buy directly from the artist at a price much better for both the weaver and buyer than could be secured in a store. Zonnie Gilmore, who depends entirely on her weaving income, goes to an auction at the Crown Point Elementary School in New Mexico. “I come here to sell to Anglos from all over.” Lots of elderly Navajo women sit and watch the auction. One rug priced at $1600 doesn’t get 
any bids, but Zonnie’s sells for $910. “Now I can pay bills and go shopping. I’m happy I learned to weave.”
Nicole blames the lack of infrastructure on the reservation for this too-long dependence on traders. She knows quite clearly that had she confronted the traders and their pricing system a long time ago, they would have said, “Fine, go see if you can find a better price elsewhere.” And that was once an obstacle with great distances to be traveled by often unreliable vehicles over bad roads. However, besides auctions, some direct sales from home and over the Internet are providing ways for weavers to maximize their profits by cutting off the hands of the often greedy middle people.
But, just as new methods of sales are appearing, a new threat to the preservation of authentic Navajo weaving has popped up. The popular Navajo rug designs have now gone global, with weavers in China and Mexico turning out cheap imitations made of synthetic yarns often with mechanized looms rather than by hand. This is particularly ridiculous in Mexico which has its own wonderful tradition of weaving with patterns, styles, and colors native to that country. So, as with designer clothing and watches, Navajo rugs are now being fabricated in sweat shops elsewhere. Their very popularity is hurting the originators. Even though some dealers in the Southwest say they will only handle authentic Navajo weavings, a perusal of the labels on the rugs reveals “Hecho en Mexico” on far too many. But for the casual tourist who likes the colors and designs of a rug, the cheaper price is what drives the purchase. Only collectors seem to want authenticity.
One weaver states, “The value of our work is undercut by these knock-offs.” And much of the intrinsic value lies in the culture which creates the rug. “All the tools, the batten, the carding brush, the spindle and comb, have life-giving names. They all have sacred prayers and songs. Machine-made rugs have no thoughts or prayers.” She adds, “When you run the wool through the warp, you invest personal thoughts and feelings. That’s how we claim our own designs. We copied no one.”
Another weaver understands how important it would be to be able to copyright their designs. “It would make it harder to copy our work, but Navajo leaders aren’t aware of these issues. They could make this the focus of their work.” She adds, “We need to learn to talk about our creations, to give ourselves the best possible return. We’re the ones in charge of assigning a value for our own time and effort. We shear the sheep, wash the wool, card it, spin it, dye it with a variety of local plants. We then calculate the value of this into our weaving.” She has already learned to sell the processed and dyed wool on the Internet. Traders give her an absurd ten cents a pound, whereas her Internet customers pay a far more equitable price. One woman even drives over from Phoenix to buy directly from her. Bennie’s documentary does show that times are changing and the weavers, as well as other artists, are seeing ways to make an acceptable income from their art. It’s certainly long overdue.
Who weaves?
As might be expected it is still primarily women who sit at their looms weaving, sometimes full-time, often just a bit here and there during time stolen from chores or full-time jobs. But there are men, such as Gilbert Begay, who have taken up weaving. Gilbert actually sells one rug about every two months, which translates almost into a full-time job (300 hours = 7 ½ 40-hour workweeks). Living in Red Valley, New Mexico, Begay uses his late grandmother’s loom and weaving tools, all made decades ago by his grandfather. To use the tools created by one’s grandparents must feel wonderful and timeless. Gilbert began weaving in his
mid-teens. His first six rugs were crooked but marketable. He now incorporates his own designs rather than following strictly traditional images. Just as the weaving was passed on to him, he hopes his nieces and nephews will develop a love of weaving. To that end, he takes them up to the family ranch to tend sheep, ride horses, and live without electricity, just like his grandparents used to do.
35-year-old Nicole Horseherder left the reservation in the 90s to go to college. After getting her master’s degree in linguistics in 1998, she came home to Hard Rock, Arizona, to live on the land, get married, have children, raise sheep, spin wool, occasionally weave, and discuss economic issues with her neighbors. She has returned with a mission to improve the socio-economic system of the Navajo Nation, at least in her area. But with her loom set up she also wants to get back into weaving so as to preserve that part of her culture.
Beauty of process and product
Throughout the film as we see the yarn of the horizontal weft passing back and forth, over and under the vertical threads of the warp, we watch a design unfolding before our eyes, in a vaguely similar way that a film is composed of shots joined together to make an 
understandable whole. Director of photography Nancy Schiesari’s camera perfectly captures the quietly evolving beauty of various weavings. Even the Arizona-New Mexico settings are often breathtaking with desert vegetation, sheep and other animals running about, and gloriously blue skies with white fluffy clouds. Many shots frame the exterior with wooden doorways or windows of homes, all reminding us how gloriously gorgeous the American Southwest truly is.
One doesn’t have to be a master weaver to contribute to the making of woven beauty. Nicole Horseherder’s aunt Lorraine Herder enjoys processing natural wool and then dying it with local plant dyes, such as rabbit brush and sage boiled together for two hours. Then she soaks some natural-colored spun wool in the solution while simmering for 30 minutes. To one batch she adds aluminum sulfate and baking powder to another in order to create a bright yellow and bright green batch of yarn, colors which will not fade. These colors seem to spring directly from the surrounding vegetation, enhanced by “store bought” minerals.
But seeing all this natural beauty, mirrored by the delightful weavings, jewelry, and clothing of the Navajo women, we might forget this is an increasingly difficult region in which to live. Droughts are one thing, but when the water levels are dropping because of the industrial needs of the coal and uranium mines, which are feeding metropolitan areas with power, one is quite justified in wanting to protest. With her background in linguistics, Nicole Horseherder also learned a lot about economics and history. She says, “When I came home I discovered people still wanting to raise livestock but facing more obstacles every year. This way of life has sustained this culture for hundreds, thousands of years, but it is now difficult to take our herds to watering holes.” Instead, water has to be brought to the animals. The Peabody Western Coal Company at Black Mesa, Arizona, pumps out millions of gallons of water to transport coal to power plants for California and Las Vegas. Nicole points out, “Not one single kilowatt comes back to the reservation.” She intones the not-so-hidden message of mine owners and the electrical industry: “You will do with less than what you had yesterday because someone out there needs more.” She knows exactly what lies down the road if the mines continue sucking out the water: “If there’s no more sheep, no more farms, no more springs…If I can’t walk the land with my kids and show them the natural plants and vegetation, that’s what is going to kill our language, our culture.”
Fittingly, Nicole looks to her grandmother as a guiding light and role model, one who is holding the family together through traditional rituals and kinship awareness. Horseherder is intent on “finding new meaning in this place we live, using old knowledge, old wisdom of my grandmother’s day and finding its place here. That’s the way we have to apply it. Otherwise we will lose it and not know why we are here.”
The Navajo weavers have been most fortunate in being the subject of Bennie Klain’s sympathetic, intelligent, thought-provoking, and beautiful documentary. It could so easily have turned into a pretty travelogue but instead became an insightful analysis of the present state of the Navajo people and the art and economy of their wonderful weaving.
-- Chale Nafus, Director of Programming, Austin Film Society
Information on LOST TRIBES
LOST TRIBES, an independent documentary film, explores free speech against the backdrop of the Columbus Day controversy in Denver, Colorado. For the past decade, the Italian community in Denver has celebrated Columbus Day much to the dismay of the local chapter of the American Indian Movement (AIM). Since its inception, organizers of the annual Columbus Day parade have had to deal with protesters who put on elaborate street theatre aimed at vilifying the man credited with “discovering America.” The history of this annual parade in Denver is peppered with numerous instances in which city leaders have had to deal with issues of free speech, freedom of assembly and what it means to be an American.
As the city of Denver approaches the 100th anniversary of this annual parade, tensions are rising. In our research and development trip in October 2006, both camps assured us their energy was geared toward ensuring a presence at the 100th anniversary parade in October 2007. This event, long a part of Denver’s history and character, continues to exude passionate opinions on both sides of the debate. Lost Tribes will engage audiences on issues of tolerance and allow a deeper understanding of free speech and assembly. – Bennie Klain
About the director, Bennie Klain
In 2007, director Bennie Klain was selected to participate in Tribeca All Access, a professional development program for emerging filmmakers held during the Tribeca Film Festival. His feature documentary Weaving Worlds premiered at the 2007 South by Southwest Film Conference and Festival in Austin, Texas. His short film Yada Yada won the Teueikan Second Prize at Montreal's First Peoples' Festival in 2003.
A fluent Navajo speaker, he often incorporates the language into his work. Klain co-produced and worked as a translator for The Return of Navajo Boy, directed by Jeff Spitz, which screened at more than 60 festivals and has received many honors. Klain serves as the Native Programming Liason for the Cine las Americas Film Festival in Austin, Texas, where his production company, TricksterFilms, is based.
His early media experience was in radio. Klain produced Windsongs, a Native American music program syndicated for public radio. He anchored three award-winning Navajo language newscasts daily at the Navajo radio station KTNN. Klain graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, in Radio-Television-Film.
Other Sources
- Navajo Nation official website
- Clyde Kluckhohn and Dorothea Leighton, The Navajo, revised edition (Doubleday Anchor, 1962, 1946)
