TruthBook Religious News Blog

Navajo class bands heritage and skills

By Arin Gencer
Sun Reporter

July 15, 2007

Deb May leaned back to survey her work, a neat row of orange and brown wool tightly wrapped around a piece of wood.

Did it look right? Would there be enough to make a knot and then warp the other side of the loom?

"You have to just trust," said one of her classmates in the Navajo -- or Diné -- weaving class at Common Ground on the Hill.

An experienced weaver, May's uncertainty came from tackling a loom unlike her own -- and an equally unfamiliar technique.

Some trust, and a healthy helping of patience, seemed to go along with learning the art of Navajo weaving, a long-standing tradition that has served as a spiritual and financial aid to Native Americans.

At McDaniel College last week, a handful of intrepid individuals, hailing from various parts of Maryland and beyond, perched on stools before vertical wood looms and sought to create their own woven patterns using wool from the sheep raised by their instructor, Roy Kady, a Navajo master male weaver.

Navajo creation stories say Spider Man taught Spider Woman how to weave, then instructed her to share the techniques with the rest of the world, Kady said.

The master weaver, who lives in Arizona, has been weaving since childhood, guided and inspired in the making of traditional dresses, horse cinches and saddle blankets by his mother and grandparents.

Now Kady creates commissioned pieces, such as contemporary wall hangings, while also raising his own Navajo-Churro sheep, which provide wool that he can dye using such natural elements as plants, roots or indigo. He looks to the creation stories, his surroundings, and even travel for inspiration in his designs.

And when he can, Kady said, he brings the sacred art of his people to others, in part because many from the younger generations are disconnected from the lessons of Spider Man in today's MTV culture.

Practically every facet of the weaving process reflects Navajo cultural beliefs, Kady said, with its creation stories woven into the rows, the warp and weft.

The wood comb used to firmly pack each newly woven line of wool evokes the sound of falling rain, a soothing rhythm, Kady said.

The bottom wooden beams of the loom represent Mother Earth; the upper ones, Father Sky. And Spider Man is believed to have taken the horizon from all four directions to make the main posts of the loom's frame, he said.

"There's life in these," Kady said. "They're not just tools."

The traditional meanings and references have drawn students such as Mary Bare, of Westminster, to the art. Bare brought in a project she had begun at last year's Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, but which had been stored in her basement since then.

"There's the spirituality and the story of creation and the teachings," Bare said. "That's what makes it different from other weaving."

Kady's class wasn't a first for Reyne Salacain, of Virginia, either. Salacain said she had tried the Navajo technique on a floor loom. Now in her fourth class using the Navajo vertical loom, Salacain said, she was working on a modified, smaller version of a rug she'd like to weave for her parents' home.

Kady said he hopes his class will teach students to "learn and connect with their inner soul."

"A lot of them are in tune with the time

Labels: Arin Gencer, creation, Navajo, spirituality, weaving