Copyright © 2001 NLThomas
All Rights Reserved

"PA artists bringing Navajo Weavers from Black Mesa for exhibition to raise awareness of Dineh People's plight."

Two Navajo master weavers, a mother and daughter from the Black Mesa region of Arizona, will travel to Bucks County, PA, for an exhibition and demonstration of the traditional weaving art Dec. 8-9, part of an effort by a group of local artists to raise awareness of the plight of the Dineh people of Black Mesa.

        Rena Babbitt Lane, an 82-year-old elder, and her daughter, Zena Lane, from the Red Lake community in northeastern Arizona, will demonstrate traditional weaving and spinning during an exhibit and sale of multigenerational weavings and other Dineh craft Saturday and Sunday, Dec. 8 and 9 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the James A. Michener Art Museum, 138 S. Pine Street, Doylestown.

        Rena Babbitt Lane, who speaks only Dineh, is one of a group of "Grandmothers" who have received national attention for resisting government relocation efforts and fighting to preserve the Dineh culture, protect the land and drinking water and the sheep that provide their livelihood and are a cornerstone of their way of life.

        The Dineh on Black Mesa were able to maintain their traditional way of life until the 1950s when low-sulfur coal deposits were discovered beneath their land. Since the 1970s, 14,000 Dineh have been relocated to an area they say is contaminated by a spill of radioactive material, and strip mine operations have compromised the ecosystem and sacred sites of their ancestral land. The livelihood of those remaining on the land - producing wool from the rare and endangered churro sheep and weavings from that wool - has been severely restricted by government livestock confiscations and reduction of grazing areas. Black Mesa is sacred to traditional Hopi and Dineh, who have joined in working to save the region's sole source of drinking water from continued slurry mining depletion.

        Working to better the economic and social conditions of the Black Mesa Dineh through preservation of their traditional endeavors -sheepherding and production of wool and weavings - is "Black Mesa Weavers for Life and Land," a nonprofit cooperative co-founded in 1998 by a group of Dineh and Carol Snyder Halberstadt of Newton, MA, a poet and former student of the late anthropologist, Margaret Mead. As a graduate student in art history and archaeology at Columbia University in 1962, Halberstadt lived with an extended Dineh family in New Mexico headed by a 92-year-old medicine woman. She will join Rena and Zena Lane at the exhibit and will be available to discuss her experience working and living with the Dineh - one of the few matrilineal and matrilocal cultures in North America.

Black Mesa Weaving Exhibition

The weavings, crafts, and rare churro wool on exhibit are among those sold by Black Mesa Weavers for Life and Land to help support the Dineh and their communities, including paying for livestock permits, redeeming impounded animals, funding hay runs, and organizing and launching a churro sheep registry process. Black Mesa Weavers for Life and Land also is a special project of Cambridge, MA-based Cultural Survival, an organization dedicated to saving indigenous cultures worldwide since 1972.

        The weavings represent the work of several generations, from ages 12-94, and include a wide range of themes and styles including storm patterns, many with pictorial elements; Two Grey Hills; Klagetoh and Ganado; Crystal and Wide Ruins; classic single and double old-style saddle blankets; tufted mohair two-sided weavings; Tree of Life; chief's pattern blankets; and raised outline. Sizes range from 12 in. by 10 in. to 60 in. by 44 in. Suitable as floor rugs, wall hangings, sofa or chair throws or as tabletop/sideboard mats, depending on size and style, the weavings range in price from $55 to $1,500. Also available will be jewelry, ranging from $12-$35 and other items, including traditional clay pipes, firestarters, pottery and clothing.

        Members of the public also can meet the Lanes and Halberstadt Friday night at a dessert and coffee reception from 8 to 9:30 p.m. at the AllWays Café, 634 Welsh Road, Huntingdon Valley, PA, located in the Bethayres Shopping Center at Route 232 and Welsh Road. A $10 donation is requested to cover the expenses of bringing the women to the area. Anyone wishing to attend is asked to call the Café at 215-914-2151 to make a reservation.

        The effort was organized by a group of Bucks and Montgomery County artists interested in the human rights issues connected with the Dineh relocation and in preserving the tradition of America's first weavers.

        The exhibition was made possible with the help of contributions from US Airways, the Horsham Days Inn and the James A. Michener Art Museum, which made space available.

For directions to the museum, visit the Michener Art Museum online. For more information contact Rebecca Felten, phone: 215-672-3152.