A New Deal for Navajo Weaving

A New Deal for Navajo Weaving PDF Author: Jennifer McLerran
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816543240
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
A New Deal for Navajo Weaving provides a detailed history of early to mid-twentieth-century Diné weaving projects by non-Natives who sought to improve the quality and marketability of Navajo weaving but in so doing failed to understand the cultural significance of weaving and its role in the lives of Diné women. By the 1920s the durability and market value of Diné weavings had declined dramatically. Indian welfare advocates established projects aimed at improving the materials and techniques. Private efforts served as models for federal programs instituted by New Deal administrators. Historian Jennifer McLerran details how federal officials developed programs such as the Southwest Range and Sheep Breeding Laboratory at Fort Wingate in New Mexico and the Navajo Arts and Crafts Guild. Other federal efforts included the publication of Native natural dye recipes; the publication of portfolios of weaving designs to guide artisans; and the education of consumers through the exhibition of weavings, aiding them in their purchases and cultivating an upscale market. McLerran details how government officials sought to use these programs to bring the Diné into the national economy; instead, these federal tactics were ineffective because they marginalized Navajo women and ignored the important role weaving plays in the resilience and endurance of wider Diné culture.

A New Deal for Navajo Weaving

A New Deal for Navajo Weaving PDF Author: Jennifer McLerran
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816543240
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Get Book

Book Description
A New Deal for Navajo Weaving provides a detailed history of early to mid-twentieth-century Diné weaving projects by non-Natives who sought to improve the quality and marketability of Navajo weaving but in so doing failed to understand the cultural significance of weaving and its role in the lives of Diné women. By the 1920s the durability and market value of Diné weavings had declined dramatically. Indian welfare advocates established projects aimed at improving the materials and techniques. Private efforts served as models for federal programs instituted by New Deal administrators. Historian Jennifer McLerran details how federal officials developed programs such as the Southwest Range and Sheep Breeding Laboratory at Fort Wingate in New Mexico and the Navajo Arts and Crafts Guild. Other federal efforts included the publication of Native natural dye recipes; the publication of portfolios of weaving designs to guide artisans; and the education of consumers through the exhibition of weavings, aiding them in their purchases and cultivating an upscale market. McLerran details how government officials sought to use these programs to bring the Diné into the national economy; instead, these federal tactics were ineffective because they marginalized Navajo women and ignored the important role weaving plays in the resilience and endurance of wider Diné culture.

A New Deal for Native Art

A New Deal for Native Art PDF Author: Jennifer McLerran
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816550379
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
As the Great Depression touched every corner of America, the New Deal promoted indigenous arts and crafts as a means of bootstrapping Native American peoples. But New Deal administrators' romanticization of indigenous artists predisposed them to favor pre-industrial forms rather than art that responded to contemporary markets. In A New Deal for Native Art, Jennifer McLerran reveals how positioning the native artist as a pre-modern Other served the goals of New Deal programs—and how this sometimes worked at cross-purposes with promoting native self-sufficiency. She describes federal policies of the 1930s and early 1940s that sought to generate an upscale market for Native American arts and crafts. And by unraveling the complex ways in which commodification was negotiated and the roles that producers, consumers, and New Deal administrators played in that process, she sheds new light on native art’s commodity status and the artist’s position as colonial subject. In this first book to address the ways in which New Deal Indian policy specifically advanced commodification and colonization, McLerran reviews its multi-pronged effort to improve the market for Indian art through the Indian Arts and Crafts Board, arts and crafts cooperatives, murals, museum exhibits, and Civilian Conservation Corps projects. Presenting nationwide case studies that demonstrate transcultural dynamics of production and reception, she argues for viewing Indian art as a commodity, as part of the national economy, and as part of national political trends and reform efforts. McLerran marks the contributions of key individuals, from John Collier and Rene d’Harnoncourt to Navajo artist Gerald Nailor, whose mural in the Navajo Nation Council House conveyed distinctly different messages to outsiders and tribal members. Featuring dozens of illustrations, A New Deal for Native Art offers a new look at the complexities of folk art “revivals” as it opens a new window on the Indian New Deal.

Weaving a World

Weaving a World PDF Author: Roseann Sandoval Willink
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
Profiles a West Bengali caste specializing in producing painted narrative scrolls and performing songs to accompany their unrolling.

The Song of the Loom

The Song of the Loom PDF Author: Frederick J. Dockstader
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
83 contemporary masterpieces in color, featuring many ceremonial Chant weaves. Full documentation.

Working the Navajo Way

Working the Navajo Way PDF Author: Colleen O'Neill
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700618945
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
The Dine have been a pastoral people for as long as they can remember; but when livestock reductions in the New Deal era forced many into the labor market, some scholars felt that Navajo culture would inevitably decline. Although they lost a great deal with the waning of their sheep-centered economy, Colleen O'Neill argues that Navajo culture persisted. O'Neill's book challenges the conventional notion that the introduction of market capitalism necessarily leads to the destruction of native cultural values. She shows instead that contact with new markets provided the Navajos with ways to diversify their household-based survival strategies. Through adapting to new kinds of work, Navajos actually participated in the "reworking of modernity" in their region, weaving an alternate, culturally specific history of capitalist development. O'Neill chronicles a history of Navajo labor that illuminates how cultural practices and values influenced what it meant to work for wages or to produce commodities for the marketplace. Through accounts of Navajo coal miners, weavers, and those who left the reservation in search of wage work, she explores the tension between making a living the Navajo way and "working elsewhere." Focusing on the period between the 1930s and the early 1970s-a time when Navajos saw a dramatic transformation of their economy—O'Neill shows that Navajo cultural values were flexible enough to accommodate economic change. She also examines the development of a Navajo working class after 1950, when corporate development of Navajo mineral resources created new sources of wage work and allowed former migrant workers to remain on the reservation. Focusing on the household rather than the workplace, O'Neill shows how the Navajo home serves as a site of cultural negotiation and a source for affirming identity. Her depiction of weaving particularly demonstrates the role of women as cultural arbitrators, providing mothers with cultural power that kept them at the center of what constituted "Navajo-ness." Ultimately, Working the Navajo Way offers a new way to think about Navajo history, shows the essential resilience of Navajo lifeways, and argues for a more dynamic understanding of Native American culture overall.

Patterns of Exchange

Patterns of Exchange PDF Author: Teresa J. Wilkins
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806186623
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
The Navajo rugs and textiles that people admire and buy today are the result of many historical influences, particularly the interaction between Navajo weavers and the traders who guided their production and controlled their sale. John Lorenzo Hubbell and other late-nineteenth-century traders were convinced they knew which patterns and colors would appeal to Anglo-American buyers, and so they heavily encouraged those designs. In Patterns of Exchange, Teresa J. Wilkins traces how the relationships between generations of Navajo weavers and traders affected Navajo weaving. The Navajos valued their relationships with Hubbell and others who operated trading posts on their reservation. As a result, they did not always see themselves as exploited victims of a capitalist system. Rather, because of Navajo cultural traditions of gift-giving and helping others, the artists slowly adapted some of the patterns and colors the traders requested into their own designs. By the 1890s, Hubbell and others commissioned paintings depicting particular weaving styles and encouraged Navajo weavers to copy them, reinforcing public perceptions of traditional Navajo weaving. Even the Navajos came to revere certain designs as “the weaving of the ancestors.” Enhanced by numerous illustrations, including eight color plates, this volume traces the intricate play of cultural and economic pressures and personal relationships between artists and traders that guided Navajo weavers to produce textiles that are today emblems of the Native American Southwest. Winner - Multi-cultural Subject, New Mexico Book Awards

Blanket Weaving in the Southwest

Blanket Weaving in the Southwest PDF Author: Joe Ben Wheat
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 9780816523047
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
A history and description of southwestern textiles along with a catalog of Pueblo, Navajo, Mexican, and Spanish American blankets, ponchos, and sarapes.

Navajo Weaving

Navajo Weaving PDF Author: Kate Peck Kent
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Weaving a Navajo Blanket

Weaving a Navajo Blanket PDF Author: Gladys Amanda Reichard
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486229920
Category : Crafts & Hobbies
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Spinning, carding, and dyeing yarns, constructing a loom, tension, and the weaving processes are discussed in this guide to the art of blanket and saddleblanket weaving

Ray Manley's The Fine Art of Navajo Weaving

Ray Manley's The Fine Art of Navajo Weaving PDF Author: Steve Getzwiller
Publisher: Ray Manley Publishing
ISBN: 9780931418082
Category : Crafts & Hobbies
Languages : en
Pages : 52

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Book Description
Full-color photographs accompanied by descriptions of styles, locations and histories of Navajo rugs.