[traditional Native American music]
- This quilt is honoring
my grandfather's 29 original code talkers.
During the war, the code talkers
were saving the world,
saving people's lives
by speaking our beautiful Navajo language.
Susan Hudson.
[Susan speaking in Navajo language]
I'm from Sheep Springs, New Mexico, Navajo reservation.
I went to the National Museum of American Indians in D.C.,
and I was talking about my quilts.
And this guy goes,
"What's a Navajo doing making star quilts?
That's just Lakotas."
People associate quilts with a certain tribe
or certain area.
Me being Navajo,
they think I should be weaving, doing baskets,
pottery and jewelry.
I can quilt.
[sewing machine revs]
In the traditional Navajo way,
the only one that's perfect is the great spirit,
and the spirit helpers.
And so, I do make a lot of mistakes,
but I try to make it as close as possible.
I just like that.
I just, it has to look a certain way or I just--
it drives me crazy.
I started sewing when I was around nine years old
because we were really poor.
My mother's the one that taught me how to sew.
As I would be sewing and stuff, if something was wrong,
she would slap my hand.
And I never knew why.
Then I found out my mother had went to the boarding school
and to realize that she was hit
if she didn't sew in a perfect way.
[flute music]
So that started making sense to me.
I always remember what she went through so I can be here.
[somber music]
Ever since I was little, I just have these dreams.
And it's just like in the old days, those penny machines.
You put your penny in there and you just can wind it.
And you see the movie.
Well, sometimes it click, click, click, click
and I'll see pictures and then one'll stop.
And if it's a good one, it goes down here, like in a file.
If not, it'll keep going this way.
Sometimes these dreams, they're really, really dramatic.
It's just like my ancestors telling me the stories
of what they went through.
Sometimes, I just wake up crying
and then I'll just start praying.
It'll be a process like that.
And when I've maybe cried four times,
I know I'm going to make that.
[ethereal music]
[birds chirping]
When I had my kids, well, of course,
they needed shoes.
They needed this.
I realize that people like star quilts,
and they wanted them,
and I can sell them.
Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, he would have giveaways.
So I would sell him my star quilts.
And then, one day,
Senator Campbell goes, "You know,
your stuff's kind of boring."
I was like, "Okay."
Cause you know, like, you know.
So we started talking and he says,
"Well, what kind of art form do you like?"
And I told him I liked ledger art.
I was fascinated with the story.
It wasn't just the Plains Indians.
It was my tribe, too.
When they put us on the reservations,
the Indian agents would come,
they would get ledgers and they were draw on it.
And they were telling stories.
That was what you used.
He says, "Well, do something like that."
And so, that's how I started to make ledger quilts.
*
This is basically my family story
all the way from Narbona,
all the way down to my three times great grandmothers.
My great grandfather,
my great-grandmother, my grandparents, my mother.
And it's to honor all the women in the world,
this side and the other side,
for the strength that they have.
[instrumental music]
Hey, sisters, what you guys doing?
- We're sewing.
- We're doing a baby quilt.
- Who did the binding and backing?
- I did. - Me and her.
- It's beautiful.
[laughter]
- Kevin Begay: You know, us as Navajos,
we use food as medicine.
So, you know, it brings the community together,
brings our family together,
and we also get to learn, you know.
Every time there's something new,
there's somebody teaching you something.
[speaking Navajo]
- My clan is Kinyaa'áanii, that means Towering House.
When Changing Woman came,
she made four major clans and Kinyaa'áanii was one of them.
She's our matriarch. - Right?
- The Navajo way is "You are who your mother is."
That's how we get our clans.
- [Mary Ann Foster speaks in Navajo]
- Kevin Begay: So, she says
that her grandma was Towering House,
Kinyaa'áanii.
And she says, so that's what I am.
And, of course, so are you, she says.
[laughter]
Not too far from here,
just along the ridge, she as born and she says
there's still some ruins and stuff from where they lived.
And now, she lives here.
- [Mary Ann speaking Navajo]
- This one?
- Kevin Begay: Her mom had 16 kids.
They have all gone home.
And she's the only one that's still here.
She says she learned weaving from her mother and her aunt.
And she said, when she first started,
her weaving would be kind of crooked.
And then, now she does it really good.
She says she can sell her rugs anywhere towards the east,
to the south, to the north.
But she says she takes it to the trading post.
- [Kevin Begay speaking Navajo]
[laughter]
[Mary Ann speaking Navajo]
[laughter]
- I made that one. - You made that one?
- Yeah. - That one's cute.
- When I first started quilting, it was more survival.
- As I started doing the ledger quilts.
That's when I started becoming an activist.
[traditional tribal singing]
What I wanted to do was to tell our story, tell my story,
tell my mother's story,
tell my grandmother's story.
[traditional tribal singing]
This is the long walk of the Navajos.
I'm showing how much power the soldiers had.
The soldiers could determine
who was going to live,
who was going to die,
who was gonna eat,
who was going to get medical attention,
who they were going to sell.
We're a matriarch system, but the government,
they didn't want to deal with the women.
So they empowered the men.
So what I'm showing is the men signing the treaty
And when they did that, the old ways were gone forever.
I can't never, never in my life,
imagine what they went through.
[speaking with great emotion] Never.
[traditional tribal singing]
[flute music]
My agreement with every museum is,
that if my children, my grandchildren,
my descendants want to see a quilt,
that they open the door to let them in.
Because this is their legacy, too.
[flute music]
- [speaking Navajo]
She wants to give this to you, yeah.
- Oh.
- [speaking Navajo]
- People always ask me,
don't you feel bad when you give them away?
- [Gloria speaking Navajo]
- I go, no, that's what they're for, they're stories.
[laughter]
I'm like, I made them for a reason.
They're going to go someplace and go to the right place
and they're going to be shown.
And the story's going to go on.
[weeps quietly]
[somber music]
My descendants.
I want them to be proud of who they are,
to be proud of being Kinyaa'áanii,
to be proud of being Dine.
I want them
to know that I cared enough about them
to keep the story going.
[sewing machine revs]