Navajo weavers are special guests
Dine Woven project brings traditions of Southwest to festival
This year the Trailing of the Sheep Festival is proud to bring to Idaho highly skilled Diné weavers from the Navajo Nation in Arizona. These artists will be demonstrating their weaving techniques at the Saturday, October 9, Folklife Fair at Roberta McKercher Park from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. They will participate in the Saturday evening Sheep Tales Gathering at nexStage Theatre in Ketchum at 7 p.m. to tell stories about Navajo traditions of raising sheep especially the unique Navajo-Churro breed, the source of wool for their weavings. They will also walk in the Big Parade Sunday noon, on Ketchum?s Main Street.
Roy Kady started the Diné Woven project in 1989. Today these textile weavings are considered fine art, each one an original masterpiece reflecting the spirit and skill of its maker.
The Navajo-Churro Sheep Tradition
Although wild mountain sheep provided meat and wool for the Navajos over the centuries, it was the churro sheep, brought to the region by Spanish colonists in the early 1600s, that inspired a pastoral lifestyle for these Native Americans. This life in the desert and mountain country of northern Arizona thrived for years until the mid-1900s when a series of federal government actions led to the near extinction of the Churro sheep and the devastation of the fragile lands of the Navajos. In the mid-70s animal scientist Dr. Lyle McNeal recognized the significance of this loss and founded the Navajo Sheep project which currently maintains a breeding stock with Navajo families. Today there are several thousand sheep of this breed registered to its association.
The Diné Woven Weavers ?Roy Kady
The Diné Weavers use 100 percent churro wool because it is strong and durable, has less lanolin that other breeds so it is shorn and cleaned easily. It is spun tightly into yarn that readily absorbs dye. The distinctive long haired pelts are highly valued as are the weavings from this wool. Today all Diné woven textiles are quality products, hand processed and made by using the primitive hand weaving techniques.
Roy Kady, Diné Woven founder, is a fourth generation textile weaver and considered a Master Weaver. Raised in the small sheepherding town of Manygoats Springs, Arizona, he began at the age of nine to learn the art of rug weaving from his grandmother and mother both Master weavers. Roy has also learned Navajo rug weaving from museum displays of old style rugs. For example, studying old style ?wedge weaving? he now incorporates this technique of tight graceful circles into his designs. Roy will demonstrate his art at the Festival and is joined by his mother, Mary K. Clah, (Shima) third generation master weaver and spinner,Vera Yazziee, fourth generation weaver and hand carder: Tyra Preston, fifth generation weaver and wool felter; 11 year old Ariel Rae Begay, fifth generation weaver and his sister Jeanette Clah, fourth generation Navajo doll maker and bead artist.
The Diné Woven weavers will by joined by Leon and Reina Tsosie, highly skilled artists and weavers from Pinyon, Arizona.
