Navajo Weaving: Art, History, Practice with Lynda Teller Pete, Barbara Teller Ornelas and Hadley Jensen, Part II (Dressed Classic)

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Navajo Weaving: Art, History, Practice with Lynda Teller Pete, Barbara Teller Ornelas and Hadley Jensen, Part II"

Podcast Information:

• Title: Dressed: The History of Fashion
• Host/Author: Dressed Media
• Episode: Navajo Weaving: Art, History, Practice with Lynda Teller Pete, Barbara Teller Ornelas and Hadley Jensen, Part II (Dressed Classic)
• Release Date: August 1, 2025

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Introduction

In this deeply insightful episode of Dressed: The History of Fashion, hosts April Callahan and Cassidy Zachary engage in a profound conversation with Navajo weavers Linda Teller Pete and Barbara Teller Arnellis. The discussion delves into the rich cultural heritage of Navajo weaving, its historical misrepresentation, and the ongoing efforts to reclaim and preserve its true narrative.

Historical Context of Navajo Weaving

The hosts commence by highlighting the global admiration for Navajo textiles, which include blankets, rugs, dresses, and tapestries. These pieces are not only celebrated for their artistic excellence but also for embodying a spiritual and cultural legacy that spans thousands of years.

Key Point:

• Misrepresentation in History: Historically, the narrative surrounding Navajo weaving has been dominated by non-Navajo perspectives, reducing these intricate works to mere aesthetic objects. This approach has neglected the identity of the Dine creators and the cultural significance embedded within each piece.

Notable Quote:

• "Weavers are treated as props to show that we were consulted, but not really." — Linda Teller Pete [03:33]

Changing Narratives: Navajo Voices

Linda Teller Pete and Barbara Teller Arnellis have been pivotal in transforming the discourse around Navajo weaving. Through their authorship of "Spider Woman's Children" and "How to Weave a Navajo Rug," they provide authentic narratives that center Navajo perspectives, challenging the long-held misrepresentations.

Key Points:

• Erasure of Navajo Identity: Historically, museum exhibits and scholarly works have often omitted the names and stories of Navajo weavers, presenting their work without personal or cultural context.
• Impact of Slavery: The episode sheds light on the harsh realities faced by Navajo weavers during periods of colonization and slavery, explaining how these experiences influenced the designs and practices of Navajo textiles.

Notable Quote:

• "Our history has been distorted. Our history has been omitted. It has been just erased." — Linda Teller Pete [05:10]

Impact of Slavery on Navajo Weaving

A significant portion of the discussion focuses on the traumatic impact of slavery on Navajo weaving traditions. The episode reveals how Navajo weavers were forcibly taken by colonizers, leading to the integration of Spanish weaving techniques and designs into traditional Navajo textiles. This period also introduced changes in dress styles, such as the creation of darker-colored dresses intended to aid in nighttime escapes.

Key Points:

• Integration of Spanish Designs: The introduction of serrated diamonds and Valero stars into Navajo weaving can be traced back to the looms and designs imposed by Spanish colonizers.
• Survival Through Weaving: The darker Navajo dresses served both practical and symbolic purposes, facilitating escape attempts and embodying the wearers' resilience and hope for return home.

Notable Quote:

• "These harsh histories have been embedded in our memories, in our generational trauma." — Linda Teller Pete [10:00]

Museum Exhibitions and 'Shaped by the Loom'

The conversation transitions to the collaborative efforts between Linda, Barbara, and curator Hadley Jensen in creating the "Shaped by the Loom: Weaving Worlds in the American Southwest" exhibition. This exhibit, housed at the American Museum of Natural History and the Bard Graduate Center, juxtaposes historic Navajo textiles with contemporary works, emphasizing the continuity and evolution of Navajo weaving traditions.

Key Points:

• Authentic Representation: Unlike past exhibitions, "Shaped by the Loom" prioritizes Navajo voices, ensuring that each textile is accompanied by the story and identity of its creator.
• Collaborative Curation: The exhibition was developed in close consultation with Navajo weavers, ensuring that their perspectives and cultural knowledge are accurately represented and honored.

Notable Quote:

• "We're not allowing other people to speak for us. We speak for ourselves now." — Barbara Teller Arnellis [28:41]

Educational Initiatives and Future Endeavors

Linda and Barbara discuss their extensive work in education, emphasizing the importance of teaching Navajo weaving traditions to new generations. Through in-person and online classes, they mentor young Navajo weavers, ensuring the preservation and continuation of their cultural heritage. Additionally, they are actively involved in upcoming exhibitions and collaborative projects that further amplify Navajo voices in the art world.

Key Points:

• Mentorship Programs: By teaching classes and mentoring young weavers, Linda and Barbara are cultivating the next generation of Navajo textile artists.
• Expanding Exhibitions: Future projects like "Horizons Weaving between the Lines" at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe aim to broaden the narrative and showcase contemporary Navajo art.

Notable Quote:

• "The journey of Navajo weaving is never going to stop." — Linda Teller Pete [30:29]

Conclusion

The episode concludes with a reflection on the transformative impact of reclaiming Navajo narratives in the art and fashion world. Through the dedicated efforts of Navajo weavers like Linda and Barbara, the true essence and rich history of Navajo weaving are being celebrated and preserved for future generations.

Final Thoughts:

• Reframing Museum Practices: The collaboration between Navajo weavers and contemporary curators like Hadley Jensen sets a new standard for how museums should engage with Indigenous art, ensuring authenticity and respect.
• Enduring Legacy: The preservation and accurate representation of Navajo weaving not only honor the artisans but also enrich the global appreciation of this profound art form.

Notable Quote:

• "Shaped by the Loom is going to be a traveling exhibit. It's going to travel to the Finmore in Cooperstown, New York after the exhibit at the Bard is going to close on July 9th." — Linda Teller Pete [29:24]

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Resources:

• Exhibition: "Shaped by the Loom: Weaving Worlds in the American Southwest"
• Websites:
  • www.navajorugweavers.com
  • Shaped by the Loom Online Exhibition (Link to be provided in show notes)

Join the Conversation: To learn more about Navajo weaving, participate in classes, or explore upcoming exhibitions, visit navajorugweavers.com.

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This summary captures the essence of the podcast episode, highlighting the critical discussions and insights shared by Linda Teller Pete and Barbara Teller Arnellis on the authentic representation and preservation of Navajo weaving traditions.

Transcript

[Cassidy Zachary]

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[April Callahan]

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[April Callahan]

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[Linda Teller Pete]

Late night voice messages that could basically.

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[Barbara Teller Arnellis]

Yes, we are currently on our annual summer hiatus from the show as we conduct our summer fashion History tours of the City of Lights. But worry not, we will be back in August with brand new content dedicated to all of the exciting fashion history exhibitions and other behind the scenes experiences we have encountered while here.

[Cassidy Zachary]

Until then, please enjoy this episode from the Dressed archive of over 500 past shows. The History of Fashion is a production of dressed media. With over 8 billion people in the world, we all have one thing in common. Every day way we all get dressed.

[Barbara Teller Arnellis]

Welcome to Dressed the History of Fashion, a podcast that explores the who, what, when of why we wear. We are fashion historians and your hosts, April Callahan and Cassidy Zachary. The woven blankets, rugs, dresses and tapestries of the Navajo or Dine people are some of the best known and most admired textiles in the entire world. And rightly so. Not only do they exemplify the highest expressions of the art form of weaving, they also are representative of an incredibly rich spiritual and cultural practice that extends back thousands of years.

[Cassidy Zachary]

However, as we will learn more about today, the history of Navajo weaving has historically been told from a non Navajo perspective that centers around treating Navajo weavings purely as aesthetic objects. So this is why you often hear about first phase, second phase, third phase chief blankets, for instance. But by treating these weavings in this way so scholars, collectors, curators have overwhelmingly ignored and dismissed the identity of the Dine creator. Very rarely, for instance, are historic Navajo textiles exhibited alongside the name of their maker because as you know, April, that information was not considered important enough to document at the time the objects were collected. And of course this is not unique to the Dine people's cultural property. So not only did they not document the Creator, they also dismiss and ignore the Dine cultural knowledge, ways and cosmology that are central to really truly understanding the object's significance.

[Barbara Teller Arnellis]

And that is all changing, thanks in no small part to today's guests. We are so pleased to welcome back to Part two of our conversation on Navajo weaving. The authors, educators and fifth generation Navajo weavers Linda Teller Pete and Barbara Teller Arnellis. Linda and Barbara have been instrumental in quite literally rewriting the history and narrative surrounding Navajo weaving as exemplified by their integral role in the creation of the BAR Graduate center in New York City's current exhibition on the World of Navajo Weaving. That exhibition is called Shaped by the Weaving Worlds in the American Southwest. In this exhibition, historic blankets, garments and rugs from the American Museum of Natural History are exhibited right alongside contemporary works by Danae weavers and also visual artists including Barbara and Linda.

[Cassidy Zachary]

And we will hear more about that today as well as from the exhibition curator who they worked closely with, Hadley Jensen. But first I wanted to ask Barbara and Linda about their groundbreaking book books and why it is so important for Navajo weavers to be writing their own histories. So let's jump back into our conversation. So I want to mention this because both of your books, Spider Woman's Children is the first book on Navajo weaving written by Navajo women, which is incredible when you think about how many books have been written about Navajo weaving historically. And same with how to Weave a Navajo Rug is the first how to guide written by Navajo weavers. Both of these books have been written by yourselves, so I'd love if you could just talk a little bit about why this is so significant and how it changes the ways that Navajo weaving history has typically been told.

[Linda Teller Pete]

Our history has been distorted. Our history has been omitted. It has been just erased. When Barbara and I visit a lot of museums and do consult work, we encounter textiles with no name, no face. Everything is just unknown. And it is true that in our history it's a harsh history. When we learn how to weave a lot of the books, they say that Navajo people are interlopers. They interlope through the Southwest that we copied weaving from the Spanish or our Pueblo neighbors. And because we're all in the Southwest and we live in proximity to where the Spanish settled, the colonials settled and the our Pueblo neighbors and there was a lot of intermarriage There was also marketplaces to where there was an exchange of goods. So anytime you are in a market area, there's going to be an overlap of cultural things. And when people say the Navajos learn how to weave from the Spanish 14something, there was a small fragment of a Navajo dress that was discovered in one of the caves in Canyon D? Chelly and it was carbon dated back to the 1400s. That predates the Spanish. The Spanish did not ask because, you.

[Barbara Teller Arnellis]

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[Linda Teller Pete]

Arrive and bring their sheep until 1542. And that debunks it, but that doesn't stop a lot of authors, a lot of textile scholars from repeating this misinformation. And that's where they do a disservice to us Navajo people. Navajo weavers, especially Navajo weavers, were a commodity back in those days because they were kidnapped. They were kidnapped for slavery. And as the Spanish brought their huge floor looms, the woven textiles that were in it were loose. And their designs were the serrated diamonds, the Valero star. And so a lot of Navajo weavers that were kidnapped were sold on the auction block and colonials bought them. Spanish households, Mexican households bought slaves and they were brought in to unweave those huge weavings and reweave them Navajo styles. That's how we got those designs in our repertoire of weavings that came from slavery. Our Navajo dress and mostly black, the red, the, the indigo, the dark brown Navajo dresses. Those dresses were created in response to the slavery period. And they're dark. And so that it encouraged the wearer to escape in the middle of the night. And on most of those dresses, you have, like, maybe four bands up on the bodice and maybe four bands on the skirt part. And that was to protect the wearer, but also to remind the wearer that they need to be home within our four sacred mountains. And it encouraged them to return home. And so the dress was created in response to the slavery period. And a lot of that has been softened by writers where they say, oh, yeah, there was servants, and these servants were baptized, and they were absorbed into the families. No, they weren't. They were slaves. And so there's a lot of tiptoeing that happens around that period of time. And also a lot of traders that set up their trading posts. After Bosco Redondo, when the Navajos were marched off to prison camp. And they came Back in 1868, after we signed the treaty, 271 trading posts popped up around the Navajo nation. And all of them dealt with rugs. All of them dealt with silver, pottery, baskets, all the arts. They didn't champion a lot of us. Very few traders champion people or artists. A lot more exploited, more so than anything. And so it was as recent as 1973 when the FCC came in and said, it's illegal for the trading post to be charging Navajo weavers 400% on their credit accounts because they live from rug to rug. They would make a rug, bring it to the trading post, get a cardboard box of food, get maybe $5 written off their credit account, and then given $10 in cash, and then it was off to the next rug. And they never could get out of this poverty. These harsh histories have been embedded in our memories, in our. The generational trauma of our mothers and our grandmothers. And it's still being carried through. And so, Barbara. And I really want people to know the truth about how Navajo weavers were treated.

[Cassidy Zachary]

Yeah. And something that shaped by the loom weaving worlds in the American Southwest, this exhibition at Bard that you both consulted on is actively trying to combat as well. Right. Is the way that Navajo weaving has been written about historically by non Navajo, has worked to privilege the object. Right. You always hear about the three phases, and this is more valuable than this, et cetera, but it actively erases the main and the culture behind the object. And so you obviously, by writing these books and by working and by consulting on these exhibitions and by creating, are actively combating that long history. And something that I found really moving too Was Barbara, you have artwork featured in the exhibition. I think you both do. But, Barbara, your contemporary Chief Set Miniatures from around, I think, circa 2005 is a commentary in some ways about that erasure and that idea of authorless objects in museums. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

[Hadley Jensen]

Yeah. Back in 1999, 98, I can't remember. My kids were still, like, in high school, in junior high, and they wanted to go see the Van Gogh exhibit in Los Angeles at the LA County Museum. And so we made a plan to go to California and do the museum and maybe take them to the beach and maybe even Disneyland. We have enough money. And my kids are very excited, especially. Especially my. My. My daughter. And she was a real Van Gogh fan. And so we got there at the museum, and they were all lined up by. By time, because they give you time to go in and see the exhibit, and then they give you these little headphones. And so we're waiting in line, and I noticed that right across the Van Gogh exhibit was Southwest Museum, and they had a collection of Navajo weavings on display. And I told my kids, let's go over there. I don't really want to be part of this. I just want to go over here. And they're like, no, we travel so much and we want to see this. And so we went through the whole exhibit, and in the headphones, they had people telling you that he had written a letter to his brother about this painting and what it meant and where he was and how he was feeling, just everything he was doing, feeling whatever. He wrote it down, and he sent the letter to his brother, and somebody collected all of that and put it with the paintings. And it was really interesting. And then you saw dates. You saw the dates of when he. He did it and what inspired him to paint off.

[Cassidy Zachary]

And this is Van Gogh, right?

[Hadley Jensen]

This is Van Gogh. And so we were done afterwards, and I told my kids, let's go over here. Let's. I want to see the weavings. So we walked in, and they're like beautiful weavings. Like before Bosco, after Bosco, weavings everywhere. And we were walking around, and then my daughter goes, mom. He goes, they don't have stories. They don't have names. Who are these weavers? Where did they come from? Why did they weave, what they wove? And so we're all questioning the exhibit and stuff. And my son, he was really young at the time, and he was like, there should be something here. There should be a story here. So I said, okay, let me tell you A story. I go, there's this young, beautiful Navajo woman. She lived in a hogan with her husband and her two children. And the vision I had was my grandmother, Nelly Teller, in the middle of White Rock, in the middle of nowhere. And I said, she wakes up every morning. She walks to the edge of the cliff, and she sings. She sings her songs, and she says her prayers. Then she stops by the watering hole and she fills up her bucket, and she comes back to the hogan, and she has little baby lambs that are sitting outside the. The hogan that she gives the water to. And food, because my grandmother loved those little baby lambs. She had a whole bunch that she used to take care of. And so I envisioned that, and I told that story. And I said, then she comes back in, and she makes breakfast for her children. And she waits for her husband to come home because he had already been up early, four or five in the morning. He took the sheep out for their first grazing. And then the sheep, when the she. He brings the sheep bag, she has breakfast ready for them. And so they eat breakfast, and she sends the kids off to where they need to be. And then she sits in front of her limb, and she says her prayers, and she sings her song. And before she starts weaving, you know, and she envisions good life for herself, good life for her kids, good life for her husband. And she hopes that she puts all her hopes and dreams into her work and that someday somebody will see that and appreciate that. And they're going, that's what you see here. See all these weavings that are hanging here? They all tell a story, but nobody wants to hear it. Nobody wants to see it, because they don't take the time. But if you stand in front of a weaving long enough, it's going to start speaking to you. And so afterwards we went. I went to the curator that was there, and I asked her, how many weavings are hanging in this exhibit? And she goes, 75. And it goes, 75 weavers. And not one of them has a face here. Not one of them has a story or a name. And it really bothered me. And we got back to the car, and I'm just. I had a lot of anger in me. I probably wouldn't have had that if I didn't see the Van Gogh exhibit. And how that was really taking care of how people cherished his work and made a point to preserve everything, whereas my ancestors weren't treated that way. So we went to the beach, and I couldn't enjoy myself because I was still so angry. And then my ex husband said, if you're that angry, you should do something. You're their voice now. You should speak for them and do something. You can't just sit here and be angry and practically ruin our vacation. And you need to go, you need to figure something out to express your anger and, and to honor these women. And right there it popped my head. I'm going to do 75 weavings. At that time I was going to do 75 big weavings and we're going to. And then later on I thought most of the weavings in there were first, second, third phase. And I thought instead of doing big ones, why not small ones? And just so they're recognized, I started making them and started telling people the story of why I'm doing this. And I went up to 24 sets and I have one set left that I'm hanging on to and I want to make sure that it has meaning behind it before I release it. And I think I found exhibit that I want that I'm going to be making this piece for. And my number 25 set has been.

[Linda Teller Pete]

Spoken for and spoken for. It's with the Chicago Art Institute.

[Hadley Jensen]

Yeah, a lot of the pieces are in private homes, a lot of, some of them are in museums and stuff. And even though my name is on them, for me it's the name of my ancestors that have woven those pieces and took me a long time for me to get over that anger and that sort of. I one time made this remark to my sister, I go, 100 years from now, we're going to be the old weavers. But our weaving in museums are going to have names, stories, photos, maybe letters. Why we wove what we wove. And we're going to be the van Goghs in 100 years when you created.

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Terms and conditions apply. As you just mentioned, you both have been so instrumental in bringing not only the true history to light from the Navajo perspective, but also bringing names to these pieces of art and this history that'll live on forever. And I think Shaped by the Loom is such an amazing example of that and sets such a high precedent for how museums should create these exhibitions moving forward because it was in direct consultation with you. Can you talk a little bit more about your role in bringing that exhibition to life and how it's different from other other exhibitions?

[Linda Teller Pete]

Sure.

[Cassidy Zachary]

In the past.

[Linda Teller Pete]

First of all, I'd like to say that Barbara first started working with museum personnel probably in the 80s, and I littered in and out of that realm because my life wasn't really about being a Navajo weaver. I had gone through college, got my degree, and I said, oh, I'm not weaving anymore, I'm going to take a job, which I did. And so there were times that I would join Barbara on her different consultations and stuff. And so I really, I have to admire how she may seem quiet, but when she talked, people listened. And but back in those days, I think the curators that were there, I don't want to speak badly about them, they were considered the textile scholars and experts and people listened to them. And a lot of the weavers that consulted, basically we were just props to show that we were consulted, but not really. And throughout these years, there have been some textile scholars that we work with that have been very generous in letting us speak our truths. And it started with Dr. Ann Hedlen, who was the head of The Gloria Ross Tapestry center on the campus of University of Arizona. She worked for the Arizona State Museum, but she also headed the Gloria Ross Tapestry Center. So we started working with her grad students, and some of those grad students are now curators. And so we. We help them with their master's theses and everything. And we started teaching classes. In one of our classes that we taught at the Idlewell School of Arts in California, in walked in a really young lady who was in her doctoral work, and her name was Hadley Jensen. So she took a class from us. And as curators go, they do need to know the process of weaving, I think, to really understand it. And we taught Hadley how to weave. And so from then on, we have been friends with her. She consults with us. And so when she became a postdoctoral student at the Bard Graduate center and also working at amnh, which is American Museum of Natural History in New York, and so she started doing her postdoctoral work there, and she started working with a particular collection. And so she called on us. And Barbara and I had just finished up a class in New Hampshire, and so we just went up to Manchester and flew over to New York and then met with her. And Hadley and her team, they pulled out all these Navajo textiles. And we were amazed that this was a collection from the 1930s that have never been seen before, never been exhibited. And so we went through. We saw a lot of textiles and that were not finished but taken off the loom. And Hadley and her team were like, I wonder why it's like this. Barbara and I knew. We knew because those were the times when the Navajos were nomadic and also being chased by the army and whomever the raiders. And a lot of those warps were probably just taken off the loom and rolled up. And I don't whatever happens to the weaver, but those things were collected and then later on sold in collections to museums. And so we're saying these came from these times when weavers were on the run. And we saw a lot of slave blankets. We recognize them as slave blankets. And one thing about working with a young curator whom you have taught is that she is much more interested in hearing our voices and not we're not being treated as props anymore, that we have an equal input. We learned a lot from Hadley, and I believe she learned a lot from us with the collection that we worked on. We paired it with contemporary pieces and the historic pieces just to give the museum goer the idea that the traditional way of weaving is still here, even in our modern times. And we're continuing this journey. But now we also have to speak for the ancestors whom. Their voices were lost, their faces were lost. And so it's taking younger curators like Hadley and all the young curators that we're working with now. It's leveling the playing field, I should say, say. And so we are grateful for that, because for a lot of years, we weren't treated like that. And I think.

[Hadley Jensen]

And they're more open to hearing our ideas and really listening to our stories.

[Linda Teller Pete]

Yes. And then one in particular thing about museum collections is that when they collected Navajo dresses, a lot of them took them apart, and they were sold as different panels because the dressmaker, as Navajo weavers, we cannot weave our own dress. Our dresses have to be woven by a different weaver. And that's just one of the protocols. And people always say, why? So it's just been like that for many years. And so when these people that wanted to make money off of Navajo weaving, they would take apart the dresses and they would sell them to different museums. And we know that the ancestors prayers, the weavers prayer for this dress to remain as a whole were answered because a lot of those panels came back together, even though they were sold apart. And so we saw some pieces in the collection that Hadley was showing us. And one of the things that we always say is that conservation, please put the dress back together, because that was how it was meant to be. Prior to Hadley being our curator, that would have never been done, because these. They never listened to the weavers. And now with this new generation, Hadley's generation, they know the importance of our voices. They know that we still honor the traditions that the ancestor weavers have done. And they're letting us write our own labels. We're doing panel labels. We're doing writing for the catalogs that has never been done before. And so times are changing, and it's going to take people like Hadley to open up a whole new world for us to become our own scholars. And also, there are a lot more Native Americans entering the museum world as curators, as experts in different art forms. And so the world is going to change, and we're no longer going to be just props.

[Hadley Jensen]

We're not letting other people speak for us. We speak for ourselves now.

[Cassidy Zachary]

And it's such a beautiful exhibition. Congratulations. And our listeners will be so pleased, because if you cannot make it to New York like myself, there is a beautiful online version of this exhibition, and there's videos and recordings, and it's really an immersive experience, and it's so well done and so beautiful in so many ways. You both have been so generous with your time today. Thank you so much. Before I let you go, I just wanted to let our listeners know of, just as you have mentioned, that you both teach classes.

[Hadley Jensen]

Yes.

[Cassidy Zachary]

So if anyone wants to take a class with you, can you tell people how they can find you and maybe learn more about your work and your offerings?

[Linda Teller Pete]

Sure. Before we get into that, I want to say that Shaped by the Loom is going to be a traveling exhibit. It's going to travel to it's going to travel to the Finmore in Cooperstown, New York after the exhibit at the Bard is going to close on July 9th. And then it's going to travel up to the Finmore. And I think, I believe the exhibition is going to be up for a year and after that it will travel to the Textile museum in Washington, D.C. and then maybe a third venue somewhere. So it's hopefully a lot of people get a chance to see it, if not online, plan a visit to one of those museums and see it because the museums that are going to sponsor it is they're going to display their own textiles as well. So it won't be like what at the Bard. And Barbara and I have been tagged for programming at all these different openings. Look out for that. And yeah, we're so excited. And actually I'm working with Hadley on another museum exhibition and it's called Horizons Weaving between the Lines. And it's going to be in Santa Fe at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture.

[Cassidy Zachary]

Oh wonderful.

[Linda Teller Pete]

And that's going to open July 16, 2023. And so we're going to have programming and a lot of stuff. So look out for that. We're going to post a lot of that on our website. And as as our classes are also advertised on our website. Our website is www.navajorugweavers. make sure the S is there.com and you can see our schedule. Yeah. Before COVID Barbara and I had been teaching for 22 years. And then when Covid happened, the Heard Museum came to us to ask us to do some online programming online classes, which we did. And so at first we weren't sure how the online classes were going to work, but it worked out great. But we're back to our in person classes now and we just finished an all Navajo class at the Heard Museum in the first week of May. Now we are on to the Ida well School of Arts where Barbara got her start as a weeding teacher. What about 20, 25 years ago, 26. Something like that.

[Hadley Jensen]

I started in 1998, and I didn't.

[Linda Teller Pete]

Come along until 2004 or something. But she was teaching there with my. With our mom. And our mom was too polite to correct students. So Barbara said, you got to come and help me. And I kept telling her, I'm barely reteaching myself. How can I be a teacher? Worked out. And so we started out. When we started classes, we only had a one page handout. And that handout grew to 25 pages. And that turned into our book, how to Weave a Navajo Rug and Other Lessons from Spider Woman. And in our classes, we do three days, four days, five days. And this year, Ida, well, has turned into a three week weaving class. Yeah. So we have beginning week, we have intermediate, and then we have advanced. We only do warping the second week. The second week is billed as Native American week at Idlewild. So they bring in a lot of Native speakers, lecturers, presenters, food tastings, entertainment. It's all things Native American. And Idlewell offers scholarships for Navajo students as well. And they just have to pay for their transportation to come see us. And then we work with them. And one of the things that Barbara and I always pride ourselves on is when we're working with scholarships, we ask that two members of a family apply as a team. Because if you teach one person, they may do it for a while, but then not do it again. But if you teach two people, they encourage each other, inspire and motivate each other to keep weaving. And one person may remember some of the lessons and help each other. And so Idlewall has been very instrumental in allowing us to move along those goals. And we are turning some of our students into teachers, and we're mentoring them. This year we have a class at Danae College in Salie, Arizona. They have a program called ncap, which stands for Navajo Cultural Arts Program. And they off they develop a bachelor's program for weavers. They also have bachelor's program for silversmithing, for pottery, for moccasin making. So they're concentrating on traditional arts. And they want us to come and teach their students how to weave. And it's not just Barbara and me who are doing this. There are a lot of other Navajo teachers out there. And so we always tell our students, take as many classes as you want from us and from other Navajo teachers. But one thing is, don't go in there and say, that's not what my teacher said. And we said, be open to all the lessons and then figure out what works for you. And you can use that process. And we're so proud that some of our students are now in art markets selling their work. One student came in and said, I have four goals. I want to learn how to weave, I want to teach my children, I want to become a teacher, and I want to work at a museum where there are Navajo textiles. It took her 13 years, but she has accomplished all that. And we are mentoring a lot of young Navajos and some of them aren't even young. They tell us that they're going to give us young people to teach when we get to our classroom. They're age 77 and they're retiring from jobs in New York and Chicago and Washington, D.C. and they want to come home in retirement and relearn their arts. And so we've been blessed by a lot of people who support what we do. And Hadley is one of those people. We're engaged with museums. We have a lot of consultation work that we do. And the books that we have written have been due to Barbara meeting the publisher in Peru, of all places. The journey of Navajo weaving is never going to stop. And Barbara and I are just a small piece of that journey. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Checking off the boxes on your to do list is a great feel.

[Hadley Jensen]

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[Linda Teller Pete]

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[Linda Teller Pete]

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[Cassidy Zachary]

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[Hadley Jensen]

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[Barbara Teller Arnellis]

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[Linda Teller Pete]

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[Barbara Teller Arnellis]

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[Linda Teller Pete]

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[Cassidy Zachary]

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[April Callahan]

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[Barbara Teller Arnellis]

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[April Callahan]

Namaste.

[Linda Teller Pete]

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[Barbara Teller Arnellis]

Linda, Barbara, thank you so much for being here and sharing with us so many wonderful insights into your cultural heritage and weaving practices. As Linda said, you can learn more about their work and find out when and where you can join one of their classes on their website, which is navajorugweavers.com and that is N A V A J O Rug Weavers. That's Weavers with an s dot com.

[Cassidy Zachary]

And you have just a few more days to see the exhibition Shaped by the Loom, which is open at Bard until July 9th. But if you cannot make it dress listeners, do not despair because the museum has done a phenomenal job creating an online version of the exhibition, and it's absolutely wonderful. It centers various written and audio perspectives from contemporary Navajo weavers, including Barbara and Linda. And we will, of course, provide a link in our show notes to that for you. And before we let you go, I am pleased to share a short interview I did with exhibition curator Hadley Jensen about the exhibition itself. Enjoy. Hadley, welcome to Dressed. I am so glad that you're joining me today.

[April Callahan]

Thank you, Cassidy. I'm so happy to be here with you.

[Cassidy Zachary]

Yeah. And can you just do a brief introduction for our listeners about who you are and what you do?

[April Callahan]

Sure. I'm an anthropologist and curator currently based in Santa Fe, and my specialty is in Native North American art with a particular focus in textiles, which is of.

[Cassidy Zachary]

Course why we are talking to you today because you curated this incredible exhibition, Shaped by the Loom, Weaving Worlds and the American Southwest. I've just had a wonderful conversation with Barbara and Linda, who our listeners will now know consulted on this exhibition with you for many years. And I'm hoping you can tell us a little bit more about the exhibition, perhaps starting with the inspiration behind its creation.

[April Callahan]

I'm happy to. So it has been a long process of development that began in 2018, and I had a postdoctoral fellowship in museum anthropology, and that was a joint appointment between Bard Graduate center and the American Museum of Natural History. And so I had the opportunity to work in the AMNH's anthropology collections and specifically their textile collections. This began as an opportunity to exhibit a historic collection of dine weavings. And Linda and Barbara have been such an important part of the process from the beginning. I should say that I first connected with Linda and Barbara because I took their Navajo weaving workshop at Idyll Wild Arts, I think, back in 20, maybe 2016. And I was working on my dissertation at the time at Bard Graduate center and knew that I really needed to have a more embodied understanding of what I was researching and writing about and thinking about. And so that workshop was so transformative in just being able to learn from fifth generation textile artists. And I started thinking about this relationship between thinking and making that guides the practice of Navajo weaving. And so this exhibition opportunity came around. It seemed a great chance to do something different. There have been so many exhibits and publications related to Navajo weaving. For me personally as a curator, it was an exciting opportunity to think about how to Place contemporary perspectives and voices in conversation with such an important historic museum collection.

[Cassidy Zachary]

And when you say contemporary voices, you're speaking about contemporary Navajo Dinee voices, correct?

[April Callahan]

Yes. So contemporary Dine perspectives. It's been important to really prioritize those perspectives throughout the development of the project through collections, visits at amnh, thinking about exhibition layout and design interpretation. And for visitors who have seen the exhibition in person, there are many artist authored labels as a way to center those perspectives in relation to both historical and contemporary works.

[Cassidy Zachary]

And can you tell us more about kind of the thesis of the exhibition, what visitors could expect to see if they went to the exhibition and how it's organized?

[April Callahan]

So Shaped by the Loom is not really about one singular idea or concept. I really think about curatorial work as a mode of storytelling in space. And for this exhibition, I think it's more of an invitation to engage with Indigenous aesthetics and languages of making related to Navajo weaving. And so through the themes of the exhibition, we've framed Navajo weaving as an art form, but also as a cultural practice and a lived experience, which is.

[Cassidy Zachary]

Not something that you have typically, one would have typically seen with an exhibition of Dinee textiles historically. Can you talk a little bit about maybe how this is different than, say, past exhibitions that really privileged the object, but disconnected it from the lived culture that it was made in and it continues to be a part of?

[April Callahan]

That's such a great question because, of course, you're confined by the gallery, by the space you have, by the budget, and you have to work within these parameters. But at the same time, there was a lot of creative freedom offered at Bard Graduate center in particular, and they were very supportive of the vision behind this project. And so I think a primary goal has been to offer a greater cultural context, a larger cultural context for understanding Navajo weaving and its social and cultural significance. And Linda and Barbara have been so helpful in, I think, allowing visitors to really see the artist behind the art. Often in museum collections, you have incredible historical items that don't have any documentation about the artist or maker. But there's so much that you can learn by looking at a piece, especially with a weaver. And so through our collections visits, they've also helped me to understand more about the weaver's expertise when it comes to material knowledge, knowledge about design elements and techniques. And I hope that some of those things are visualized in the gallery as well.

[Cassidy Zachary]

Yeah, and of course, I, unfortunately, will not make it to New York to see the exhibition before it closes, and many of our listeners will not be able to as well. But you have this fantastic online element, which is just incredible and it's really detailed. And I think it gives us an idea of how the exhibition maybe is organized. But you go into the exhibition online and you have homeland creation, cosmology. So learning about Dine culture and the Dine people, learning about the role of ecology and the creation of all of the different elements that go into weaving, the dyeing and coloring. And then you have personal essays from people like Linda. And you also talk about the different design elements, techniques and technologies. And within each of these categories are objects featured within the exhibition. And just, you really have done such an incredible job. And for people like me who can't make it to New York, it's so important to have these online elements. And before I let you go, I did have a question for you because something Linda and I and Barbara and I spoke about was really the problematic legacy of museums. Obviously, you're an anthropologist. Anthropology itself comes with a long, problematic history of this kind of concept of stealing cultural property from Indigenous groups, actively erasing the makers from those collections because that wasn't what was privileged at the time that they were those artifacts were being collected. And then of course, how museums have just interacted with Indigenous people historically and even still today. And Barbara and Linda both talked about being used as props by museums, for instance, who really didn't take the incorporation of their voices or expertise or their perspectives seriously. But they also spoke about how different that experience was with you specifically. And this exhibition is clearly an example of the way that things can change and things should change moving forward. And I really think that you've set an important precedent about how museums should interact with their music, their collections, and privilege Indigenous voices moving forward. I'm hoping you can talk to us just a little bit more about why that's significant and important today.

[April Callahan]

I have also learned a lot from this process, and it's really been about relationship building. And this has now been a five year project and I couldn't have imagined it unfolding in any other way. For me, as a non Native curator, being able to prioritize the voices and perspectives of Danae weavers and visual artists has been fundamental to the curatorial vision behind the project. And in addition to Linda and Barbara, we've also been working with a younger generation of fiber artists and weavers, Tyrell Topaha and Kevin Aspice, and we're honored to be able to include their work in the exhibition as well. And Raphael Begay, who's a Dinee photographer, and Darby Raymond Overstreet, who is a Dinee digital artist and printmaker, and we were also thinking about the kind of contemporary expressions of Navajo weaving and how the visual language of weaving has found its way into a variety of media. So we also worked with Connor Chee, who's a Dine pianist and composer, and commissioned a soundscape for Shaped by the Loom, which you can also hear online. I think that Shaped by the Loom has also been an opportunity to reframe more conventional category to be more reflective of Binet ways of thinking about weaving. I hope that this in some small way can be a model for thinking about the potential of collaborative exhibition making.

[Cassidy Zachary]

Absolutely. And I think you can really see too the ways that incorporating Indigenous voices and perspectives in this way transforms the experience for the viewer and transforms what that exhibition will be. Again, thank you so much for being here and sharing this exhibition with myself and our listeners.

[April Callahan]

It's been a pleasure. Thank you for your interest in the.

[Barbara Teller Arnellis]

Exhibition that does it for us today. Dress listeners, may you consider the rich histories and traditions of weaving that have informed many of the very items that might be in your closet Next time you get dressed, please head to restpodcast on Instagram or Rest Podcast without the underscore on Facebook to check out the visual content associated with each week's episodes.

[Cassidy Zachary]

And remember, we always love hearing from you, so if you'd like to write to us, you can do so at. Hello DressedHistory.com DressedHistory.com is also our website where you can sign up for our monthly newsletter, our in person tours and online fashion history courses. And you can check out whatever else we have up our finely tailored sleeves.

[Barbara Teller Arnellis]

We get so many questions from you all about our recommendations recommendations for fashion history books. So if you are interested you can always find a link in our show notes to our Bookshop Bookshelf. So that address is bookshop.org shop forward/dressed and there you can find over 150 of our favorite fashion history titles.

[Cassidy Zachary]

And do you love Dressed but want to skip the ads? You can now sign up for Ad free listening with any tier on our Dressed History T Patreon where you can also chat with your fellow fashion history lovers and attend one of our live Q and as and so much more.

[Barbara Teller Arnellis]

We are also excited to now be part of the Airwave Network and their premium Ad free History subscription Airwave History plus available on Apple Podcasts. The subscription brings dress and also 27 other popular history podcasts ad free for just $5.99 per month. More information on Patreon and Airwave is available at the link in our bio.

[Cassidy Zachary]

Thank you as always for tuning in and more Dressed coming your way very soon. The History of Fashion is a production of Dressed Media.

[Barbara Teller Arnellis]

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