Produced by Leighton C. Peterson
Filmed by Nancy Schiesari
Edited by Jayson Oaks
Music composed by Aaron White
USA, Trickster Films, BetaSP, 2008, 58 minutes
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.