Episode 9: “Think For Yourself” by Tyrrell Tapaha

Transcription:

I always express to everyone that my work acts as a tangible bank of memories and experiences that I live, the people who I surround myself with community wise, provide to me. So it's really intimate. [MUSIC] 

[DINÉ INTRO] My name is Tyrrell Tapaha, I am a Diné weaver. I’m originally from the four corners area– more specifically Goat Springs, Arizona which is just outside of Teec Nos Pos, Arizona. I'm currently based in Flagstaff for the winter, seasonal work is pretty common. My main medium that I work in is Diné style weaving as well as just a lot of miscellaneous fiber art that's paired with that. And primarily that's the main work that I do. It's heavily centered on agro-pastoral work, so doing everything sheep-to-loom and understanding the processes to get to that point. But primarily that's the medium that I work with. [SOUNDS OF BELLS AND SHEEP]

I mentioned sheep-to-loom so I hand process all of my materials. I also use vegetable dyes to get all of my colors for just my color palette that I work with and just heavily using the resources that are available to me. Being able to have and mitigate different types of practices that maintain fiber because we raise sheep and most of our livestock for fiber if not for meat. So, you know, it goes hand in hand in terms of stewardship as well as sustainability, you know. I was always grown or I was raised in the mentality of “take care of your sheep and they'll take care of you.”

I roughly brought up earlier that sheep herding is not the most financially stable job. More often than not too, when I tell people from back home that I sheep herd they're like “oh my god are you okay?” like “do you have enough, do you have enough food?”, you know, however that may go. It's not a high status occupation because at least for the past 100 years or so since this lifestyle has been declining in popularity and like just having people be the footholds and place holders in that way, more often than not it's the queers, it's the misfits, they're the ones who own the sheep, who take care of that and are really carrying this lifeline. So in that way I feel like I want my work to paint this picture. I want it to be as inclusive and all enveloping as one can have it. [MUSIC] 

The one that I put forth was a piece titled “Think for Yourself”. It's a really busy piece, there's a lot of things going on. In all honesty, a larger showcase of what I've been doing, not only technique wise, but in terms of the color and technique aspect, it was the largest that I did at the time to date. And it talked about the calamity and kind of tv static that we often get in the overstimulated world that we're in. It feels like it's very overwhelming to integrate yourself into the flow of events that is the modern day. So you know a lot of the lower portion of that piece was meant to emulate that busyness, that tantalizing energy that we all kind of run from but also seek. 

In kind of the mid portion and top half of the weaving was meant to emulate peace of mind so to speak. I integrated two of my great grandmothers who were renowned weavers and phenomenal livestock owners, you know. My great grandma on the left— she's in purple— Mary Katie Claw, she's from the lineage of weavers that I say I come from. To my other great grandmother, I set the loom up on a loom that I inherited from her so it felt like finding peace of mind was looking back to what has been done, what got me here, and what is kind of driving me forward in that way. So in terms of the imagery that was some of the larger components with that and I kind of sealed it all together with Diné philosophy. It's the only text on the piece and it's a doutntigucase, you know. The phrase itself is directed towards the listener, but it's saying “think for yourself”, you know, critically think about what you're integrating, you're not the only person in your world that you exist in, you know, how do you interact with that environment? 

[SOUNDS OF LOOM THUMPING] A lot of the tools I’m using, they’re handmade. Whether they’re hand welded— cuz some we have metal looms nowadays— they’re from past grand uncles that I have. I never got to meet them in my lifetime, but getting to see the technique that they used to weld, to see the personhood in the tools that I’m using to create my work. Our looms act as individuals, they’re their own living, breathing thing outside of myself. I think with a lot of other mediums, you're reliant on this machine that we integrate ourselves with, which is ever perpetuating, ever extractive and it is using resources that we know come from communities like mine. 

[SOUNDS OF WATER] Water is important to you. All these things that people keep reiterating for time in millennia there are all the resources that have been what shaped us and what make us. Even down into the songs that my people have about creation, about life, it all talks about this intimacy that we have as individuals as beings, as five fingered individuals, you know. Our roles into how we play and interact with that, they're all inherently connected. At least with sheep herding in and of itself, since it's like so transparent like I'm living alone in a twelve by twelve cabin by myself with sheep on the mountain, you know, like I get really emotional when it rains because I know like “oh man these guys are going to go down fat, like I'm doing my job right”, you know. You can't do that without acknowledging where you come from in terms of our mother earth and our father sky. Those two are the pinnacle in that sense. 

I've been telling people like I don't mind being a placeholder, I don't mind being the person doing the work for right now. What I do want though is for others to notice this, to see the importance of this. You can't have that if no one's doing it, you know. So in terms of this climate pressure, it’s kind of putting a lot of people to critically think their life choices, how they're integrating with the world that we live in now. If there's anyone to do it, you know, it's the indigenous practitioners, or you know, people like me who are the boots on the ground for the operation. Cuz like I said, void of a paycheck or void of anything else I'm going to be doing what I do because it's work that needs to be done.

We've used the word extractive. Like this mind set that we have nowadays, this world that we live in, it's all just take, take, take. What I admire about how a lot of these older generations live and— since I work so intimately with my family— hearing how my family used to live it's just a positive feedback loop. This is how they were living and that's also why they had abundance because they took care of what they have and they understood its importance.

I would be nothing without my community. I'm nothing without my family and I understand why a lot of these older generations kind of held that mentality because, I guess it's kind of paired with “you are your word” in that way. A lot of these older Navajos are very strict and stern but they will do what they said they will do and they'll do it better than you anticipated. So in that way, like I said, I'm very blessed to have family and very blessed to have generational knowledge and I can't imagine my life without it. [MUSIC] 

My hands inherently have been doing what, you know, generations have been doing. Very blessed for that sense, but pairs well with this message that I'm talking about. Like I said, I would be nothing if people didn't already pave the way for me to walk the path that I'm going on. It feels like we're on a cusp of some change and being on that table for that discussion, a lot of it kind of points to like— like I said, knowledge holders like myself who are practicing a lot of this— we’re finding spaces where that voice is needed, where people need to hear more about this, and need to be encouraged and have some humanity brought back in.

I feel like we already know our answers. We already have the tools that we need. It's just a matter of people refusing to use the master's tools for their own liberation. In terms of understanding what power is, that is very invigorating as well as opens the discussion to how can we direct this towards the community? How can we uplift and do this movement as a group, as a collective, and as people? Like I said, I feel like more often than not this conversation just gets romanticized and pushed to the side and is left for the next meeting time. I'm a little tired of that, I'm a little bored of that. So I'm excited to see what happens in my lifetime as well as if I can be the catalyst for anyone. Like I said, if my life is just being a placeholder for other people to build and to grow and to further this conversation, fine by me, you know, that's all I could ask for. [MUSIC]

MUSIC & SOUNDS USED:

Theme music : Water Fluid - Music by ItsWatR from Pixabay

Weaving Loom and Sheep Bleating Sounds: Courtesy of Tyrrell Tapaha

Footsteps in Water - Nature Sounds: Sound Effect by JuliusH from Pixabay