Homeland, Creation, Cosmology

Rapheal Begay (Diné), Spider Rock (Tséyi’ – Canyon de Chelly, Chinle, AZ), 2021. Digital photograph. Courtesy the artist.

In Focus

Navajo loom with unfinished weaving (sash belt) Diné artist
Navajo loom with unfinished weaving (sash belt)

Diné artist
Before 1910
Wood, string, and wool yarn
Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, New York, Donated by B. T. B. Hyde, 1910, 50 / 8041

Listen to reflections on this item from Diné fiber artist and weaver Tyrrell Tapaha.

Our looms are meant to emulate the natural cycles of life shared between Father Sky and Mother Earth. When setting up a loom, you refer to a microcosm of being: the elliptical path of the sun throughout the year, the rain, the flow of life, the role of reproduction and those who assist in that dance. Every layer of our culture, language, and history has a role in living a well-balanced life. It’s not only directed at learning about the Self but how we, as people, fit into the Universe. Every aspect of Diné weaving has teachings sowed from past generations that encourage learning generations to think critically about resource use, hard work, reverence, and persistence.

—Tyrrell Tapaha


Tyrrell Tapaha is from Goat Springs, Arizona. Their work encompasses the intergenerational pastoral living handed down through Tapaha’s grandfather, great-grandmother, and other relatives willing to teach. Tapaha produces woven textiles and felted objects for both aesthetic and utilitarian uses. These textiles are made with raw natural fibers predominantly grown on the Navajo Nation and hand-dyed with local flora from the Four Corners Region. Tapaha’s weavings are tied to a life lived and intimately interwoven with feelings, memories, and experiences. Tapaha has worked as an apprentice with master weaver Roy Kady. In addition to their fiber and textile work, Tapaha also works full-time as a sheep herder in the Four Corners region of the Navajo Nation.



While it is tempting to view this loom with a sash belt as incomplete, its component parts constitute different aspects of Diné (Navajo) origin stories. In particular, this item materializes the connection between Spider Woman’s teachings about weaving and Spider Man’s loom-making techniques.

According to one version of the Diné creation story, “The crosspoles [of the first loom] were made of sky and earth cords, the warp sticks of sunrays, the healds of rock crystal and sheet lightning. The batten was a sun halo, white shell made the comb.”1 This passage goes on to explain the materiality of the four spindles, which are made with turquoise, abalone, cannel coal (a type of oil shale), and white shell. These materials are derived from the four sacred mountains that delineate the Diné homeland, further reflecting the cultural and aesthetic relationships ordered by sacred geographies, cosmologies, and social structures. Although traditional gender roles have become less strictly defined within contemporary Diné life, the fundamentals of this historic creation story are still widely implemented within Navajo weaving traditions. For example, many looms and tools are still made by men and are often passed down generationally from weaver to weaver, helping to preserve the teachings of Spider Woman and Spider Man.

As an expression of the reason that it may have been collected in the first place, this item presents the activity of making as it would have been perceived by the maker. In other words, viewers of this loom with its unfinished weaving are greeted with a visual snapshot of an unfolding process—an episode in a larger narrative of Navajo weaving. Just as the sash belt would have secured a rug dress around the waist of a Diné woman, this loom with its unfinished weaving reinforces the connections of weaving to sacred cosmologies and origin stories that remain integral to the creation and maintenance of a balanced life.

—Marion Cox

  • 1

    Kathy M’Closkey, “Towards an Understanding of Navajo Aesthetics” (paper, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Windsor, Canada), http://see.library.utoronto.ca/SEED/Vol4-1/M’Closkey.htm.

Navajo Corn Ye’ii rug Diné artist
Navajo Corn Ye’ii rug

Diné artist
ca. 1905
Wool and cotton, tapestry weave, with natural and synthetic dyes
Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, New York, Collected by Uriah S. Hollister, 50.1 / 4373

Listen to reflections on this item from Diné fiber artist and weaver Tyrrell Tapaha

Tyrrell Tapaha is a Diné weaver and fiber artist from Goat Springs, Arizona. Their work encompasses the intergenerational pastoral living handed down through Tapaha’s grandfather, great-grandmother, and other relatives willing to teach. Tapaha produces woven textiles and felted objects for both aesthetic and utilitarian uses. These textiles are made with raw natural fibers predominantly grown on the Navajo Nation and hand-dyed with local flora from the Four Corners Region. Tapaha’s weavings are tied to a life lived and intimately interwoven with feelings, memories, and experiences. Tapaha has worked as an apprentice with master weaver Roy Kady. In addition to their fiber and textile work, Tapaha also works full-time as a sheep herder in the Four Corners region of the Navajo Nation.



Four Corn People are depicted on this thick woolen blanket, created and collected before 1911 in the San Juan Agency (near Shiprock, New Mexico) for Lucy Evelyn Peabody, a prolific collector. Corn People are sometimes incorporated into sand paintings—ephemeral images made with dry, colored sand by Navajo hataali (healers) during certain ceremonies. In this case, the image recalls a scene from the Shootingway Chant when the Warrior Twins enter a cloud and find it to be the dwelling of the Corn People.1

The curative capacity of sand painting images requires attention to pictorial and iconographic detail, and some Diné (Navajo) believe that producing and circulating them outside of their intended ceremonial context is dangerous. Although “Mrs. Peabody’s influence with the Medicine Man finally prevailed,” resulting in the production of this work, the agency of the weaver in this complex moment of intercultural exchange must be acknowledged.2 From the nineteenth-century collector’s standpoint, the perceived risk of creating this blanket may have augmented its collectability and monetary value. When re-creating sand painting compositions in this less ephemeral medium, Diné weavers often took protective measures, amending the figures’ details to avoid angering the Holy People summoned by unaltered depictions.

A number of details in this blanket serve as examples of these alterations. First, these Corn People have eight leaves, as opposed to the customary five, and there are no roots between the figures and the clouds, represented by triangles, from which they emerge. Additionally, the weaver chose a deep red color for the composition’s background, which varies significantly from the dusty brown of a hogan floor upon which a medicinal sand painting would be created.3 The combination of natural and synthetic dyes that characterizes this weaving indicates that it was produced around 1905, before the esteemed hataali Hosteen Klah began creating exact sand painting reproductions in woven form.4 Klah’s work was intended to perpetuate the sand painting tradition and educate interested scholars; following Klah, weavers began to make traditionally accurate sand paintings for the market at their discretion.

—Marion Cox

  • 1

    Rebecca M. Valette and Jean Paul Valette, Navajo Weavings with Ceremonial Themes: A Historical Overview of a Secular Art Form (Atglen, PA: Shiffer, 2017), 66–73.

  • 2

    Uriah S. Hollister, quoted in American Museum of Natural History, Division of Anthropology, Collections Database, Textile Card, cat. no. 50.1/4373, accessed May 7, 2021, https://anthro.amnh.org/anthropology/databases/common/card_page.cfm?catno=50%2E1%2F%204373.

  • 3

    Valette and Valette, Navajo Weavings, 73.

  • 4

    Valette and Valette, Navajo Weavings, 98.

Window Rock (Window Rock, AZ) Rapheal Begay (Diné)
Window Rock (Window Rock, AZ)

Rapheal Begay (Diné), 2018. Digital photograph. Courtesy the artist.

This composition invites us to acknowledge our perspective as we peer through a window of land and sky, reminiscent of a morning prayer offered to the rising sun in the East.

—Rapheal Begay (Diné), photographer

Reflecting on his creative process as a Diné (Navajo) photographer and curator, Rapheal Begay states that he “makes” photos rather than “takes” them. His viewpoint parallels that of Diné weaving, where textiles are often made from materials sourced from Dinétah and around the region. Many of the local materials are derived from sacred landscapes, plants, and animals. Begay’s photography, completed as he travels throughout the Navajo Nation, provides a uniquely Diné way of seeing and knowing his homeland.

Window Rock, ceremonially named Ni’alníi’gi (Earth’s Center) and referred to as Tségháhoodzání (Perforated Rock), is both a geological formation and the capital of the Navajo Nation. Begay uses his photography to represent this sacred geography in a way that refers to the Diné origin story. The photograph’s composition suggests a vertical, upward gaze, one that flows from the earth through Window Rock to the sky.

Throughout their history, the Diné people have followed First Man and First Woman, embarking on many journeys and constantly adapting and transforming in spite of persistent upheavals and infringements from Spanish colonizers and missionaries, the United States Army, and settler-colonists. Diné culture remains multifaceted, vibrant, and innovative, which has allowed weaving to thrive. Begay has reclaimed the medium of photography, long used to objectify the Diné people, using the camera as a tool for sustaining and promoting visual sovereignty.

—Marion Cox

Artist Bio

Rapheal Begay (Diné)

Rapheal Begay (Diné, b. 1991) is a visual storyteller based in Window Rock, the capital of the Navajo Nation. Through photography and curatorial initiatives, he intends to culturally express and creatively advocate for understanding and teaching found in the Diné (Navajo) way of life. In 2017 he obtained his BFA in art studio with a minor in arts management and an undergraduate certificate in museum studies from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. Named by Southwest Contemporary as one of twelve New Mexico Artists to Know in 2020, Begay is the recipient of the 2021–22 Goodman Aspiring Artist Fellowship and works as a public information officer with the Navajo Nation Division of Human Resources Administration in Window Rock, Arizona.

Artist Statement

Throughout their history, the Diné people have followed First Man and First Woman, embarking on many journeys and constantly adapting and transforming in spite of persistent upheavals and infringements from Spanish colonizers and missionaries, the United States Army, and settler-colonists. Diné culture remains multifaceted, vibrant, and innovative, which has allowed weaving to thrive. Begay has reclaimed the medium of photography, long used to objectify the Diné people, using the camera as a tool for sustaining and promoting visual sovereignty.

Life and Art on the Navajo Nation: Fields of the Future Podcast, October 15, 2020


Anthropologist Hadley Jensen speaks with Diné photographer and curator Rapheal Begay about his life and work and what it means to pay attention to the things we take for granted. Through visual storytelling he foregrounds Indigenous aesthetics, embodied knowledges, and alternative ways of knowing that explore the Diné way of life. Begay describes with visceral clarity the dynamic landscape of the American Southwest and the knowledge systems that animate it.

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Spider Woman and the Role of Diné Women
Spider Woman and the Role of Diné Women

Howard Row, Marie Begay at her loom, Burnham, New Mexico, 2020. Courtesy the photographer.

In another example of the cultural significance of Dinétah, the four sacred mountains are woven directly into the daily spiritual lives of the Diné (Navajo) through the story of Spider Woman (Naashjéii Asdzáá), who brought the gift of weaving to them, as related by Barbara Teller Ornelas. She journeyed to each of the mountains, gathering the materials that she needed in order to weave. From Blanca Peak she collected wood for her husband, Spider Man, to construct a loom, and from Mount Taylor she gathered plants to use in making dyes. On the San Francisco Peaks she received patterns from the thunder gods to use in her work, and at Hesperus Mountain she learned the prayers connected to the weaving process.

Spider Woman then wove the first pattern of the universe. With her patterns, prayers, and songs, Spider Woman gifted her weaving knowledge to the Diné so that they could integrate hózhó into their daily lives and keep their communities nourished for generations to come. In Navajo culture, hózhó is the harmony, balance, and local order established between the Diné people, or Earth Surface People (Nihokáá Diné), and the Holy People (Diyin Diné) through daily practices and ritual ceremonies. Weaving is considered to be an essential practice for maintaining a meaningful connection with the origins of Navajo culture, and more specifically, with Spider Woman, the central figure of the Navajo creation story.

Diné women are at the center of both the Navajo creation story and textile production. Just as Spider Woman serves as a grandmother, teacher, and guide for the Diné people, Diné women play an essential role in Diné society as the stewards of cultural values and knowledge systems. A Diné woman’s contribution to society through craft is considered both an honor and a responsibility. Through their weavings, Diné women bring hózhó to their families and communities. The act of weaving can therefore be understood as part of Diné women’s identity and as a collective acknowledgment of the relationships between the Diné people and the natural and spiritual worlds.

—Danielle Weindling

What Is Dinétah?
What Is Dinétah?

Rapheal Begay (Diné), Buffalo Pass (Buffalo Pass, NM), 2021. Digital photograph. Courtesy the artist.

Dinétah is the traditional homeland of the Diné (Navajo). The word itself means “among the Navajo” or “among the people.” Although conventional maps do not show its boundaries, it is situated in the Four Corners region, encompassing northeast Arizona, northwest New Mexico, southern Colorado, and a sliver of southeastern Utah. Dinétah is delineated by four mountains that are sacred to the Diné people: Blanca Peak (Sisnaajinį́), associated with the color white; Mount Taylor (Tsoodził), associated with the color blue; the San Francisco Peaks (Dook’o’oosłííd), associated with the color yellow; and Hesperus Mountain (Dibé Nitsaa), associated with the color black.

Many of the ceremonies performed by the Diné are essential to maintaining a balance between the physical and spiritual worlds. Specific sites, including the four sacred mountains, are imbued with special significance to people’s lives that cannot be found anywhere outside Dinétah. For example, the four sacred mountains have meaning in relation to the development of a person’s character: thinking (Blanca Peak), planning (Mount Taylor), action (the San Francisco Peaks), and completion (Hesperus Mountain). Making a ritual procession in this order through the mountains corresponds to living a balanced life. The land is not only inseparable from Diné culture, it is also closely intertwined with artistic practice. Many of the dye plants and materials used to color Navajo textiles are gathered from the slopes and foothills of the mountains and from the plains, deserts, and mesas that surround them. Moreover, prior to the late nineteenth century, most yarn used in weaving was produced from flocks of Navajo-Churro sheep found within the boundaries of the Navajo homeland.

Historically, the right of the Diné to dwell in Dinétah has been contested by colonizers and the federal government, resulting in land claim and sovereignty disputes that reverberate into the present. In 1864 the United States government forced the Diné from their ancestral homeland and imprisoned them at Bosque Redondo in Fort Sumner (eastern New Mexico). Four years later, after negotiating the Treaty of Bosque Redondo, the Diné people were allowed to return to a designated part of this area, which had been turned into a government-sanctioned reservation. Today, although it occupies only a portion of its former land base, the Navajo Nation still endures within Dinétah. 

—Caleb Weintraub-Weissman with Hadley Jensen