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one day she ought to be nice on colleges I could be I was a big house or you shouldn't know gigantic trophy fish I was it you know a god and legend enough along with the earlier Parkinson legend was education with the P she got in stuff but of course Jim picture no Joey what is with me a without Parkinson yeah when I hear the phrase I was a bit I think when you are out cheering and you're trying to catch one of those last withers and he flies through the air head but you in the eye leaves you with a nice bruiser and then you continue sheer and you get it done you figure out a way to to make it work despite everything that may be mounting against you that's what I think about and then you plan the next butcher yeah man you know there's that there's a song from Bruce Springsteen and it's our anthem song because when we're really when we're down and out I put that song on and it you know it says there's gonna be hard times coming there's gonna be good times coming but there's also gonna be hard times coming swing that ball at me because I'm going to I'm going to grab it and I'm going to work hard work as hard as I can to do what needs to be done you know it's it's just being honest and upfront and working your butt off you know bring that wrecking ball on is is all I can say and that's that's what I my name is and I am glad that everybody is here today crystal had mentioned you know who should we bring on you should bring on some extra Weaver's because we have such a great leading program here at the college you know who should be who should we bring on and without a second of hesitation cheese like we have to bring on Barbara and Linda we need to bring them on and so I've heard so much about these wonderful women this is actually my first time seeing you guys in person our Navajo culture arts weavers actually every year since the program has started we sent them down to Phoenix to go work with these wonderful weavers at the Museum and they go through ridiculously intensive one-week weeding program in which they and then learn from these ladies and learn from each other and we've had such wonderful inspiring feedback you know crystal mentioned bringing on these wonderful sisters I said absolutely let's do it I'm actually going to bow out today I figured it would be nice to have crystal talk with these down and talk with Barbara and Linda just because of how well that they know each other so I am going to be taking crystals position making sure you get all any questions that you can go ahead and send them in I will text them to crystal and crystal make sure that Barbara and then get them so without further ado here's crystal and crystals here to introduce Barbara hello everyone good afternoon my name is crystal little band I'm the coordinator of the Navajo culture arts program this week we have sisters seven generation from a seventh generation family we have Barbara and we have Linda so I think we should just jump right in and they have they have a lot to talk about so let's get started I'm gonna have Barb and Linda introduce themselves in and say Bob Rotella or Nelson she combines don't Wakeeney Buster's Jean and then I made this and then as she needed she beat out Simons good afternoon I'm Linda Taylor Pete and I am Barbara sisters I'm in Denver Barbara's in Tucson we have been doing a lot of Navajo reading classes for about 20 years but we've been we versus we were about six years old and and we'll we have a lot of family stuff that we're going to talk about this is what I mentioned earlier who we are were we're educated people born for water that flows together our grandfathers clans are one who walks around and red bottoms plants and we are again we picked four fifth generation Weaver's from tuber Hills and our current Weaver's are myself my sister Linda teller paid my daughter Sierra teller now is my son Michael teller Ornelas and our granddaughter our older sister Roseanne's granddaughter Roxanne Lee and Linda's husband Bellwood Pete is our tool maker this is our seventh seven generations of leaders we used to do leaving demonstration at the Arizona State Museum and this is one of the pictures that was taken that went on top and where we had my mom and her two sisters and our cousins and our nieces and nephew come and and and do demonstrations with us and then the bottom picture is early early in the morning like 4:00 in the morning at Santa Fe Indian Market where we one year we you took all the ribbons and and we were really happy to that morning our first generation is a son Papa the first documented weaver in the big 8 of Tom & Teller weaving family and from Newcombe we don't have any pictures of her we just hear stories and then that stories about her passed down on our mom's side and our great-grandmother had a lot of stories about her her mother and her grandmother and so she was a very first one that was recorded I think we had more generations of believers but we never had them record it so we just started started with her and documenting our leaving generations so the one that own lady is Susie calm that's our mother's mother and our grandmother and then the little one on is our great-grandmother and that's my mom's grandmother and her name was then that soy but sit she didn't really have an English thing right I don't think she did and and then our our lolly it was a Nellie Patrick I teller and that she is our dad's mom and she was also a great excellent and then the rug that you see behind them they collaborated on that piece together you can see where we get our talents from that was from families too so this is our grandmother or kin Masonic Susy Tong and the only thing only memories I have of her was she was always weaving and she never did anything else but we and she real once she was done she would have another setup and sometimes when we were playing in the ditch with her hear her calling and so we all took turns running over there to help her she would be sitting on like these huge barrels you know we mean a top of her be being as she would drop her home and so she would holler and holler tell one of us to give her her home back but the trick was once she got you in the house she would make you like five other things before she let you go so that's why we took like basically you know Joss Joss singular go go into her house but she you know one of her one of the things that she always said was when I died she was I'm gonna die with my comb in my hand and basically that's what happened to her she finish a piece she write down she had a comb in her hand she passed this is our kin Lily Nellie Patrick I tellers weaving she was really known for doing all different kinds of styles she knew probably up to like 14 different styles of twill weaving and so our dad was working at the Trading Post at tiger hill Trading Post and he would come home and tell his mom so-and-so ordered a twill saddle blanket and she was what kind of twill do they want and of course you know my dad had no clue so she woman every time we patterned that she knew into this piece and she gave it to my dad and say here just haven't point to which pattern they want and I'll make the size you know whatever size they want so we always call this our first teller catalog she was really well known for her to face weaving see the and the turquoise and red design and the other side is just completely it was brown and white tall weaving in the back and this is our fourth generation is my mom we call him the Purple Gang my mom is she's on the right the middle is my aunt Margaret and then the one on the left is our aunt Mary Louise and they're all great Weaver's they out of the two and murdered the one in the middle is probably the most famous of the three of them they were all award-winning Weaver's they all have been in books magazines and all kinds of stuff and Armand was a great weber also so this is when we were doing the Arizona State Arizona State museums weaving demo where we had my mom my aunt Margaret and my Admiral East do they carting and spinning and and and then you know Lynne and I on our cousins and all our nieces and nephew and my kids were and the weaving tech meeting and so this is basically how they did their materials even at home of course it wouldn't be as dressed up like this but they would be at home and they would do carting and spinning and they would help each other you know once they most my aunt martyr and my aunt Mirta least both had sheets and so when they shared the Sheep they would separate the wool between all the weavers and then they would come to each other's homes and help each other and prepare the world and it was a lot of fun that when you got included into all that so this is our mom's weaving and again she was a really an amazing amazing weaver and because our dad was a trader at two very old trading posts my mommy's Lisa have a small apartment behind the Trading Post and we used to have tourists come you know to the Trading Post and they would say I expected to see weavers all over you know like sitting under trees or or whatever and my dad was there too busy at home you know they don't have time to sit under trees and weave and but he would say that his wife is weaving in the back and so we had different people from all over the world come through this little apartment that we have and they would watch our mom work you know and and and and so my mom was really sold a lot of most of her pieces directly to customers because people always wanted to buy her pieces and so she never really had the opportunity to enter her pieces into art shows or you know have her pieces end up in magazines and stuff she gets mentioned in books and stuff saying that she was a weaver but but because she had a direct line to customers she never really got they acknowledgment she had problems with her eyes and later on she kind of gave up her weaving because it became too hard for her and then it wasn't until she kind of got sick and she she didn't want to do anything else and we had just finished teaching a class at the Ameren foundation over in Dragoon Arizona and this Japanese one of our students came from Japan and took you and she brought this plastic moon that you got he's seen the picture and she was saying that this is what they say is this is what they call never weaving in Japan and so she didn't want anymore because she bought a loom and all that stuff and and so she gave me that loom and so our mom wasn't feeling really well and she just got out of the hospital and we took that load to her and she really loved it so we worked it for her and she started weaving and she this is all the stuff she came up with so all her weaving career all she ever made was tuber Hills you know Browns blacks grays whites and you know and so she never really had the chance to work with colors when we gave her this loop she kind of went through our supplies our classroom supplies wool and she took out all the brightest color that she could find and she just she just went crazy with the colors and stuff and when had the start of a Facebook page so she could start selling her pieces so the fifth generation is myself my sister Linda and her older sister Roseanne all of us would probably around six or seven when we started learning how to weave we were taught that the legends and the stories and the songs of weaving by Oren Ollie and but we were telling the basics of leaving from our mom she just kind of and because she was so busy with demonstrating for the for the Trading Post it was left to our older sister Roseanne to really teach us and from our older sisters and we learned the techniques and designs this is our sister Roseanne and this who is the best Weaver in your family I'm going there's no question I was our sister Roseanne and she she she was an amazing Weaver and we learned a lot of you know how to be disciplined when you're when you're weaving she never let us cut corners she made sure that our colors were they balance each other and make sure our patterns you know were interpret and and stuff and if she didn't like what you were doing she wouldn't make you take it out and when we were kids Lynne and I used to sit there in front of our moves and she would tell us we've an inch and then let me know you know so we know what Weavin is we try to make sure that we leave a niche at the same time and so she would come in with her yardstick and she would measure it like five or six different parts all the way across and if one of them was lower than an inch or higher than an inch we had to take it out and balance it out and so we learned a lot of techniques from her you know and she she was an amazing amazing weaver her panners just basically just came to her and you know and she would she drove the school bus at Newcomb schools she worked at Newcomb Trading Post olena Trading Post to gray Hill Trading Post plus you know she was a weaver and plus she had to take care of her children and she used to have these notepads where she would just doodle all these designs you know and she would she just came up with some amazing amazing stuff so Barbara was the first one that sort of bucked the system in our family she was an artist-in-residence up there heard museum for four years and so that's where her kids grew up actually and when Michael was in a cradle board you know she had to put a sign on him that said please don't touch it's a real baby and so Michael is in his 30s now but that's that's where she really begun to hit her stride I think and she has really broke something along the way she when she left home and went to Phoenix she started weaving other styles because she at the Heard Museum they had a lot of different regional styles and so she did a lot of studying there she continued to do two grades you know and the the big rug that's on the left hand side is a collaborative weaving for her and my older sister Rosanna and this is the first rug that wand the first place best of show at Santa Fe Indian Market in 1987 and I believe that this rug was the turning point of a lot of Weaver's now being able to sell on their own without galleries without training posts you know the the sisters wove this in about four years and were able to really get stable with this with this piece they both they each bought homes they each had funds while they were working I mean a lot of significant things happen to them in their lives and and the stories are embedded in that big piece and it became a big splash and I believe that some of the gallery people you know we run into them every now and then and they'll always always talk about that that tapestry and they'll tell Barbara you're the one who ruined a Navajo meeting because now Weaver's want more money for their pieces and you know that's the way it should be but she also has done a lot of studying and the the three old-time pieces that you see on the right are little miniature Wheaties that she does with high web counts and they represent the first phase second phase third phase of the mid-1800s she still does her to gray and she's no slouch you know after she won the 87 best of show with her older sister she went on to win it again on her own in 1990 with the with the mr. fee that you see on the left and then the one on the far right is another one that I believe should have won the bestest show in 2016 or so but again there was a you know judging is sort of a crapshoot I think but in my mind I know it go to want and that rug or that tapestry is Idol Jordan Museum in Indiana the middle piece is a a period piece that she did of the first face and that really made a splash as well the bottom photo that you see I think a lot of people have seen those those little dolls Navajo Barbies and she made all their dresses all the the Montes that they're wearing she you know we went through the whole Navajo Nation to collect small little jewelry pieces that she redid to fit the dolls she redid their hair their moccasins everything so you know she went directly from being a traditional to grey Hill Weaver to an abstract and actually went into diverse parts so you know there's there's a lot more that you're gonna see from her because she gets she gets inspired by her kids and she's inspired by other things as she sees so we were very privileged that we have her to look up to when she started in on other regions she really made sure that they were as authentic as possible so when she does burnt waters I died the the colors for her when she does um you know when she does commissions like the bottom right hand left side rug where you see all those crosses though that's a specialty Commission that she did for a collector in San Francisco the the collector had bought a house and was collecting mission crosses and so he called a Barbara and said I would like a piece to warm up my where I have all these metal and clay clay crosses so this was her interpretation of what she thought might warm up his room she did it in reds and she she did and random design which she really doesn't do very well because she's very regimented in in making sure that all her designs are in symmetry but this one was pretty random and we were all very shocked that she pulled this one off so she shocks us all the time I will like I said from from age six all the way through college and once I finished college I said to my family I have my mom my you know everybody in my community weaves my sisters are well known I have a degree I'm gonna get a job and weeding is too hard I don't want to do it anymore and so I you know I I would always have a loom but it stayed in my closet for a long time and it wasn't until our older sister passed away in 1996 that it became a lot more real for me to get back into we V and so when I got back into weaving I stuck with two rays at first but we started getting a lot of commissions and you know when we talked to collectors we talked about what they would like to have in their collection and the first one that we did was with a married couple who wanted a theme and the theme was the the past the present and the future and they asked Barbara and Michael and me to come up with a theme for for our Wiggins and so when I researched it in the 1940s to Ray Hills they were using color turquoise yellow and red and so from then on I started researching a lot of the historic we means I started doing like child blankets and Mokey's but a lot of these tell stories they're not just weavings that I do I usually really read about all there are like a million books on Amazon on Navajos and so any book that you pick up have been written probably fun by non-mo and so I generally will read that but but really remember the stories of of our nollies and our grandmothers and so I sort of put the two together and I weave tapestries that tell these stories okay so these are my children Ciaran little Nutella renounce and my son Michael all color allows Sierra was probably around five or six when I my mom first set up a loop or her just for her to play with you know she was always curious about what we do my older sister was in you know put a spindle in her hand when she was tiny and and she just you know kind of gravitated towards weaving and and and she did a you know she started out doing to purr hills and stuff and and then she just kind of branched out into other things and and um you know she was a she worked at the Museum of American Indian in DC after she graduated from University of Arizona and she she'd been doing like abstract we beings and stuff and so and I were really excited when we saw her starting a a to grade and we're like oh we're so happy she's doing it too great and then she put these little cherry blossoms in the middle and then and then she finished it and we're like why did you do that and she was you know she was I listen to other Weaver's and they always say that you have to weave what you see in your own environment and she was and this is what I see you know because she she worked at the Museum and then she walks down the mall and all the month passes cherry blossom trees and so that's why she put it you know inside her to break and she sold the indie market to a couple from Washington DC and big because they love the piece because the middle part reminded them of cherry blossoms which is exactly what you know she intended and then the second the second one the middle one she did two of those and she called it forbidden forbidden love you know and the other one the green one is in the rule Square and then the purple is on top so they're kind of like thinking of each other and stuff and this that this piece in the hood Museum and at Dartmouth College and then the the other pieces on the Loom she she that was at this display at the Museum as one of the innovative art she also did the Ironman levy and the bottom and we were so happy with her and she had just moved to LA to become a writer on a TV show and she sent her her weaving to me so I entered it for her at any market and I told I told her I called her up and I said you want a blue ribbon you know and I won second place and she was so happy so her you know she was a writer on happy endings and all everybody told her get on the plane go you know so she came to any market and she was it will receive her piece and that piece is at the Will Wright museum in San fee and so she's you know she she doesn't really have time to weave anymore but she keeps one in her home and when when before all this pandemic started she used to have a loom in her office and she would sit there and you know work with it and stuff and and she knows the stories of our we being she knows the stories of our family and but she also weaves with her words and is my son Michael Michael Michael's work and I never really intended to teach my home you know until he was around ten years old when he came over and he said mom I ever gonna teach me how to weep like yeah why not you know and I mean we've always had men Weaver's and we used to have been Weaver's come to the trading post and to sell their pieces and my dad would say well whose name do you want me to put you know on your piece and he would say I put my mom's name or my sister's name or my aunt's name or whatever and my mom and my aunt murder at that running joke about how there's a lot of famous Weaver's at two great Hills that never woven a rug in their lives you know the men Weaver's or the weavers then and so you know and when I was learning at my Knollys feet she used to tell me that you were born to be the sphere you were blessed by the believing God and never I never really understood what that meant until I saw my son leaving just I would tell him to do certain things and he would get it right away you know and and then he just started branching out and stuff and I tried to you know control him a little bit and then he would like me out of his room he says you're not coming in so I'm over half but he just came he comes up with some amazing ideas and stuff like the bottom red one on to the to the left and people see all kinds of stuff in that piece to me I see sheep with the face you know some people see Rolling Stones tongue you know and kinds of stuff is amazing yeah if you put it in another way and then the one in the middle of the strike ones he called those his spider-man pieces because the colors that he got were from the spider-man's outfits and that kind of like represented his breastplates or something but he comes up with some really cool ideas of his work sometimes he designs them on computer which I really had a hard time with but then he was saying but this is you know this is how we do things now so I'm warming up to all that this is our seventh generation Roxann Rosalie is our our system Rosen's granddaughter she was around for she was born in Germany her parents were in the army are my grandson Javier teller or announced and he's just he just turned four so I'm waiting for its pandemic to be over so I can like start teaching him so I'm really excited about that so this is Mike's and so she was her pet her mom was deployed into the Middle East and so it was left to Lin to take care of her and go ahead you tell us sorry oh sure so we um Roxanne's parents were both in the army my nephew Carrie and his wife were in the army and his wife got deployed to to Iraq she was in Iraq and we took Roxanne and her older brother and you know for us with us in the summertime and we watched play with those tiny little dolls those Polly Pockets and I was watching her fingers and I thought oh I bet she can weave so of course we set up a loom for her and she naturally got drawn to it she knew how to be very respectful with the Matins you know she didn't grab at the work strings she didn't do you know we hear lots of stories about kids cutting their warps you know things like that she didn't do that she actually had habits and movements just like her grandmother Roseanne and that really shocked us and so we we really surrounded her with lessons and you know anything she wanted to do culturally encouraged her to learn the stories and um we keep telling her about about you know keeping weaving as a top priority and you know she's like a typical teenager you know she dyed her hair pink but she took a winning first place ribbon for a burnt water tapestry that she did and that tapestry that she's holding with the pink hair is with our with our tapestries at the Museum of Indian culture I think in Santa Fe so we have Michael's piece Barbara's piece my piece and then Hermes all in one exhibit and so we're pretty proud of what she has done fevers like to make their minds up about what they want to do and they stick to it you know and she has said that wherever she lands she's gonna make sure that she has a loom with her seven generations that's awesome and I hope everyone's enjoying to see the intergenerational transfer of knowledge that your family is is is on this plane you did you ladies did already cover a few of the questions that we have listed for you I do would like to go through a few more questions such as how do you understand the creative tension between tradition and innovation in forming informing your artwork so I said we fully embrace innovation you know a lot of times what we are doing demonstrations or whatever people will always be critical of our looms the way they look we use metal turnbuckles we we have a lot of tools that our nephew Terry had adjusted for us a lot of things that my husband who's a mechanical engineer um you know he's built looms that are amazing because you never have to change the way that you sit so we do get a lot of criticisms for that and so the innovation the innovation part is nice because it makes things easier but everything we do we still keep to the tradition we still go through the protocols when we do our fiber preparation our work being weaving stems everything is still according to tradition how our grandmother's wove in the 1920s is the same way we weave in 2020 and and I think that you know you can embrace innovation you can still remain true to your traditions and it's wonderful to explore and push the boundaries of view of leaving but you also have to remember how you learn and so pay homage to that you know and when I think a tradition I think of leaving a to gray and and when I weave other style I think of that as going beyond my boundaries but through it all you have to maintain the quality of your work you know whether you're whether you're doing traditional or you're creating something innovative or whatever the quality of your work has to be the same you can't you can't do one thing and let the other part go it doesn't work that way kind of like how that whole Navajo our whole Navajo culture and philosophy is is that we always have to have a balance in everything so and and I think that's a very important message especially to our emerging artists the younger generation for them to to know that that we still have to have the traditional aspect of the culture arts but also at the same time to also utilize the innovation of modern technology so that's a that's a great message and Thank You Linda and barb for that my next question is when what has been the biggest challenge that you have had to overcome as weavers I think for me when I first started out it was very hard to break into selling my pieces to galleries and you know and like shops that were not on the reservation and I was always told take it back to the reservation sell it if it's on the trunk we'll buy it you know and stuff and I never really I never really had the opportunity to sell to galleries and so I I knew a friend who my dad had a friend who opened a gallery in Scottsdale and so he told me over there and visit them and tell him who you are who your family is and that was the only way I could get into the to the gallery and he let me do a consignment you know he wouldn't come out by my pieces but he let me do consignment and he said if it if it doesn't sell in two weeks come back and get him you know okay that's fine and he said have some kind of exposure saying you know this is what I do but both my pieces sold and he called me like a couple days later and he says come come pick up your checks because they're both sold and if you have any more pieces we'd love that consigned them you know so and then one of the workers who worked there probably like my third for time bringing another piece and he says you know he goes you're too good for the gallery's you should go down to the Heard Museum and start working with those people over there and so and that's how I got into the museum's and so you have to have a lot of luck you have to have a lot of family support but the quality of your work has to meet you know how people think of your we mean I don't know if I could do it now but breaking down barriers to get to the next level you know and I would call myself an artist and then people will laugh at me and they're like oh you're just a weaver you know I'm late and then one time I heard this painter talking about how he had walked through rain he had to do this he had to do that to get pay me from Michaels and I'm like you know you could just buy your material or me you know I have to sit there and card and spin and make my own material and then I'd sit in front of my loom and come up with my own design isn't that the definition of an artist you know you make your own materials and you you know think of the design and you create that that's the definition of an artist to me so I started calling myself bad you know and I never back down from that I always say and I tell you know our students know students that you're an artist you you're creating as you go I think my greatest challenge which has been probably very recent in the last 5 5 to about 6 years or so it is making ourselves be the experts because Barbara and I grew up with now Hawaii we're fifth generation it seems as if all the books out there that are there for our new Weaver's our new Navajo Weaver's are people that want to learn about our history you know or are wanting to make those recollections though the lost linkages that they have with their Navajo leaving families was based off of those books that were written by non natives and for a long time I think we've put up or tolerated the fact that non natives had appropriated our art the the selling point the history part the teaching and you know for a long time Barbara and I couldn't even break into fiber organizations because they'd rather hire non-native teachers to teach Navajo weaving and so it took us a really long time to kind of fight our way through the system and we did it with allies non-native allies we did it with people that really believed in us and we kept arming ourselves with with our own information and we we broke those barriers as well and and when I started looking through books you know there there's a lot of racism in those books there's a lot of systemic things that will not go away and you know or we have our future generations that may be reading those books and so with the help of Thrones books we are writing our own you know we came up with the collaborative book spider woman's children and then now we're going to release a new one which we'll talk at the end of the show about but those were our biggest challenges was trying to make ourselves the the the textile scholars you know and a lot of people depend on degrees and thesis work and things like that I mean that's fine and great but you know why pay someone that learn Navajo history through books rather than someone that grew up with it so I think that has been our greatest challenge our greatest challenges very recently we do have another question for you we can kind of combine them the where do you find inspiration for your artwork and also do you see your work as informing in some ways not only the future of art but also the future of you your people so I feel like some some those two questions you know they intertwine with each other I find inspiration everywhere so my family through our Navajo history and I love looking in the collection like at the herd or at enemy I began using nitrous tree in New York and different places you know you just look at these old pieces and it just it goes kind of flows through you you know you have to you know you get inspired by them and you know I can look at buildings and see patterns like you know and you know you can look at the landscape and figure out what colors look put together you know and so I get inspired a lot by that so the other question was do you see your work as informing in some ways not only the future of art but the future of your people you know now who we need is not going to die out I think Navajo weaving when our ancestors went to Bosco Redondo they still wove their um you know if that is evident by all the first phase second phase third phase that are being found in on the East Coast and then they make it to the Antiques Roadshow where they're sold for you know quarter million dollars and they never talk about the Weaver they never talk about how they got that weaving or who might have woven it it was just just all about money the thing is we have to look during that time period to know that our ancestors wolf at Moscow redondo and kept their families alive you know and they came back and then they got impeded with the trading posts that exploited a lot of Weaver's they came back and had to live through their livestock reduction where they had to now buy their own wool and then they got impeded again by government schools where a lot of our generations didn't learn how to speak Navajo or even do traditional arts and now we're seeing a resurgence of that and it's regenerating and you know when we teach our Navajo students we get them at all ages from very young to there's their 70s a lot of these Navajos had moved off the nation to work in cities like Washington DC Chicago New York and they're retiring coming back home and they're relearning some of the arts and they do so with them with the information that they want to teach their grandkids or their great grandkids and because of that we know it's you know that's the future the future is about toggle it back that is us making sure that weaving is going to exist years from now you know I tell Weaver's or Navajo Weaver's that you know fine find a good mentor find a great Weaver to mentor you and and and you know study under them you know they're learning weavers out there they're willing to teach you know what you know but be respectful be humble be respectful to them you know and and you know because we Lyndon I we encourage all of our students to keep going you know and and and it's always improve on your next piece don't don't let anything you know go and and and and don't ever talk bad about your piece because it's something that came from you you created this piece you got to keep this going and when you get the chance you get to teach somebody else just move you know paying it forward all the time that actually is a perfect segue into our last question which is are our second to the last conscious question with what is which is what advice do you have for aspiring Weaver's do the very best you can learn everything you learn you're Navajo weaving history learn the we be history in your we you know refine your songs and prayers and when you're weaving always improve on your piece and never cut corners you know because if you cut corners you know in your heart we didn't do your best you know so always always do your best and never ever cut corners and seek out like I said good Weaver's and and and and take advice from them you know because they've been there they've you know they were in the front lines you know for four Weaver's to be recognized and we and take pride in what he do take pride in your work and you know I've been all over the world I've been to so many different leaving cultures and that the people there have so much pride in their pieces you know and then I'm and I come home and I'm like these people are like this these people are like that and we're the same way you know and we however they feel about their culture and their weaving we feel the same way and it's my job this lens job to pass that forward and it's you know all the weavers out there's jobs to teach the young monks new so that this is never you know it never breaks and so I think the other advice that we give out what it's really not advice but encouragement is we always start with our classes by telling people Navajo waiting belongs to you don't let anybody know family members extended relatives strangers tell you how to weave or that what whatever you're doing whatever information that you you are looking for and if you can't find it don't let that stop you because Navajo eating belongs to you you need to pick up that torch and really pass it on and we we are at the stage now where the training posts are not telling us what to weave and I think that we have a lot of artistic people now who people are so much more artistic in words and deeds and whatever they do and so it's that it's time now for people to start their own trends weavers can start a trend they can they can invent a new style they can you know we're no longer this behind the wall faceless voiceless you know we've become fearless and we are telling people we are weavers we are artists and some of them make a whole living a good living by it and some of them have supplemental income some people don't even worry about that they just have good jobs but they want to make sure they want to learn how to weave to keep the the linkage going with their with their relatives and I always tell people even if you fail you know we we have a lot of Navajo students and they have issues and they're ready to give up and we tell them you know what that's fixable we can take that block out rewiev it you know next piece you're going to be cognizant of that mistake so every piece is going to teach you something and you know weaving is a skill and you know now that the time is right for all textile artists to take the world by storm Thank You barb and Linda I think you not only inspired myself but inspired Christine and everyone watching it's your words really really resonated with us and so that's a great way to end with this question when you hear the phrase I wash it bare what does that mean to you do your very very best for me that's what it means be do your very very best never cut corners and always always live your life in balance you know because the only have yourself to answer for and if you're not living in balance then you have to answer that for yourself so you have to be in balance and to be a weaver to be a silversmith to be a carver whatever I'm art that you do painter you know and and you have to be you have to make sure that your heart isn't a good place your head in a good place and you know I was a very able you know and I'm that's what my grandma my knowledge is to say to me I was a very able you know yes stick to being don't let go because it's gonna hold your family together it's gonna always give you a house it's always gonna put food on your table and he was right mine only has to be he used to say that to me all the time when I was small yeah and so um I think that uh was it there we say talk worship there a been not done kid disease that's our you know that that's something that we really take to heart that leaving strengthens us and we do get all of our tools and our lose blessed from our medicine people and one of the things that um that really stuck with me when we were in Canyon de Chelly and getting our tools and looms bless was he said to us as he touched our tools he said these are your weapons these are your weapons against poverty against laziness against all the things that plague the modern world because you can retreat into your reading and you find your peace there you find your solace and you you start to learn from your mistakes so tall Willapa is sound singular but it's also a community effort as well because you need the encouragement from your family members and if you don't get that you know there's still family I mean there's still friends that become family there's still other mentors out there that can encourage you so you don't always have to feel like you've been knocked down by criticism so all will it bad means you need to overstep those boundaries you need to let all those negativity go and just keep weaving yeah keep weaving all right thank you so much ladies I'm gonna do a quick screen share Oh your books okay so the book on the extreme right hand side is a collaborative book that I participated in in cataloguing about sixty weavings from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science here in Denver Colorado that's where I'm from and so we had two textile scholars dr. laurie webster and louise driver they were the they took the lead on driving this project and then dyb gay is another colleague of ours she's a fantastic weaver from Salani arizona and her and i teamed up and did the the explanation of the weaver that designs the colors everything like that so it's a really cool book and if you Weavers out there need inspiration for designs that's the book to get and it's available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble the middle book is our book that Barbara and I did and this book Barbara met Linda Leegin who is the publisher of thrums books in Peru and she approached Barbara and said you know they thrums books does a lot of textile books from all over the world they've done books in Guatemala and Peru Laos Afghanistan all over all over indigenous let me let me interrupt for I have to go hurry square so thank you everybody thank you for for listening to us and let us share a little bit of our life and my sister will take over now and she she knows she's a closer thank you okay so that middle book you know she made that connection in Peru and we were able to meet up and we talked about what this book was going to look like and we said you know there's a lot of books on Navajo Weaver's it's just that they're all written from the perspective of and they and what happens to these language translations so when we when we do interviews with our elders and our mid-career and our new generation of Weaver's it wanted to talk now how we talk now if they wanted to talk English we did so we we didn't want anything lost in translation and this is the first book since colonial and conquistador contact that has been written by Navajo Weaver's about Navajo Weaver's so we're pretty proud of this book and we have thrums books to thank because they really really understood our platform in in making this information available the last book is our new one that's coming out in October and it's our basic how to weave a Navajo rug and other lessons from spider-woman so we kind of go into a little bit of history we do a lot of cultural interpretation and we had help from a lot of different people it wasn't just us we had a team of people that helped us out our illustrator is my kill a man who's Navajo who lives here in Denver our technical person was Velma Craig she's been one of our really good students that is now a full-fledged teacher and she's got a huge following of students and we're pretty proud of her she helped us with the technical writing part we also employed Sharon Johnson the late Sharon Johnson and her husband Freddy Johnson and they they helped us out with the making the connections with the cultural stuff so it wasn't just us we made it a collaborative effort of Navajo people and my husband really stepped in to really focus on the tools and we talked to a lot of different tool makers we I mean we put so much information in there and it has lots of photos lots of illustrations and it's a book that anyone can pick up open it and you know learn how to work and learn how to weave again thank you for joining us all the way from Denver Linda and then Eunice Dean in the background and and barb I'm hope everyone's staying safe everyone is taking care of themselves and and if you and if you have any other arts that you want to pick up don't forget to check out our website at www.allaboutdoors.com [Music] [Music] [Music]