Paper short abstract:

My paper exposes the challenges wrought by federal regulations incorporated in NAGPRA, and the Indian Arts and Crafts Board legislation which thwart the potential for repatriation of historic textiles and their designs respectively.

Paper long abstract:

Ho-chunk scholar Amy Lonetree (2012) reminds us that:

Objects in museums are living entities. They embody layers of meaning, and they are deeply connected to the past, present, and future of Indigenous communities…. In the presence of objects from the past, we are privileged to stand as witnesses to living entities that remain intimately and inextricably tied to their descendant communities.

Although the religious aspects of Diné culture have undergone extensive examination, the context and importance of weaving remain detached from Navajo spirituality in most publications. This is due to fragmentation of Navajo lifeways into binary categories. Generations of scholars juxtaposed the ceremonialism of Medicine Men with women's ostensibly "secular" textile production for external markets. The highly formalized aesthetics embraced by modernist painters now provide the dominant framework for interpreting pre-1890 Navajo textile collections housed in museums. This object-based aesthetics is entirely out of key with the spiritual and cosmological understandings that continue to motivate many weavers.

The growing demand for historic textiles greatly undermines the market for weavings created by an estimated 20,000 Diné. Utilizing information gleaned from archives, publications, and interviews, I map how the sustained "culture of connoisseurship" inadvertently contributes to artisans' impoverishment, undermining the potential for weavers to provide for their families in this culturally meaningful way. My paper exposes the challenges wrought by NAGPRA and the Indian Arts and Crafts Board which thwart the potential for repatriation of historic textiles and their designs respectively. However, three articles enumerated in UNDRIP provide a ray of hope.