- Perry Null Trading:
You are a Navajo married to a Hopi, but your last name is Navajo?
- Brenda Nez:
I use Brenda Nez-Joshevama.
- Perry Null Trading:
When did you start weaving?
- Brenda Nez:
I was seven years old. My mother Genevieve Nez taught me how to weave. I would sit beside her and watch her make her weavings.
- Perry Null Trading:
Do you remember your first rug?
- Brenda Nez:
Yes, I used my mother’s scraps and strung the warp on a box and that is what I used to weave my first rug.
- Perry Null Trading:
Did you always know you would weave rugs?
- Brenda Nez:
My mother grew up during the Great Depression so she never wasted anything. I would take her materials to make my rugs and she had a very hard time with that. This little girl taking all of the yarn and warp, stuff she was going to use and think maybe I was going to waste. That really discouraged me.
- Perry Null Trading:
It didn’t stop you from weaving?
- Brenda Nez:
No, but it made me do all of the steps by myself. I would shear the sheep, clean the wool, card the wool (smooth it), spin the wool (make it fine), and dye the wool. It really made me learn the whole process.
- Perry Null Trading:
Do you still do all of those steps?
- Brenda Nez:
No, today you can go and buy the wool that is really fine and makes a very nice rug. It would take so long to do those steps that you would never be able to sell the rug.
- Perry Null Trading:
Do you weave fulltime?
- Brenda Nez:
No, it is just a hobby, I really don’t weave many rugs.
- Perry Null Trading:
What do you do?
- Brenda Nez:
I work for Rocky Ridge Boarding School and teach weaving there. When I came back from school and saw how many Navajo children didn’t know their language and not learning how to weave it really made me what to teach.
- Perry Null Trading:
You have your degree in teaching?
- Brenda Nez:
At first I wanted to do Social Work, but finished with a BS in Eduaction and a MS in Multi-Cultural Education from Northern Arizona University.
- Perry Null Trading:
Have you had success getting the young children to weave?
- Brenda Nez:
I approach it as art therapy. These kids are under so much pressure with all of the test required from No Child Left Behind that I really try to use weaving as a way to relieve tension.
- Perry Null Trading:
Do you have some star pupils?
- Brenda Nez:
Yes, both males and 14, Aysaiah Begay & Shomari Bitsui.
- Perry Null Trading:
How about your own children?
- Brenda Nez:
My two younger children show an interest, Brent & Amada.
- Perry Null Trading:
I saw a picture of a Burnt Water rug you wove that won the 1991 Gallup Inter-Tribal Ceremonial. Is that your favorite style?
- Brenda Nez:
I like to weave the classic diamond pattern and do those in the Ganado & Burntwater styles.
- Perry Null Trading:
When was the last time you came here to sell a rug?
- Brenda Nez dt>
The early 1980s, I sold one here to Tobe Turpen before Perry purchased the Trading Post.
- Perry Null Trading:
Thank you for what you do, weaving is always such a beautiful expression of the Navajo.
