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• 1 media/mt. taylor.jpeg media/landscape.jpg 2018-01-21T02:45:37-08:00 Diné Diyogí: Inspirations and Creations 27 By Kara Roanhorse image_header 2018-01-24T13:01:30-08:00 Author's Note: I am Diné from the satellite reservation community To’hajiilee, NM. I am Tł’ááshchí’í (Red Cheek Clan), born for Ta’neeszahnii (Tangle Clan). My maternal grandpa is Tsé nahabiłnii (Sleeping Rock Clan); my paternal grandpa is Kinyaa’áanii (Towering House Clan). See the Contributors page for more about my positionality...
  
  - Introduction: At First Glance -

  January 3, 2018. My classmates are gathered around a table to decide which object from the Haffenreffer collection to research and write about. A distinctly Diné design captures my immediate attention. I decide on the woven cotton-wool rug named “Sandpainting textile” made between the 1920s-1930s. As I glance at the woven design of a sandpainting, I question my own knowledge of ceremonies and the extent to which non-Diné people are allowed to see sandpainting imagery. Keeping this in mind, I wish to further engage and reflect on my people’s history and survivance.

  In retrospect, the decision to choose the Diné diyogí (rug) was to choose something familiar, something comparable to feeling/being at home for me.
  
  At first glance of the rug, I felt an energy of love and interconnectedness – channeling the presence of my ancestors and k’é (kinship; relations; solidarity). Diné rugs and blankets, made primarily from the hearts and labor of Diné women, have been displayed across Dinétah and the world. Often times, my people’s rugs are “highly prized as artworks and museum artifacts” in the Americas. Yet, how do we begin to problematize this? What is meant by "object" and the intentionality behind writing an object biography? Most importantly, what is the underlying harms and stories missed when essentializing and misinterpreting indigenous peoples’ representations, history, and knowledge needed in order to explain Indigenous creations?
  
  In choosing Gladys Manuelito’s rug, I am taking on the responsibility of writing and thinking about her as part of a narrative of my people, and therefore I am writing for and to my people and her family. I do not take this task lightly, nor do I wish to know, present, or pursue all information available on this topic. As Audra Simpson notes, not everything needs to be known and made available and I refuse to provide explanations of indigenous cultures and experiences, especially of my own, solely for the use and benefit of the non-indigenous, general public, and institutions like the academy. Ultimately, I embrace the responsibility to investigate, scrutinize, and remedy the colonial logics at play and weave together insights and parts of Diné history in order to (de)construct and promote indigenous resilience and resistance.
  
  - Understanding Settler Colonialism -
  
  Settler colonialism is "a structure, not an event."
  
  When I first began learning of settler colonialism within the southwest, I began to think back to the westward expansion narrative in the so-called “frontier” of the United States (U.S.). While I am still learning how settler colonialism, imperialism, and other structurally oppressive ‘isms’ came to be, I did have an understanding of how it impacted my life and my community. Living on the reservation is an experience I can directly point out as ongoing settler colonialism – to dispossess indigenous peoples of their lands, and therefore their way of life while passing off this designation of “Indian reservation land” as progress to celebrate.
  
  There is no “one size fits all” explanation of how all indigenous communities experience colonialism and other oppressive structures. Settler colonialism is a structure, not an event (Wolfe, 2006). There cannot be one totalizing story to encapsulate all indigenous peoples and their experiences, especially of the Diné, living in the Americas and beyond. In illuminating the past and present indigenous-settler relations in the U.S., and how Diné people and their history fits into this picture, we must first contextualize the Americas as part of a centuries-old colorblind, post-racial, post-colonial project. Literature from Native and Indigenous scholars speak to the qualities and makeup of American society, past and present, as structurally, institutionally, and inter-personally embedded in white supremacist, settler-colonial, and capitalist ideals. American Indian studies also provide a deeper understanding of Indigenous Peoples’ history, identity, law and politics throughout Turtle Island (North America) and particularities of U.S. settler colonialism. America’s founding may have changed the indigenous world as we knew it, but how we conceptualize and reclaim our collective presence, and thus future, is of great importance today.
  
  In remembering and memorializing indigenous histories, there has been an overpowering shadow cast by the ongoing atrocities and occupation by the original settler-nation state. Accounts of the realities of European imperialism disrupt this popular narrative with an alternative history – the story of imperialism and settler colonialism impacting indigenous nations. In Decolonizing Methodologies, Maori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith reminds us this story is about conquest and political strategy – a denial of the validity of indigenous peoples claim to existence and territory, a rejection of indigenous sovereignty and self-determination, the severing of relationships and access to land, and expectations of annihilation to Indigenous languages, knowledge, and transnational connections.
  
  Imperialism and colonialism are crucial concepts to the story of the Diné and how some people became expert weavers. As Smith notes, European imperialism encompasses “discovering,” exploitation, distribution, appropriation, and accumulation of power. The establishment of imperialism, along with the implementation of a racial hierarchy, assisted in the ways in which settler colonialism became the status quo. Thus, the co-opting of the collective memory of indigenous peoples’ oppression is imperialism in action, and the perpetuation of “the ways in which knowledge about indigenous was collected, classified and then represented in various ways back to the West, and then, through the eyes of the west, back to those who have been colonized” (Smith, 2013). Indigenous peoples are not centered nor the storytellers in this aspect.
  
  With the rise of western ‘finds’ across the Americas and parts of the world, European industrialists gained capital (notable indigenous lands) and secured new markets, facilitated by colonialism and a hierarchy placing white, wealthy men at the top and in control. Colonialism is, therefore, part of a large-scale process and structure shaping geopolitical borders of human settlement across the earth, which develops in tandem with the spread of normalizing colonial forms of knowledge, settlement, and ideals at the expense of indigeneity. 
  
  My people experienced exploitation and subjugation through the colonial invasion of their lands in the southwest, creating an unevenness – an imbalance of power that still exists between indigenous peoples and settlers. With the deepening expansion of global European imagination and ideology infused with cultural, intellectual and technical expressions, the Enlightenment spirit was responsible for this ‘signaling transformation’ economically, politically, and culturally. As a result, the transformation was “an integral part of the development of the modern state, of science, of ideas and of the ‘modern’ human person” (Smith, 2013). During the 17^th century onward, my people felt the expansion of economies, of “new” western, theorized ideas and ‘discoveries’ made which developed into a mindset of endless possibilities set in new worlds, with new wealth, and new possessions to prosper from. Exploring and colonizing the frontier became a strengthening narrative for settlers to justify and benefit from their American identities. My people, like many indigenous communities, suffered from the expansions and thirst for power/control, especially as colonizers sought to further their notions of science, economic advantages, political practices, and social structures.
  
  Settler colonialism came to define and ensure a racist, colonized society would prevail. Because colonialism “became imperialism’s outpost, the fort and port of imperial outreach,” context and location are essential to understanding the specificities of the American colonies’ endeavors, functions, and silenced histories as to how the continent became an integral part of building wealth and class status for European men and their settler interests. Settler colonialism is part of the “image” of imperialism and the present/future of how nations states avoid its investment in a very localized, specific experience of genocide, dispossession, destruction, and erasure of indigenous nations.
  
  The settlers’ government is responsible for the coding of rules, embedded in structures of their own making, which further regulate and legitimate colonial and imperial practices across the globe. Indigenous organization and societal systems were and are dismissed, and their peoples are viewed in an imagined, static past – not as fully human, but as savage, uncivilized, and illiterate, and with languages and modes of thought deemed inadequate enough to allow and legalize mass ethnic cleansing. These and other ideals weaponized to oppress sought to bring complete disorder to indigenous communities.
  
  Despite the ways settler colonialism alters the conditions and fabric of indigenous life, many would argue there are obligations today to live responsibly, to honor our ancestors and relatives, and prioritize our reciprocal relations with living and non-living beings.  Moreover, it is especially important to acknowledge the struggles in recovering and revitalizing indigenous lands, histories, languages, cultures, and human dignity, while being equally wary of the colonizers’ maintenance of settler colonialism in liberal democratic contexts. Globalization, or rather manifestations of capitalism, serve imperial and colonial forces, and we must be critical of how contemporary systems of oppression seek to hurt, destroy, and reform itself constantly, even in democracies advertising for freedom, liberty, and equality.
  
  Given this preliminary understanding of U.S. settler colonialism, there is still much more to know and be critical of from this initial sketch of highly complex and important concepts concerning indigenous peoples. Let us continue to learn and constantly transcend such understandings.
  
  - Diné Perspectives | Diné Creations -
  
  Understanding of the DIné way of life has been eclipsed by what non-Diné, mainly white anthropologists, believe to be the truths of my people.
  
  In Diné Perspectives: Revitalizing and Reclaiming Navajo Thought, Lloyd Lee poses the question of what it means to be a Diné person today and asking what is meant by “respecting tradition”? These questions are important to formulating Diné history and thinking that is directly connected to the contemporary present. The traditions of the past influence and direct an all-encompassing paradigm connected to ways of knowing and being that go beyond what can be known and assumed through a western paradigm and framework.
  
  Fights for justice, prosperity, and a balanced harmonious life is what Diné people are striving for today among other experiences and expressions contextualizing the survivance (survival + resistance; derived from Gerald Vizenor as an “active sense of presence”) of our nation, communities, and selves. Today, envisioning any type of narrative of my people must also mention Diné sovereignty – particularly rethinking the ways sovereignty is exercised, implemented, and effects future generations as it exists in or apart from western law and our traditional principles. This type of decolonial work must be at the center of how we as Diné are understood collectively. Our power, autonomy, and self-sustaining spirit continues to be rooted in our Diné beliefs, culture, values, and community creativity. The protection of our way of life requires constant rethinking and centering of Diné perspectives of our sovereignty, decolonization, and critiques of western domination.
  
  Diné weaving and textile making is directly tied to our ancestral homeland, collective survivance, intergenerational teachings, and settler colonialism.
  
  Along with enslavement and war brought by Spanish colonization, the introduction of churro sheep and new dyes and practices supplemented the existing skills and talents of the Diné in Dinétah (Diné lands, since time immemorial, within the four sacred mountains). Later, U.S. colonization would also produce destruction to the people, their lands, livestock, and the forced “Long Walk” to the government internment at Bosque Redondo (Fort Sumner) that would end the war between the nations. In establishing the “Navajo reservation,” the U.S. government’s 1868 treaty with the Diné was a promise of peace and prosperity for the Diné, but as oral storytelling and the hard truths of history tell us, these promises were soon to be broken.
  
  There is speculation as to how the Diné learned the skill of weaving and the extent to which Pueblo peoples may or may not have had a part in teaching the Diné this craft. Yet, the origins of Diné weaving are still not known and may never be known. Nonetheless, the ways Diné women began to mass produce these textiles despite the impacts of colonization is of great significance.
  
  The 19th century brought an expansion of rug making specifically made for tourism and export with intentions to trade with settlers. The railroad in the southwest opened a new market for the transportation of tourists and their intentions to seek out goods for trade and personal collections. According to the federal government’s reports, weaving was exclusively performed by women and their creations became the most profitable Diné industry during this time. Instigation from white, wealthy collectors and traders willing to pay “premium prices” for objects with “perceived spiritual symbolism” is part of how Diné textiles traveled across the continent, during a time of widespread assimilation and ongoing colonialization of Native and Indigenous peoples across the globe.
  
  As I first started to read texts related to Diné weaving, I became extremely uncomfortable with the amount of Diné sacred knowledge available in books and on the internet. I do not agree with providing detailed accounts of experiencing ceremonies or other related information of that sort. Non-Diné people do not have a right to know sacred knowledge nor experience ceremonies. They especially do not have the right to write and share about them or benefit from them in any way. I refuse to allow this and will continue to be critical of what has become the norm in discussing ceremonial-themed textiles allowing any and all information related to ceremonies, dances, and other cultural practices to be made available for the world to consume.
  
  Diné rugs, blankets, and clothing are more than artworks and museum artifacts, and more than a historical “narrative of textiles” to reveal. These Diné creations represent the Diné way of life and way of being that is often misunderstood and taken for granted by people who only wish to celebrate material culture rather than deal with the continued existence of the Diné nation. One cannot separate aspects of the Diné culture from traditional concepts and principles that we were given by the Holy People. We have a responsibility to protect and ensure future generations of Diné people have the same, if not more, opportunities than we have to pursue a life of balance and beauty – to live and exude harmony.
  
  It is wrong of anthropologists to categorize and perceive Diné creations for their material value and aesthetics. Explaining Diné creations through a western paradigm does not and cannot explain Diné culture in its fullness. Describing Diné creations must go beyond explaining their journeys through measurements, imagery, and superficial categorization. To do this is to reject settler colonialism and anthropocentric ideas, thereby disallowing ignorance and harm to flourish.
  
  - A Family of Weavers: Remembering Gladys “Hanesbah” Manuelito & Hastiin Tł’a -
  
  The logic of settler colonialism reminds us the colonizers need to steal for land is as crucial as the need to possess and make things into property.
  
  The concept of “object” in the anthropological sense of the word is based in western traditions and settler colonialism. Diné creations are more than a colonizer’s “object,” because they signify a worldview, a stance, traditional values/beliefs, and a way of living and being that non-Diné people may never understand. Diné textiles are more than what is perceived by the colonizers’ gaze because of the people who created them.
  
  Gladys (Hanesbah) Manuelito, also known as Mrs. Sam, wove the “Eagle Trapping” rug located at Brown’s Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology repository in Bristol, Rhode Island. Gladys, from New Mexico, was the niece of the famous Diné medicine person and weaver, Hastiin Tł’a (Hosteen Klah) or “sir left-handed.” Outside of her family’s connections to textile making, little is known of Gladys’ prolific career and life story.
  
  Some information on Gladys’ family history is known because of Hastiin Tł’a, a famous weaver, and hataałii (singer or chanter). Born in 1867 at Bear Mountain in New Mexico near Fort Wingate, Tł’a came into this world right before the signing of the Treaty of 1868 and recovery from Hwéeldi (the Long Walk; place of forced imprisonment).
  
  Tł’a would forgo the colonizer’s boarding school to become a medicine man through the teachings of his uncle. Upon learning ceremonial practices such as chants and sandpainting, he mastered at least eight chants. This was a great feat considering most individuals master only one or two. He also held the identity of nádleeh, or “one who is transformed,” with gender fluidity embodying both masculine and feminine attributes. As he began training in the female-designated craft of weaving by watching his mother and sister, he soon became a master weaver. In 1916, Tł’a sought to document aspects of Diné ceremonial practices with his artistry and weaving skills, becoming the first to weave a Yé’ii bicheii dance rug with the support of Franc Newcomb – a trader, wife to Arthur Newcomb, and co-owner of the Newcomb (Nava) trading post near Tł’a’s home.
  
  Tł’a became famous for being one of the first weavers to recreate a highly accurate sandpainting image, using appropriate colors/patterns in permanent form, despite this act as being taboo and ushering in backlash. From thereafter, he used more image representations of ceremonial-influenced depictions into his weaving, gaining more feedback of sacrilegious offense. The Newcombs helped to sponsor his weavings as the demand for them increased. Yet, at the time, he feared for the future of the Diné way of life because of the ongoing assaults of settler colonialism, especially assimilation through western missionaries and the U.S. federal government, and hoped to preserve sacred knowledge and practices. Tł’a’s connection to Mary Cabot Wheelwright, a wealthy white anthropologist from Boston, is also of significance as they founded the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian located in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Tł’a suddenly died from pneumonia before the museum was inaugurated, and was buried on the museum grounds.
  Tł’a’s was able to teach his two nieces, Gladys and Irene, his techniques, designs, and knowledge of weaving. By performing ceremonies with them, Tł’a was able to continue his efforts of passing on cultural traditions/knowledge that at the time appeared to be in danger of disappearing. Gladys’ and her sister were able to have careers that were deeply influenced by her uncle and an intergenerational spirit to keep traditions alive.
  
  Gladys, or Hanesbah, lived during a time when there was a shift toward openness of Diné traditions and ceremonial practices. Diné medicine men were known to give public demonstrations of sandpainting techniques. Researchers believe these demonstrations took place “perhaps as early as 1893 during the World’s Columbia Exposition in Chicago,” and at annual occurrences at public events and venues during the 1920s, notably at the Santa Fe Indian Fair and the Gallup Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonials (Valette and Valette, 2017). Over time, some believed the recreations of sandpaintings would not bring harm or danger by the Holy People as the rise of permanent copies of scared imagery in public spaces brought no disturbances. With the increased acceptance of incorporating sandpainting depictions into art, a few weavers began heavily using ceremonial imagery in their designs and justifications for doing so varied. Gladys was among the generation of weavers who were influenced by Tł’a’s creations.
  
  Gladys, who was under the direct guidance of Tł’a, may have had the ability to have a deeper and more informed understanding when weaving sandpainting rugs. As Valette and Valette note, “completing the weaving without suffering blindness or other predicted misfortunes was for them sufficient proof that their actions had not provoked retribution by the Holy People and were therefore permissible, or at least tolerated. With this reassurance, a few Navajo women began to weave and sell ceremonial-theme textiles more or less openly.” Precautions must have also taken place before Gladys began weaving in order to prevent her from experiencing misfortunes and ailments.
  
  During the time when Tł’a replicated sandpaintings in his woven creations, he depended on the assistance of his family members. Among the helpers, Gladys was given her uncle’s twelve-foot loom, as was her sister, when her uncle could not devote enough time to weaving. Tł’a protected Gladys and her sister by holding a nine-day Nightway ceremony for them, and thus, “by the mid-1920s, the weaving of sandpainting tapestries had become a family enterprise” (Valette and Valette, 2017). During this period, Gladys married Sam Manuelito, becoming “Mrs. Sam” and her sister, Irene, or Althbah, married Jim (John) Manuelito to become “Mrs. Jim.”
  Gladys was very talented and perceived as “more skilled” than her sister. She was able to weave “several large sandpainting tapestries under [Tł’a’s] direction, copying his designs with great precision” (Valette and Valette, 2017). After Tł’a passed away, Gladys continued weaving sandpainting designs and later won first prize at the Gallup Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial for her depiction of the “Skies.” Gladys was “a very prolific weaver” despite how her creations have not been cataloged nor her narrative extensively expanded upon. She ultimately wove fifty sandpainting textiles prior to her retirement in the 1970s and taught her daughter-in-law, Ruby Manuelito, her family’s weaving knowledge. Ruby also became “a master weaver in her own right” producing Nightway designs (her specialty) and Two Grey Hills styled tapestries, going on to win “several awards at the Gallup Ceremonials and other Southwestern exhibitions” (Valette and Valette, 2017).
  
  Gladys has received little attention in the literature. I aspire to know more about her life and success as a weaver, especially information about her relationship with her uncle and the ways weaving became an intergenerational occupation in her family. I hope her family today knows how special she was and the contributions she made as a master weaver.

  “ Spider Man  showed them how to set up and string their looms while his wife Spider Woman taught them to weave blankets with the wool from their sheep. In recognition of this gift, weavers in the past would sometimes leave a “ Spider Woman  hole” in their blankets, reminiscent of the hole at the center of a spider web. This practice disappeared at the beginning of the twentieth century when traders refused to purchase weavings with what they considered a flaw.”
  – Excerpt from Valette & Valette on “The Navajo Weaving Tradition” 

  - From the Four Corners to New England -
  
  Imagining the journey from the southwest to Rhode Island, taken out of context.
  
  The handspun rug is described through its measurements of 51” x 44.5” and has a nearly identical twin rug woven by Gladys’ sister, Irene. The theme is “Eagle Trapping sandpainting from the Eagleway” (Valette and Valette, 2017). Rudolf Haffenreffer is believed to have visited many trading posts through the established railroad in the southwest and bought Gladys rug at some point during his travels, adding to his collection of creations obtained from many Native and Indigenous communities. Currently, there exists no archival evidence as to how Gladys’ creation ended up at the Haffenreffer repository in Bristol, Rhode Island.

   “The now extinct Eagleway may have been a Navajo hunting ritual rather than a curative ceremony. In the Eagle Trapping sandpainting, Monster Slayer, his body painted black with white spots, stands in the middle of the pit holding a weasel skin. Two trapped eagles lie on the floor next to him. The opening at the top of the pit is concealed by a wooden lattice covered with grass. A rabbit has been tied to the opening as bait. The black eagle at the top of the weaving has just been caught and is attached to the pit with a cord. The feathers that Monster Slayer has plucked from the trapped eagles are stacked in the two quivers on his left. They will be used later on for ceremonial purposes. In 1923, when the El Navajo hotel was built in Gallup, New Mexico, an Eagle Trapping sandpainting was painted on the wall of the foyer as a decoration. The reproduction of the painting in local newspapers and magazines on the occasion of the hotel grand opening in May of that year may have provided a model for the weavers of this rare sandpainting.”
  – Excerpt from Valette & Valette on “Eagle Trapping” c. 1925 

  Gladys’ rug is more than an artistic object – it has a living history and a present life.
  No matter the circumstances under which Diné weavers wove what they did, deeming these creations as merely “justified transactions of objects made for sale” to white, wealthy people does not acknowledge the power imbalances and oppression present during these transactions. Diné weavers did what they could in the name of their way of life, for the ancestors and future generations to come. There will always be more to know, of what we can, in researching Diné survival, survivance, preservation, and revitalization efforts.
  Moreover, many researchers lack the expertise and knowledge to speak about and to these topics. We must be aware of these perpetual misunderstandings, misinterpretations, and flaws of (mainly white) ethnologists and anthropologists, past and present, taking on these issues. As “research” continues on Diné creations, let us also remember only Diné people can reflect and speak to a Diné point of view – all other descriptions fall short.
  
  - Conclusion: Repatriation and Current Implications -
  
  Because land is necessary for life, contests for land is contests for life.
  And if contests for our land is contests for our lives, then contests for our creations are contests for our way of life.
  
  Upon asking about the repatriation of Gladys rug to her family, the Haffenreffer staff revealed they did not know who had woven the rug until recently. For almost an entire century, Gladys had not been named and given the credit for weaving a visionary and culturally significant creation.
  
  Most importantly, the probability of the long-awaited return of Gladys’ rug to either her family or the tribal nation is “small” due to the stipulations in the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). I was told the rug could possibly be repatriated under its designation as a “sacred object” or as “an object of cultural patrimony.” While I am not an expert on these issues, NAGPRA’s requirement of agencies and institutions receiving federal funding to comply with the returning of Native and Indigenous creations deemed “cultural items” has many seen and unseen challenges despite its favorable aspects. It becomes increasingly challenging for items like Gladys to be perceived and legally termed as a “cultural item” that include: human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony. In the case of Gladys’ rug, there seems to be no motivation to go down this route of repatriation because it is likely to fail as a NAGPRA case.
  
  Thus, in consulting with the Haffenreffer staff on these complications and complex issues, Gladys’ family may (or may not) be notified of the whereabouts of her rug in question. What does this mean for the future of the Diné way of life and the protection of Diné creations? Can western-produced laws like NAGPRA and others like the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 truly bring and restore justice to indigenous nations? These are questions that will continue to be asked, in different ways and in different times, until we have full reparations for our peoples and our creations.
  
  In beauty we walk, striving for hózhó (beauty & harmony)
  
  In writing about Gladys Manuelito and her incredible artistry, I sought to tell a story from the framework of Diné understandings and acknowledgment of the responsibilities we have to support indigenous resistance and resilience. I hope to pursue these responsibilities and expectations for decolonization, not in the abstract, but in the active and tangible sense of affirming and honoring indigenous knowledge, worldviews, and ways of life. With my chosen object, I hope to continue to learn and pursue reflections on reparations for our lands and lives.
  
  Furthermore, accurately writing an account of Diné rug-making and history was and will be difficult because of the stolen and silenced stories needed to tell the realities of creating and commercializing this Diné artform. More is known and told of Diné textiles than the actual weavers themselves whose ingenuity inspired an artistry prevalent and ongoing in the southwest today. What does it mean when ceremonial-themed weavings are “the most sought after by collectors and the least studied by scholars” and no complete picture exists on their iconography? Diné creators and designers deserve to be remembered in the same way their creations are, no matter how much information seems to be non-existent. Finally, instead of focusing on the material objects, let us rather pursue acts of respecting and honoring Diné weavers and other Indigenous peoples by first remembering their narratives and legacies.
  
  Writer’s note on terminology: Throughout the biography description, I use Diné (the People) over the largely used term “Navajo” and older term “Navaho” because these words denote negative connotations and translate to the colonizer’s name for us: “thieves.” Additionally, I will use the preferred terminology Native and/or Indigenous Peoples and specific Indigenous names when referring to other Indigenous communities over the legal term “American Indian” and its alternative “Native American” to intentionally highlight transnational connections and recognition of Indigenous nationhood across the globe.
  
  
  
  
  WORKS CITED:
  1. Lamphere, Louise, Eva Price, Carole Cadman, and Valerie Darwin. Weaving women's lives: three generations in a Navajo family. UNM Press, 2007.
  2. Lee, Lloyd Lance, and Gregory Cajete. Diné perspectives: Revitalizing and reclaiming Navajo thought. University of Arizona Press, 2014.
  3. Simpson, Audra. "On ethnographic refusal: indigeneity, ‘voice’ and colonial citizenship." Junctures: The Journal for Thematic Dialogue 9 (2007).
  4. Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. Zed Books Ltd., 2013.
  5. Sublette, Mark. “Our Guide to Native Textiles: Collecting Navajo Rugs” Native American Art, 2017.
  6. Valette, Jean-Paul, and Rebecca M. Valette. Navajo Weavings with Ceremonial Themes: A Historical Overview of a Secular Art Form. Schiffer Publishing Ltd., 2017.
  7. Vizenor, Gerald Robert. Manifest manners: Narratives on postindian survivance. U of Nebraska Press, 1999.
  8. Winter, Mark. Dances with Wool: Celebrating 100 Years of Woven Images from Southwestern Mythology. Toadlena Trading Post, 2002.
  9. Wolfe, Patrick. "Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native." Journal of Genocide Research 8, no. 4 (2006): 387-409.
  
  
  ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
  
  Settler Colonialism
  • Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. Zed Books Ltd., 2013.
  • la paperson (Yang, K. Wayne). A Third University is Possible. University of Minneapolis Press, 2017.
  • Tuck, Eve, and K. Wayne Yang. "Decolonization is not a metaphor." Decolonization: Indigeneity, education & society 1, no. 1 (2012).
  • Kauanui, J. Kēhaulani, and Patrick Wolfe. "Settler Colonialism Then and Now. A Conversation between." Politica & Società1, no. 2 (2012): 235-258.
  • Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne. An indigenous peoples' history of the United States. Vol. 3. Beacon Press, 2014.
  • Peace, Power. "Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto." Don Mills, ON: Oxford (1999).
  • Wolfe, Patrick. "Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native." Journal of Genocide Research 8, no. 4 (2006): 387-409.
  
  Diné Perspectives
  • Lee, Lloyd Lance, and Gregory Cajete. Diné perspectives: Revitalizing and reclaiming Navajo thought. University of Arizona Press, 2014.
  • Lee, Lloyd Lance. Navajo Sovereignty: Understandings and Visions of the Diné People. University of Arizona Press, 2017.
  • Denetdale, Jennifer Nez. Reclaiming Diné History: The Legacies of Navajo Chief Manuelito and Juanita. University of Arizona Press, 2015.
  • Denetdale, Jennifer. "Chairmen, presidents, and princesses: The Navajo nation, gender, and the politics of tradition." Wicazo Sa Review 21, no. 1 (2006): 9-28.
  • Denetdale, Jennifer Nez. "Representing changing woman: A review essay on Navajo women." American indian culture and research journal 25, no. 3 (2001): 1-26.
  • Denetdale, Jennifer. The long walk: The forced Navajo exile. Infobase Publishing, 2009.
  • Yazzie, Melanie. "Contesting Liberalism, Refusing Death: A Biopolitical Critique of Navajo History.” University of New Mexico (2016).
  • Austin, Raymond Darrel. Navajo courts and Navajo common law: a tradition of tribal self-governance. U of Minnesota Press, 2009.
  • Aronilth Jr, W. A. "Diné Bi Bee Óhoo'aah Bá Silá: An Introduction to Navajo Philosophy." Tsaile, AZ, Navajo Community College (1994).
  • Acrey, Bill P. Navajo History: The Land and the People. Rio Grande Press, 1979.
  • Manuelito, Kathryn D. "A Dine (Navajo) Perspective on Self-Determination." Taboo 10, no. 1 (2006).
  • Emerson, Larry. "Dine culture, decolonization, and the politics of Hózhó." Dine perspectives: Revitalizing and reclaiming Navajo thought (2014): 49-67.
  • Lerma, Michael. Indigenous sovereignty in the 21st century: knowledge for the indigenous spring. Florida Academic Press, 2014.
  • Lerma, Michael. "Indigeneity and homeland: Land, history, ceremony, and language." American Indian Culture and Research Journal 36, no. 3 (2012): 75-98.
  • Tsinnajinnie, Leola Roberta. "Examining the Indigenous Relationship Between Education and the United States' Military from 2001–2009." PhD diss., The University of New Mexico, 2011.