Weaving Voices
Episode 5
A Life Woven Together Between Shepherd and Sheep
[00:00:00] Rebecca Burgess: The first people of the Americas have experienced relentless and continued attrition of their ancestral territory and attempts at cultural erasure at the hands of the US government. And yet these cultures have been kept alive through incredible diligence and commitment across the generations. These are cultures with rich and well honed fiber and food ways.
[00:00:24] Rebecca Burgess: Within the region now commonly known as the Southwest, the Navajo Nation continues to shepherd the Churro sheep and sustain their wool processing traditions. The embodiment of this dedication is expressed in the newly formed rainbow fiber co-op, a project and offering generated and uplifted by today's guests.
[00:00:56] Rebecca Burgess: This is Weaving Voices, a podcast that stitches, [00:01:00] textile practice, economic philosophy, and climate science into a quilt of understanding, designed to transform our thinking and actions, both as citizens and material culture makers, and users. I'm Rebecca Burgess, your host of this Whetstone radio collective series, which aims to explore the nexus of modern day economic design and textile systems.
[00:01:23] Rebecca Burgess: I was fortunate to be joined by three Dine guests to share heart opening stories from their work as shepherds and weavers who have committed their lives to the sheep that they raise. The breed is known as Churro. My first guest Nikyle Begay is the co-founder and director of the Rainbow Fiber Co-Op, which is a Dine led wool fiber cooperative focused on purchasing wool and adding value to it through the making of roving and yarn.
[00:01:52] Nikyle Begay: *speaking in [00:02:00] Diné*
[00:02:01] Nikyle Begay: Greetings. My name is Nikyle Begay, and as I introduced myself in our Diné language, I said that I am a part of the bitter water clan born for the big water clan. My maternal grandfathers are the start of the red streak people. And my paternal grandfathers are of the dear Springs people.
[00:02:23] Rebecca Burgess: Nikyle is a Dine shepherd and Weaver who resides on the Navajo nation in Donado, Arizona.
[00:02:29] Rebecca Burgess: They began shepherding at a young age and spent a lot of their summers with their paternal grandmother and her large flock of sheep. My next guest Zefren Anderson is a Weaver and a spinner. He grew up with family that were shepherds, producers and farmers, and he learned about everything from raising sheep to industrial wool sales.
[00:02:52] Zefren Anderson: *speaking in
[00:02:57] Rebecca Burgess: [00:03:00] Diné*
[00:03:01] Zefren Anderson: My mom's of the mud people. My father is of the many houses people. My mom's father's family is the red house people. And my dad's family is of the salt people, Toni Dan Nasha. So I live in Shiprock.
[00:03:20] Rebecca Burgess: Shiprock is within the Navajo nation in New Mexico. Zefren is a board member of the Rainbow Fiber Co-Op. My final guest, Jay Begay, Jr. is from the community of Hard Rock, Arizona, the black Mesa region of the Navajo reservation.
[00:03:44] Jay Begay Jr.: I am of the honeycomb rock clan, born for the Chiwawa Apache Clan. My maternal grandparents are of the bitter water. And my paternal grandparents are the Red running into the water clan.
[00:03:59] Rebecca Burgess: Jay grew up with [00:04:00] sheep and his paternal grandmother was the person that he spent much of his childhood with. Her work was tending to the flock weaving and all aspects of raising sheep.
[00:04:11] Rebecca Burgess: All three guests shared how their lives are shaped by the teachings of traditional practices that their grandparents and prior generations handed down to them. And I wanted to explore the nature of the relationship with the sheep and asked, first of Zefren when the relationship between the Diné and the Navajo Churro sheep began and what this relationship means to his family and immediate community he speaks from his personal knowledge and that which was handed down by his ancestors.
[00:04:41] Zefren Anderson: It happens so early on that you can say that as soon as we become a definable culture that people say, Hey, there's the net over there. There has been a relationship with fiber weaving and creating all this stuff. And eventually sheep are a [00:05:00] part of that. So I don't like to say the terms of like temporal times.
[00:05:04] Zefren Anderson: I just say early on the relationship with the sheep, because if you have the history that is given to us of that time, of course they say 15th century, these factors, and even those facts are in dispute because the genetics of the Navajo Churro is so varied that you can't put the source down to any one line or breed.
[00:05:28] Zefren Anderson: There's multiple ways that it could have come into our cultures just very early in that scene. But what is prehistoric and what is as our cultural core values is our love of fiber because of how much it helps daily life. How much it eases, the pains of hunger, poverty, and all these other ideas to make a successful life for you, raise children.
[00:05:57] Zefren Anderson: And they don't have to have the same [00:06:00] worries as you because you make their world more balanced and more nurtured than the previous generation.
[00:06:08] Rebecca Burgess: Zefren went on to say how remarkable and adaptable those philosophies are when it comes to sheep. He said that his ancestors, if given any modern breeds to work with today would likely end up over time through breeding decisions, working with a sheep
[00:06:24] Rebecca Burgess: that would be the same as the present day Navajo Churro. How this lineage began, he says would likely be done the same way if it were starting anew today.
[00:06:34] Zefren Anderson: I hope that it never ends because that was the goal of us as human beings, for our culture knowledge and everything, that things are perpetual that doesn't take more from the environment than what we put back into it.
[00:06:49] Zefren Anderson: And that philosophy works on different levels all the way from the micro to the macro. So, you think [00:07:00] too much of it and you don't have the brain power and the time to think of it. So we just live in the moment and what we have to try to bridge whatever is coming out and going in, in terms of that, we don't give our ancestors, most cultures don't give their ancestors enough credit to give them the power that their minds had in the past that if given the same tools that you would know now, they would've had the same reasoning and intellect to create any technology that we have in the present.
[00:07:32] Rebecca Burgess: He believes they could have taken anything and turned it into what has become classic, Navajo weaving. He admits it's hard to describe. And if you tried to explain it, it starts to sound like a metaphysical philosophy.
[00:07:45] Rebecca Burgess: He's learning his native language and knows that his native tongue has the ability to explain these concepts more clearly than we can in the English language. Nikyle offered more explanation about their shared lineage and [00:08:00] about connection. At the beginning of our interview, you'll recall that the guests introduced themselves in their native language and in a traditional Diné manner.
[00:08:09] Rebecca Burgess: This is what establishes kinship and alliances between their people.
[00:08:14] Nikyle Begay: For example, Zefren's second clan is * while * meaning many houses is a subgroup of where my paternal second clan comes from, To tsohnii, Big Water. So in a sense already, I have gained a brother through him and with Jay, his maternal grandfather clan is Tod¶chæiiænii, which is Bitter Water.
[00:08:40] Nikyle Begay: My first clan is Tod¶chæiiænii so that would make Jay my grandchild. When we build kinship, we also share our knowledge between each other, as well as stories. And a lot of the times when we speak to ancestors and they have [00:09:00] that comfort, knowing that we have some kind of relation, whether it's through clan or through sheep, they share very amazing stories with us. And a lot of them seem to have a genetic memory of once having sheep.
[00:09:17] Rebecca Burgess: Nikyle recounted a recent conversation they had with a Rainbow Fiber Co-Op producer who had made some interesting comparisons between Navajo shepherding culture and Mongolian shepherding culture and how both communities live very harmoniously with their flocks.
[00:09:33] Nikyle Begay: I bring that up because he also said that in the beginning of time, whether it was hundreds of thousands of years ago or closer to the present, he said that when we arrived here in the Southwest, we had journeyed from wherever we came from. Traditionally, we say that we emerged through four different worlds to finally find ourselves here in the fifth world.
[00:09:56] Nikyle Begay: Well, he said that we once had sheep [00:10:00] but they were lost along the way because we weren't as reverent as we were supposed to have been. And that we had always just continued to recite their songs and prayers in our traditional ceremonies until we were reintroduced to them. So he made a point that when it's attributed to Spanish colonization, bringing sheep in, that out of the Southwestern tribes, Navajo are the ones who took to it a lot easier and quicker than other tribes did.
[00:10:34] Nikyle Begay: And I found that so amazing. So being able to find that kinship within each other and to share our true passion, which is sheep and fiber and weaving. It's amazing.
[00:10:49] Rebecca Burgess: As Jay described it, he was always told that the relationship between Diné and sheep started at the beginning of time.
[00:10:57] Jay Begay Jr.: The story goes that the sheep were [00:11:00] created in a place called *.
[00:11:02] Jay Begay Jr.: And the purpose of the sheep coming to us was that we would never go into poverty or that we would never go hungry. And that was a gift that changing women would give to the Diné, to us when we had arrived. So it was told that the holy ones gathered and they were the ones
[00:11:28] Jay Begay Jr.: who created the sheep. So that was in a sense where that relationship had formed was that the sheep would present itself
[00:11:38] Jay Begay Jr.: and we always go back to that meaning of "sheep is life" in our culture. And in Navajo, we say "Diné be’ iiná," which means they give everything to us, our bedding, our food, our clothing, they pretty much provided everything that we needed. And as I was told was that [00:12:00] the sheep is a very giving animal. It gives its land, it gives its wool, and then when it's time, it gives itself.
[00:12:09] Rebecca Burgess: Jay says there's the saying that you have to take care of them for them to take care of you. That was the meaning behind the sheep is life phrase. Even today, if a relative dies or there is a birthday party or a celebration, the sheep are always part of those ceremonies.
[00:12:27] Jay Begay Jr.: In that way, there was that relationship that was built again, because that meant that if you were having a ceremony, your relatives in return would help you, when you're looking out for help. So in many ways, the sheep built relationship in our Navajo, where do we call it? * A lot of * was formed through sheep.
[00:12:50] Rebecca Burgess: When shearing took place in the spring, it would bring the families together. They would help each other. And in a sense, it was the sheep that were bringing the families together. It was [00:13:00] bringing joy and laughter. These stories of the Churro origin are powerful because they contrast the textbook history that is often represented.
[00:13:10] Rebecca Burgess: We're often hearing numeric dates about when colonizers arrived with their livestock. Those of us who've been taught that history are missing so much of the depth of the entire story. Learning from my guests about the true understanding of the meaning of this relationship is profound.
[00:13:29] Rebecca Burgess: It's at this point of the interview that we shift our attention a bit to the history and the US government's engagement with the tribe, and what's known as the Long Walk and the Livestock Reduction Act. In the 1860s, Nikyle says the Navajo were very prosperous with flocks of sheep and extensive orchards where they had developed their own type of peach. But as westward expansion of the US military and the quote unsettlers continued, the tribe was [00:14:00] viewed by the government in Washington, DC as an entity to control.
[00:14:05] Nikyle Begay: That fear drove into the local army posts within Arizona and New Mexico. And they were actually given orders from the president and the Congress to get Navajo, Apache people under control. So their idea was to round us all up and force us to march over 300 miles or so to, from that time, they said was somewhat barren lands of Eastern New Mexico near Fort Sumner.
[00:14:42] Nikyle Begay: And their plan was to change the Navajo from being, I don't like to use certain terms, but people who migrate and practice transhumance with their flocks, as well as having their seasonal camps to [00:15:00] just, modernizing them and focusing on agriculture.
[00:15:06] Rebecca Burgess: The Americans came in and they killed the sheep, the goats, they burned the corn, the squash, the gardens, and the peach orchards and all of this to make their ancestors submit into being removed from the land.
[00:15:21] Rebecca Burgess: A large group of Navajo were forced to March to what later became the Navajo reservation, which was in the Fort Sumner, Bosque, Redondo area.
[00:15:32] Nikyle Begay: That was just a very tragic time where not only the livelihoods of the people were destroyed, but also there was a lot of loss of life. If somebody resisted here, they were killed.
[00:15:45] Nikyle Begay: And there were stories told that if pregnant women on the March had their babies, they were either forced to kill their own offspring themselves or the army would shoot them mother and child then and [00:16:00] there and leave them behind to die. And when they got to Fort Sumner, it wasn't the utopia they made it sound like it was. It was actually
[00:16:11] Nikyle Begay: fending for yourself as well as introducing new concepts like I guess at the time, what they would've called modern agriculture and being unable to sustain themselves. So a lot of them there died from starvation or disease that wasn't common to our people. So in later 1860s, they signed the treaty and were able to return home.
[00:16:40] Nikyle Begay: But within that treaty, it outlined that they would be confined to their original homelands and unable to go out of that boundary.
[00:16:52] Rebecca Burgess: Other rules set upon them included that their children had to go to school, which we will touch on a bit later. As for the livestock [00:17:00] reductions that occurred in the 1930s,
[00:17:02] Rebecca Burgess: this was due to the us building the Hoover dam. That was an attempt to harness the Colorado River's power to produce electricity. There was a lot of fear that before they got the damn filled with water it would be filled with silt from runoff that would flow during the monsoon. And rather than studying where that silt would actually come from, they automatically assumed the Navajo people and the Navajo sheep and goat grazing lands was the source point.
[00:17:28] Rebecca Burgess: It was estimated that there might have been hundreds of thousands of sheep and goats on the Navajo reservation prior to the implementation of the Livestock Reduction Act.
[00:17:38] Nikyle Begay: At first, a lot of Navajo shepherds were tricked. They would say, oh, you'll be compensated X amount of money per head if you let us take them. While a lot of them were just taken and just shipped elsewhere.
[00:17:53] Nikyle Begay: What isn't shared in history books is that the sheep that were taken from here were [00:18:00] sent up along the Rockies, as far as into Montana to establish that Western horseman, ranch type culture. And a lot of those Navajo sheep were then bred up and the Navajo weren't compensated. Those who resisted that resulted in BIA agents actually coming to their home, holding the families against their will, going to the sheep and goat corrals and just annihilating the entire thing.
[00:18:32] Nikyle Begay: And it wasn't humane of course. Either, they just shot them point blank, or sometimes they douse them with gasoline or anything flammable and set them all on fire while the Navajo people, my ancestors could not do anything about it.
[00:18:54] Rebecca Burgess: The government's goal was to reduce the number of animals claiming that it was about protecting a [00:19:00] reservoir from silting in. And yet here it is today, filling in with silt on its own as this is what it means to dam the power of any river. Within the context of climate change, nothing of what they created will last. Unlike the Navajo culture that has persisted throughout time, enduring externalized forces attempting to weaken it with the aim of controlling.
[00:19:26] Rebecca Burgess: The Livestock Reduction Act in particular was a massive threat to the health of the genetics of the Churro, but even in the face of this, the culture persisted. Nikyle's ancestors knew the land very well, and the sheep did too. Throughout their life, they've heard so many stories of the sheep saving their people from all of the events that had been set upon them.
[00:19:50] Rebecca Burgess: Like The Long Walk and the Livestock Reduction Act.. And more recently when the government came in and took native children to residential schools. A report by the US [00:20:00] government recently came out at the request of the secretary of the interior that analyzed how many children lost their lives at these boarding schools, which have been acknowledged by many as really prisoner of war camps.
[00:20:13] Rebecca Burgess: This process of forcibly sending children to these schools was used as a tool to control native families and to control the land. We're hopefully at a powerful inflection point in our collective awareness of this painful piece of history.
[00:20:29] Nikyle Begay: You tend to forget those kind of things that it was just one generation away to where my grandpa, my dad's dad and his sisters used to herd the sheep way far away whenever they got the sense of a BIA agent coming through to collect kids to send to boarding school. And the sheep having the knowledge of the land and being able to pass that on to their offspring, as well as the people having knowledge of the land and passing it off to the offspring, they were able to take [00:21:00] refuge in these very remote locations and basically save themselves, making both a resilient sheep and a resilient people.
[00:21:09] Rebecca Burgess: While the land has always provided refuge, it is now a landscape that is rapidly changing. Zefren shared his memory of the environmental conditions of the mountains, the memory his grandmother shared with him of these same mountains and in contrast what he's now observing.
[00:21:27] Zefren Anderson: My parental grandmother, who was probably born around the 1810s, 1820s, her recollection to my grandparents was that the mountains below the tree line never showed any rocks.
[00:21:40] Zefren Anderson: There was always snow pack on the mountains and the textiles that I've seen tribute this trend of continued dryness and warmer temperatures. To adapt our ancestors from all of that change to now, I think is what's [00:22:00] leading us in the next direction. Is that our work isn't done, it's just now starting because we're starting to see decades long centuries change within just a few years and even months in some places.
[00:22:14] Zefren Anderson: And some of the mentality of our fellow artists, some shepherds, and particularly when it comes to government, political and religious institution, everything has stayed the same. Everything is business as usual. And that's why I think we've all come together because we're questioning where our data is coming from, how we do things and actually trying to work with this change and not to say that it's bad,
[00:22:47] Zefren Anderson: it's just that we need to start thinking outside the box.
[00:22:52] Rebecca Burgess: Zefren says they already know that the drought is cyclical. It comes up every thousand or so years, and now those cycles are [00:23:00] accelerating. They will need to continue to adapt and to change. Even if it means that we need to think outside of our tradition to figure out what to do. At four decades old, he carries his own observations, but he also holds the stories of his grandparents and their grandparents that span all the way back to the Mexican empire.
[00:23:23] Rebecca Burgess: I empathize with Zefren, Jay, and Nikyle. I've observed such change in our own snow pack here in the Sierras in such a short amount of time. Our thousand year drought cycles are returning in tighter proximity to one another. I do not live amongst elders who have an institutional memory of what scientists would call mega drought.
[00:23:44] Rebecca Burgess: There are not many people who have shared actual historic knowledge of how to adapt and survive within these larger and bigger patterns. Adaptation is what the Diné do so well. From climate change to colonization, they are masters. [00:24:00] That incredible skill for adaptation is expressed within their approach to life. Artistic expression and their practice of animal husbandry. For Niklye, they first began to share sheep as a child because their grandma had a large flock and there's work that needed to be done.
[00:24:18] Rebecca Burgess: There was other work like catching and handling the sheep and also packing the wool when it was harvested.
[00:24:25] Nikyle Begay: In reality, the sharing is the hard work because you spend a lot of your time perfecting what you're doing. Yes, I've learned at seven, but it's now later in life in my thirties that I can just pretty much do it with my eyes closed.
[00:24:45] Nikyle Begay: I would follow my grandmother around. I would watch her carve. A shaft for a spindle out of an old ax handle. And she would plop a whirl on there and go out with a few [00:25:00] bags of roll logs while she's herding the sheep during the day, and just spin wool as the flock raises. So those are like the things that have basically shaped my future with wool.
[00:25:14] Nikyle Begay: Because I also started my own flock at a young age when I was 12, going to 13 years old. And when I finally did it was my grandmother who was like, okay, now you have sheep, now you gotta do something with them.
[00:25:27] Rebecca Burgess: They dove right into learning how to process their own wool. It's a process you're learning from and perfecting every year.
[00:25:34] Rebecca Burgess: Nikyle now raises their own sheep and harvests their wool in the spring. The summer is usually dedicated to cleaning carting and spinning. By the fall, they are weaving with that wool.
[00:25:46] Nikyle Begay: Particularly I learned a lot of the craft from my dad's mother. One of the things that she did as opposed to other weavers at that specific time, [00:26:00] was she wove twill saddle blankets.
[00:26:03] Nikyle Begay: And she had her own clientele that would buy from her because a twill saddle blanket was undervalued if you took it to a trader or a collector, because it wasn't a big, vibrant rug that a collector or whoever wanted to invest in, something would go for. However, seeing these horsemen, their faces, whenever she presented them with a finished
[00:26:34] Nikyle Begay: twill saddle blanket it was like Christmas in July. It was just so amazing. So I decided that I would love to continue that.
[00:26:45] Rebecca Burgess: They say there's a lot of twill patterns that they know from their own mother and from her aunts that nobody else in the family knows. And they feel very fortunate to have continued those weaving styles.
[00:26:57] Rebecca Burgess: A lot of what they do with their own wool goes into [00:27:00] crafting twill saddle blankets. The fact that they live near a fairly busy highway means there's often people at the door asking about the sheep and the beautiful colors that they produce. For Zefren's practice with the wool right now, unlike Jay or Nikyle, there's no grazing allotments available for him to have sheep.
[00:27:20] Rebecca Burgess: He's a busy artist that is focused on supporting the important revaluation of Churro wool that the rainbow fiber co-op is spearheading.
[00:27:28] Zefren Anderson: My only way that I feel is a better way for me to contribute is to work with projects like is this and rainbow fiber tries to purchase wool at fair market values.
[00:27:43] Zefren Anderson: And that practice is what I use with my wool purchases that what I create is put directly back into my materials. So I go out there and harvest wool from sheep that I know work with [00:28:00] what I'm working for with my vision, not so much mission, but the advocacy that I'm trying to get my art to prove and promote because I work with not only economic inequality, but also I used the word queer advocacy, but it's mainly just a name holder for just a quality of living. It doesn't really matter what you love, but we as human beings have to exist in a safe space. And that's what I use a lot with my art. And then I'd advocate a lot with our history.
[00:28:37] Rebecca Burgess: He felt moved when the rainbow fiber cooperative started.
[00:28:40] Rebecca Burgess: It was a way to reconnect with producers and the sheep. There's an inherent value that is hidden in all these materials. And as an artist he reaches in and he finds ways to uplift all of that value. Zefren says he is extremely grateful for everyone that still has sheep and areas that can still support them. [00:29:00] He weaves blankets with an historic warp set that was done 150 to 200 years ago.
[00:29:06] Rebecca Burgess: He has carried this tradition forward. For Jay, he combines both an artistic practice and the shepherd role and has been working very hard with the Navajo Churro breed to improve the quality of the fiber, minimizing the coarseness and other factors, which he's been able to do with his own flock. He does sell his wool to the rainbow fiber co-op.
[00:29:29] Rebecca Burgess: He knows the entire process from the sheep to the loom.
[00:29:33] Jay Begay Jr.: First, it starts with the caring of the animal and then shearing the animal, washing the wool. I remember as a kid, we would take bags of wool to the local water hole. And it's an area that has ponds that would fill up when it rained. And it was like a sheet of rock and my grandmother would build a fire and [00:30:00] put these huge pots on the fire. And we would use the water from the pond. We would wash the wool and then lay them out on the rock for it to dry. So I got exposed to that pretty early. And after that it was carting and spinning and dying of the wool and eventually into the weaving process. And I've seen the entire process my entire life after herding sheep, we
[00:30:28] Jay Begay Jr.: put the sheep up at noon or they would just go under a tree. And I remember just watching my grandmother weave. Wasn't so interested in the process or actually doing it. But later on when the time came, I just recall, recollect what I remember seeing. So I put that to use primarily weave, um, horse inches to girth that holds the saddle onto the horse.
[00:30:56] Rebecca Burgess: In terms of any dyes that he uses for these woven [00:31:00] braided materials, he mostly uses what can be found locally, dyes that they call Navajo carrot, which you have to dig deep for in really sandy areas to get to the root. It gives a very nice orange color. The black walnut gives a nice and almost brown, tan color.
[00:31:18] Rebecca Burgess: And there's also sage that can be found locally and juniper. The ashes that are burned from the juniper branches are also used as a mordant or a binding agent to bind the pigment to the wool. For Zefren getting any natural dyes requires driving at least two hours. He stopped harvesting natural dyes about two years ago after realizing that the plants were not replenishing themselves in the places where he was harvesting.
[00:31:46] Rebecca Burgess: And that brings us to the issue of drought, which is also affecting the ability for shepherds to raise their sheep. Jay says they definitely have noticed the effects of climate change. They just don't get the amount of [00:32:00] precipitation that they used to. And the drought seems to be continuous. The cost of supplemental feed is also getting increasingly more expensive.
[00:32:10] Jay Begay Jr.: Particular in our area
[00:32:13] Jay Begay Jr.: is what they call the Navajo partition land. It was an area that was once divided between the Navajo tribe and the Hopi tribe and a portion was given to the Hopi and a portion was given back to the Navajos. So we're kind of in a sense, separate from what they call Big Navajo, the rest of the reservation because of the land dispute, our area, the grazing permits were canceled back in 1974, and they've not since been renewed. So they're still working on that process. But in that process, the regulations indicate that we might be only allowed 10 animals. So that [00:33:00] puts a lot of restrictions on us. And a lot of the concerns that our elders ask is what is 10 head of sheep gonna do?
[00:33:10] Jay Begay Jr.: That's not really sustaining. So in our area, that's one of the challenges. And then again, like I said, is the change in the climate. We don't get as much, you know, the monsoon season.
[00:33:26] Rebecca Burgess: In Nikyle's area, they think the challenges regarding grazing permits were first brought upon their people when they came back from the long walk, as well as after the livestock reductions were made.
[00:33:36] Rebecca Burgess: The government had imposed strict grazing permits to the heads of households. And usually at that time, they weren't presented to a great number of people. They think it really set up a lot of families to fail at raising livestock and it pitted very close knit families against each other to the point where there's long standing feuds of who should hold that grazing permit.
[00:33:59] Rebecca Burgess: [00:34:00] And if they become inactive, the permit, they're basically revoked and then nobody can have that permit to graze here on the federal lands. It happened in their own family on their mom's side.
[00:34:13] Nikyle Begay: I'm not saying this in a sense that I don't want to associate with them, but I can't associate with them because they have lifelong grudges.
[00:34:22] Nikyle Begay: My maternal grandmother, she holds a grazing permit for her area, as well as her sisters. And because it was divided in such a way that some sisters got more units as they call them than another sister, what was once very familial or communal between them to work the livestock has now been just flipped upside down.
[00:34:46] Nikyle Begay: And I can't say hi to extended relatives without them turning their nose up at me. And I don't even live in that area nor do I graze there. I think being set up this way [00:35:00] is always gonna be a continued challenge.
[00:35:03] Rebecca Burgess: Nikyle says all of these challenges have stemmed from what the government has put the community through.
[00:35:08] Rebecca Burgess: And now with the effects of climate change, it's gotten much harder to raise any kind of livestock. The prices have shot up for hay and it's creating a bigger roadblock for those who wish to continue the shepherding way of life. At some point, it could just become unattainable.
[00:35:25] Nikyle Begay: Hay producers are being forced out by cities because they deem it unsustainable and they wanna build houses there.
[00:35:36] Nikyle Begay: They wanna develop it into housing. And I don't know if you've ever flew into Phoenix, but when you fly into Phoenix, you see in their backyards, every backyard, a pool and coming from here, Northeastern Arizona on the ancestral homelands of my people, water is just very, very sacred to where I have grown [00:36:00] up hauling my own water.
[00:36:02] Nikyle Begay: And when I say hauling. I either walked or I rode the horse to a well where I'd have to pump the water into buckets, I'd seal the buckets and load them up and then trek home with them. And when I got home, by that time, I'm like, okay, that is a lot of work to go and get water. So it's already switched to different thinking in my mind, placing the value of that water.
[00:36:29] Nikyle Begay: So I'm not gonna waste it.
[00:36:32] Rebecca Burgess: Is there perhaps anything out of history prior to Long Walk that informs how to think about the future. Nikyle says, if we come back to establishing relationships, building new friendships, that effort could move us through the land disputes or the disputes about the work that needs to be done to care for these animals.
[00:36:53] Rebecca Burgess: They said that if they were to return to simpler ways of identifying who they are to each other and who they are to the land, [00:37:00] all of this could and would sustain this way of life. Zefren describes returning to certain traditions and rebuilding ensuring that the community of artists, shepherds, and anyone that has their hand touching the wool, that they are sharing more with one.
[00:37:18] Rebecca Burgess: So that no one is experiencing dire survival situations alone, instead of the quote, unquote, "it's just me" thinking we need to transition to the quote unquote, "it's just us." Jay says it's finding and continually developing that network, that friendship, that relationship, and also continuing to engage the youth so that the traditions will be continued through these children and their grandchildren.
[00:37:43] Rebecca Burgess: I ended our conversation, asking my guests what they'd like to see occur, to make the wool culture stronger. For Jay, he says improving the quality of the wool of the Navajo Churro sheep and making it known to people that this is an ideal wool. He also feels that continuing to tell their story for [00:38:00] people to hear is vital.
[00:38:02] Jay Begay Jr.: Sad to say that it's slowly diminishing, but I do have hope with our youth that it will continue. And for us to get our youth more involved, that would make our wool culture stronger, to educate them. And the stories that go with it from a traditional standpoint. But all in all, I think telling our story that we're passionate about it and to network and get ideas of other ways to improve the quality. And then for other ways to work with wool, I think that would make our wool culture stronger.
[00:38:46] Rebecca Burgess: Zefren says his grandparents were always blunt with their advice and combined with his personal opinion, from what he himself has seen. He says that we need participation from complete family units.
[00:38:58] Rebecca Burgess: Anytime there's an idea or [00:39:00] knowledge that disappears in the youth, it's a reflection of the parents and grandparents' ability to transfer that knowledge.
[00:39:06] Zefren Anderson: For the longest time, we've always blamed that there's intergenerational trauma and all sorts of activities added, and it's still being discussed and worked on, but no one has gone out there to actually solve the problem.
[00:39:22] Zefren Anderson: Like it's not just the student, it's the student's parents, the student's grandparents, the whole family unit become involved in the process. It's unsustainable if it's just one person. Like we said, this idea of community and * building, it's almost like we have to teach ourselves how our families are supposed to work.
[00:39:42] Zefren Anderson: The burden of difficulties is not supposed to be concentrate on the shoulders of the individual, it's supposed to be a community wide effort, a clan effort, and a broader kinship connections. [00:40:00]
[00:40:00] Rebecca Burgess: For Nikyle moving forward is not forgetting about the past trauma that their ancestors endured, but not using it as a weapon to keep themselves divided from each other.
[00:40:09] Rebecca Burgess: They feel it's going to take a process of decolonizing internal biases. They also explain that a lot of the time, the traders and other outside companies have come to the reservation and they really have historically, and to some degree today, control what shepherds are being paid for their wool. Today, some of those bigger buyers, as well as traders deem the Churro wool as worthless.
[00:40:33] Rebecca Burgess: Hence the role of the Rainbow Fiber Co-Op to respond to this injustice.
[00:40:39] Nikyle Begay: I feel that if we work together to, as I said, decolonize, that type of thinking, we'd have to come together and work together and share our knowledge because we are, as in the adults now we're not gonna be here forever. So we'll need to share with those who are [00:41:00] younger than us, or even those who are the same age as us or older than us who want to reintroduce themselves or reacquaint themselves with shepherding with working with wool.
[00:41:11] Nikyle Begay: Throughout this whole thing. I was thinking about what Jay said and excuse me, I'm getting kind of emotional because a lot of us as Navajo children who were raised around sheep were told by our grandmothers that if you take care of the sheep, they'll always take care of you. And throughout my life journey, I have seen that I have heard shepherds saying that when they lost their grandparents and when they lost their parents, the sheep reminded them of the work that their grandparents and parents did. So it's like this sheep became their parents and they found that same love within their flocks. And I feel that with rainbow fiber, it is just that one piece of [00:42:00] continuing to take care of the sheep. By giving the producers that, um, recognition that they deserve, that their hard work does not go unnoticed.
[00:42:18] Rebecca Burgess: I hope those who have listened to this podcast are able to understand ways in which they see themselves as part of building these friendships and building these relationships. If you are someone who works with wool, the Rainbow Fiber Co-Op is now producing beautiful roving and yarns for your spinning, weaving, and textile making practice.
[00:42:37] Rebecca Burgess: And you can follow the weaving work of each of today's guests by taking a look at the show notes. There are so many ways to support the depth of these incredible life ways that Jay, Nikyle, and Zefren's work uphold, including providing donations directly to the rainbow fiber co-op project. Supporting the startup costs for yarn production and milling.[00:43:00]
[00:43:00] Rebecca Burgess: Thank you so much for listening.
[00:43:18] Rebecca Burgess: This episode is made possible because of all the people who work behind the scenes on it. I'd like to thank my producer, Jennifer O'Neill, audio editor, Bethany Sands, and intern Maha Sanad. I'd also like to thank Wjetstone founder, Stephen Satterfield, Whetstone head of podcasts, Celine Glasier, sound engineer, Max Kotelchuckm music director, Catherine Yang, associate producer, Quentin Lebeau, production assistant Shabnam Ferdowsi, and sound intern, Simon Lavender.
[00:43:50] Rebecca Burgess: The cover art by Whetstone art director, Alex Bowman. You can learn more about this podcast at WhetstoneRadio.com, on Instagram and Twitter [00:44:00] @WhetstoneRadio and subscribe to our YouTube channel Whetstone Radio Collective for more podcast video content. You can learn more about all things happening a Whetstone at WhetstoneMagazine.com.