Weaving Voices

Episode 10

Cotton Before it Became the Fabric of Everyone's Lives

[00:00:00] Rebecca Burgess: If you're a resident of North America, it's common for us to think about cotton farming as having a linear history singularly attached to the chronology of colonization of the continent, and later to the development of what is now the United States. This plant, however, has a much longer arc of history in North America, and it's a history rarely discussed in the halls of academia

[00:00:26] Rebecca Burgess: or in the clothing industry at large. And thus, it has given us all a rather limited version of the evolution of this plant's history.

[00:00:38] Rebecca Burgess: This is Weaving Voices, a podcast that stitches textile tradition, economic philosophy, and climate science into a quilt of understanding, designed to transform our thinking and actions, both as citizens and material [00:01:00] culture makers and users. I'm Rebecca Burgess, your host of this Whetstone Radio collective series, which aims to explore the nexus of modern day economic design and contemporary textile systems.

[00:01:13] Rebecca Burgess: In this episode, we have an opportunity to listen in to a longer arc story of fiber plant and people relationships that precede the common knowledge of cotton agriculture and processing systems, communities in what are now called the Western United States. And in particular, the southwestern US have relied upon the cotton plant to produce lace weight as well as sturdier complexly woven textiles for multiple millennia.

[00:01:41] Rebecca Burgess: I had an opportunity to learn about cotton systems originally from my friend Adae Briones of the First Nations Development Institute. She grew up alongside today's guest and she was my first Cotton history teacher. She shared with me that cotton was a sacred staple crop for her region, and that as the [00:02:00] United States expansion moved westward with ranching communities, much of the land that her people had been farming for staple food and fiber crops was transitioned.

[00:02:10] Rebecca Burgess: Specifically, her community was pushed to grow crops to support the ongoing expansion of ranching in the region. My guest today is Adae's childhood friend Louie Garcia. Louie is Tiwa and Piro Pueblo from the Pira Monso Tiwa Tribe of Guadalupe Pueblo in Las Cruces, New Mexico. He is an educator and weaver based in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

[00:02:35] Rebecca Burgess: Garcia says there are 19 federally recognized pueblos in the state of New Mexico, not including the Hopi Villages of Arizona or other areas in El Paso, Texas. The desert region where he comes from in New Mexico has dry sandy soil and an average annual rainfall of six to 12 inches. So much of the farming is dry land farming with some irrigation systems that do predate European [00:03:00] contact.

[00:03:01] Rebecca Burgess: Plants and crops have adapted to this environment and can be grown in a relatively short growing season. In addition to cotton, fibers that were used in the Pueblo Southwest include yucca fiber, which is gathered widely in the region. There was also a type of plant known commonly as Indian hemp used to primarily make cordage. Cotton was introduced into the Pueblo Southwest from Mesoamerica, roughly around 600 bce. 

[00:03:30] Louie Garcia: By seven to 900, we do have very strong archeological evidence and oral history that documents the presence and the prevalent use of cotton in the Southwest by that time. And so the introduction of Cotton to the Southwest was through indigenous traders that would bring various crops, not just cotton, lots of [00:04:00] food stuffs and parrot feathers.

[00:04:02] Louie Garcia: Different materials such as shells. Salt was traded back and forth. Obsidian, raw materials would be traded in. So Cotton was one of the cultivars that was brought up and adopted by the pueblo, the ancestral Pueblo people of the area. 

[00:04:23] Rebecca Burgess: Since that time, he says Cotton has maintained a very important place within the culture.

[00:04:28] Rebecca Burgess: Much of the native fibers that were available prior to the introduction of cotton were coarse, and they required lots of time and energy to gather and to process. Garcia notes that we're all familiar, at least to some degree with cotton. Most of us wear it daily. It's actually 30% of the global fiber diet by volume.

[00:04:47] Rebecca Burgess: We also have it in our lives in products like bedsheets and towels and cotton balls for cosmetic purposes. And so most of us have a sense of the softness and the absorbency of cotton fiber. [00:05:00] Garcia says all of these qualities were definitely the qualities that his Pueblo ancestors appreciated about the plant.

[00:05:06] Rebecca Burgess: In addition to these qualities, he says Cotton also plays an important role in spiritual practices of the Pueblo people. 

[00:05:14] Louie Garcia: Being in the Pueblo Southwest as a desert environment, many if not all of our ceremonies and dances pertain and relate to asking and praying for moisture and rain. And so the means that moisture is brought to the Pueblo Southwest is through the clouds, the cloud beings that we believe are our ancestors.

[00:05:41] Louie Garcia: And so we petition them and in that way, the nature of cotton, raw cotton, even on the bowl in on the plant itself is reminiscent of clouds. The white billowy bowls of cotton are very reminiscent of [00:06:00] the cloud beings, and so this in and of itself, or the Pueblo thought of this, is that we're essentially working with the cloud, spinning and weaving to create essentially a cloud that will bring rain and moisture to our crops.

[00:06:23] Rebecca Burgess: He says the form of the cloud itself is also representative of prayers. When the people prepare for ceremonies or when there is a prayer, they smoke tobacco. They believe that this smoke is creating rain clouds and then going up into the sky to call the rain forward. 

[00:06:41] Louie Garcia: The use of the tobacco to pray for the moisture is all in keeping with this concept and idea of clouds.

[00:06:52] Louie Garcia: In the way that we are asking for the moisture and those clouds will in turn bring that moisture and bless the people. [00:07:00] When the prayer and the petition is sincere and when the heart of the people is together as one and coming from a good place, then that's when we believe that we're blessed with rain for the people.

[00:07:17] Rebecca Burgess: The pueblo people believe that their ancestors are the clouds. And the people believe that this is their origin. I wanted to learn more about how the community organized around planting and harvesting and the archeological records and oral traditions of this process. Part of Garcia's work is archeological in nature.

[00:07:36] Rebecca Burgess: He's a research consultant on the Cedar Mesa Perishables project. Which is in the process of documenting approximately 5,000 artifacts that have been excavated from alcoves in southeastern Utah. Many of the artifacts are textile fragments, but they also see a whole range of materials. They found wooden farming implements, for example, and different tools that were [00:08:00] used for gathering and processing cotton.

[00:08:03] Rebecca Burgess: As they do this excavation and archeological work, Garcia says he realizes that much of the traditional Pueblo cotton system is not based on what we would consider traditional gender roles in textile systems. 

[00:08:18] Louie Garcia: The Pueblo men were the ones that traditionally were working with the fiber, and that would've included the work from spinning and weaving of cotton itself and Yucca, Yucca cordage as well would've been gathered and processed by the men primarily.

[00:08:38] Louie Garcia: So the processing of or the ginning of cotton is very labor intensive and requires a great deal of time. After the cotton is harvested, then it's brought home, and after the cotton's brought home, then that's [00:09:00] when the women and children of the whole family would get involved in ginning of the cotton.

[00:09:09] Louie Garcia: And the way that it was ginned was by hand. So you're sitting with a pile of cotton and gently picking apart the fiber and picking out the seeds. 

[00:09:19] Rebecca Burgess: In Pueblo Cotton, he says the fiber or lint sticks to the seed. So it requires a little bit of work to free the seed from the fiber because cotton is a seed fiber.

[00:09:30] Rebecca Burgess: Within the archeological work that Garcia is doing, they're noticing that the cotton bowls and the cotton seeds they're finding are somewhat different from the modern varietals they see grown today. They call it naked seed. It's where the fiber doesn't necessarily bind to the seed quite as much. So they found cotton with what we would call a very different release factor, where the fiber does not attach to the seed as strongly as in today's varietals.

[00:09:58] Rebecca Burgess: So from the [00:10:00] time of these archeological sites to today, we see that the bowls have become much larger and the seed has become much fuzzier. It does take a little bit more work to get the fiber off the seed, and then to pick out these seeds in the more contemporary varieties. 

[00:10:16] Louie Garcia: After you have the seeds removed, then you would take this big billowy,

[00:10:22] Louie Garcia: pile of cotton without, or just lint, no seeds, and you would pile it up. They would use willow switches like a wand with maybe four or five prongs that was bound at one end, and then kind of open out, fan out, and that would be used to beat the cotton to open the fiber and as the cotton would, beat it kind of out flat, then it will be folded on itself and beat out again, folded on itself, beat out again.

[00:10:56] Louie Garcia: And what that essentially does is because the fiber, [00:11:00] the cotton lint is so super fine, is the beating of the cotton, kind of opens the fiber and allows them to kind of catch on each other and create kind of a uniform bat, if you will, that could be spun from. 

[00:11:20] Rebecca Burgess: After several rounds of pounding the cotton flat and folding it over, you create a very uniform bat that can then be spun from. Garcia says essentially, all of the fibers are adhering to each other in this bat, so it lends itself to spinning and drafting out and spinning a yarn to the desired girth thickness that you need for creating a very fine sewing thread or something as thick as a weaving yarn.

[00:11:45] Rebecca Burgess: This understanding of using the willow to open up the fibers and to get them to process better is something that he became aware of through the archeological studies. He says early on, the archeologists had a sense that these tools were [00:12:00] used for fiber preparation, but they didn't quite know what part of the fiber preparation process they were used for.

[00:12:06] Rebecca Burgess: There was no one in the Pueblos that was still processing cotton that way, even though it had been extinct from the Pueblos in the southwest, he and others were aware that there are still indigenous communities in Mexico that are growing native cotton and processing it in this same way. 

[00:12:23] Louie Garcia: A group of archeologists and some native pueblo weavers went down south to Oaxaca, Mexico where we visited Mishk communities that were still growing their native cotton and processing it. So we were able to see firsthand how these women were using similar ones to beat the cotton and create a bat and spin from. So it was that missing cultural link. And a lot of times it's difficult for people to kind of get a sense for the [00:13:00] various different cultural influences that made their way into the Pueblo, Southwest from Meso America.

[00:13:08] Louie Garcia: But we do see very strong evidence that when the fiber made its way from the south into the Pueblo Southwest, then we get a sense that that technology also came along with it. With the seeds came the technology, if you will. 

[00:13:28] Rebecca Burgess: Garcia says, there's also evidence that certain types of yarn, particularly indigo dyed yarn, was brought up as a trade item because that technology had not yet made its way up to the Pueblo Southwest.

[00:13:40] Rebecca Burgess: The dyed yarns would've been an easy commodity to bring up as a trade item. Blue dyed cotton yarns are noted as arriving on the scene as early as the year 300 in the Pueblo Southwest. In many cases, it was found in association with religious paraphernalia. And so we do know that Indigo itself [00:14:00] is a semi-tropical plant, and it does not grow in the desert.

[00:14:03] Rebecca Burgess: So it had to have been dyed in an area where that plant could be easily grown. 

[00:14:08] Louie Garcia: Which would indicate the value and how special the colored yarn would have been used. And blue is a very significant color that is used in the pueblos and it's, again, its correlation with water and moisture and the sky as being the means of bringing moisture.

[00:14:29] Louie Garcia: So it was very significant in that sense. So all of that technology and very strong evidence of indigenous trade should not be underestimated cuz it was a very strong influence and way that people were exchanging goods and ideas. But along with that came the technology and all of the cultural knowledge that came with the fiber, and even some of the religious [00:15:00] associations of how the fiber was used and the different ideas that go along with it.

[00:15:06] Rebecca Burgess: We can use textiles to retrace the relationships across these geographies. Starting from the region where Garcia's community lived and worked, you could travel south into a semi-tropical area where you could grow and ferment indigo. There was a connectivity between the communities that came from these very different bio regions, and we know they were sharing their knowledge and their technology and their seeds through a robust trade and cultural network. 

[00:15:33] Rebecca Burgess: Garcia's description of this detail allows us to understand the pre-colonial set of relationships that were vital to the region. 

[00:15:42] Louie Garcia: That idea of migration is a very important part of our idea of Pueblo people because we do know and we have a very strong oral history behind people moving across the landscape.

[00:15:56] Louie Garcia: Even before we recognized like how [00:16:00] we recognize today, tribal peoples before, you know, pre historically, the people were recognized by clan and clan ships, and so the various clans that make up the Pueblo people today can be traced back. For example, you'd have Sun Clan. Pretty much every Pueblo Village has a Sun Clan.

[00:16:25] Louie Garcia: And every Pueblo village is gonna have, or most Pueblo villages will have a parrot clan that certain clans that came from the south, the sun clan and the parrot clan being two of those. And so through our clan origin histories, we do have that oral history that talks about the origin of various clans and how they came, how we were instructed at the time of emergence.

[00:16:53] Louie Garcia: To travel across the landscape and leave behind footprints [00:17:00] or evidence of our occupation in that could have been in the form of dwellings or pottery, pottery shards or petroglyphs. And so throughout this whole area, from Meso America all the way into the Pueblo, Southwest, we see certain commonalities in terms of the architecture, in terms of petroglyphs, in terms of cultural knowledge, cultivars.

[00:17:31] Louie Garcia: He 

[00:17:31] Rebecca Burgess: says all of that is evidence that people were moving freely across the landscapes without any reservation or borders. He says at the time it was a matter of survival. You had to cross pollinate with other communities, if you will, to maintain a strong and vigorous community, 

[00:17:48] Louie Garcia: Various religious practices, and even fiber and weaving technologies, ceramic technologies, many of these things were shared between people from [00:18:00] long distances away. And so we have, you know, history of where certain food items came from. Chili, for example, coming from the south, corn coming from the south. So many, many of these food staples, fibers being cotton, and the technologies that came with them were all

[00:18:21] Louie Garcia: moving across the landscape and being shared between people because the food and the fibers were all things that helped with survival and the viability of life in these very harsh environments. 

[00:18:38] Rebecca Burgess: This exchange of ideas and technologies and histories, Garcia says, has provided descendants of the ancestral people, an enduring tradition that's been strong enough to resist many influences.

[00:18:49] Rebecca Burgess: These communities have maintained a specific linguistic and cultural identity as a result of that ability to share cultural trade items and to share traditional knowledge. [00:19:00] The distinctions in language and cultural practice across regions continue to this day. Originally, there were distinctions between clans and then these clans often became trading partners.

[00:19:13] Rebecca Burgess: The word distinction tied to a resilient region is a very different approach to organizing across communities whereby there's not an imposition of one unilateral language or homogenization necessarily, but it's trading and sharing knowledge based on a desire to help everyone survive, while providing autonomy and sovereignty to develop within a place in a respectful way that cultivates language, ceremony, and distinct weaving patterns.

[00:19:44] Rebecca Burgess: I wanted to learn more about the distinctions of the textile practice that Garcia learned from based on his own archeological work and the oral traditions that he knows so well. He said there are many commonalities in textiles across the Pueblos. [00:20:00] There are specific historic events as well that he mentioned that have had an impact on the production and distribution of these textiles.

[00:20:07] Rebecca Burgess: One example is the arrival of the Spanish. He says it changed the textile traditions in many ways, and some of which still persist today. 

[00:20:16] Louie Garcia: The introduction of Wolf, for example, sheep and sheep's wool to the Pueblos, which was a welcome introduction because we all know the qualities that wool has. And so when that fiber was introduced to the Pueblos, it was very welcome and of course the Pueblo weavers were able to adopt that into our repertoire of creating textiles.

[00:20:42] Louie Garcia: Whereas prior to that, the primary fiber would've been cotton textiles, which we do see in many of the Kiva murals that have survived in some of the dwellings and throughout the southwest that kind of give us an idea of what [00:21:00] textiles looked like pre historically prior to the introduction of wool. 

[00:21:06] Rebecca Burgess: He says the textiles themselves are very characteristic in terms of what the pueblos and the ancestral pueblos were weaving.

[00:21:13] Rebecca Burgess: Some of those characteristics include textiles that are wider than tall or wider than long as they're woven on the loom. The looms themselves were upright nature as opposed to horizontal or backstrap. The top loom bar would be latched to the ceiling beam and usually within the ceremonial chambers, and the tension on the loom would be adjusted by a rope.

[00:21:36] Rebecca Burgess: In that kind of setup, the weaver would be able to create a wider than tall textile, which lends itself to creating a garment of the size required for clothing 

[00:21:46] Louie Garcia: These mantas, they use the Spanish term "manta" to describe the Pueblo's style of dress for the women, that would've been a rectangular piece of fabric woven on the loom of the size [00:22:00] required.

[00:22:00] Louie Garcia: And then after completed, the dress would be folded in half horizontally and then stitched up one side and was always worn, tied over the right shoulder and going under the left shoulder. And so that was the traditional, characteristic Pueblo women's garment, whereas the men were wearing loincloths, very minimalistic loin cloths.

[00:22:28] Louie Garcia: And for ceremonial use would have been a kilt, which again, is a rectangular fabric that would've been wrapped around the waist and tied with the sash. And so the sashes, there are many, many in these collections. Many, many examples of different types of sashes and belting in various structures that were used to hold clothing in place around the waist.[00:23:00] 

[00:23:00] Rebecca Burgess: He says, even though loincloths are a very simple garment, they were very, very elaborate. This goes for the aprons the women were wearing as well. Many fibers were used to create them, including yucca fiber, human hair, and cotton. For the women's aprons, they were woven with a plated twill technique, and they were very beautifully decorated.

[00:23:20] Louie Garcia: The very first row of the weaving on these aprons, there's usually a characteristic row or two of human hair that was woven into them. And so this brings to like many questions and ideas that actually are in keeping with some of our contemporary views and ideas of human hair, how human hair is treated in the Pueblos today.

[00:23:50] Louie Garcia: We do know that it's a very significant, and it has to do with lineage and with the women's line in a matrilineal culture [00:24:00] and society, cuz we see that in the, the women's aprons. The other side to that were the yucca sandals, and we find in the yucca sandals, which were most likely worn by the men, as the men were the ones to go out and travel long distances for trading and or hunting.

[00:24:24] Louie Garcia: They would've had to have had some type of sole to protect their feet from the ground. You know, stickers, different things that are found in the desert. But in those sandals, in these twined sandals, there's one row of, again, human hair that we see woven into it. 

[00:24:46] Rebecca Burgess: Garcia says that the textiles served more than a utilitarian need, and this becomes somewhat evidenced in just the choice of fibers that were used, and we know how complex some of these fibers were to obtain.

[00:24:59] Rebecca Burgess: For [00:25:00] instance, there are some sashes that were braided from dog hair, but not just any dog hair, white dog hair. So we get a sense that dogs were being bred for a specific color of hair, maybe a specific consistency and coarseness of hair. And we also see that brown hair dogs and buffalo hair was also used for other forms of sash making.

[00:25:21] Rebecca Burgess: And he mentions that sashes are a very important part of traditional clothing. Because all of the clothing is woven to the size of the loom, there's no tailoring or cutting and sewing. And after the textile has served its purpose through much wear and tear, Garcia says that they add another layer of labor called twined embroidery.

[00:25:43] Rebecca Burgess: This is an extensive process of mending. 

[00:25:46] Louie Garcia: That would've been like a darning technique used to reinforce the textile, and many times those fragments of larger textiles, especially very [00:26:00] intricate textiles, with maybe some brocade, we often see fragments of those larger textiles that are repurposed for other purposes, whether it's to hold.

[00:26:12] Louie Garcia: Medicine, herbal medicine or things that might have been used for ceremonial uses, you know, just those fragments of cloth in and of itself would still maintain that specialness, if you will. I don't know how else to explain it. They still will hold things of importance. As opposed to being discarded. So the life of that textile still continues to be used.

[00:26:46] Rebecca Burgess: He said they often find the most intricate and beautiful and special weaving techniques as applied to the funerary ceremonies. We get a sense of how important and how special textiles were in terms of what context they were [00:27:00] found in and how they were worn, and what that would've meant. He says that they still have many of these traditions in the Pueblos today.

[00:27:08] Rebecca Burgess: For example, there are textiles that are woven specifically for men, and there are textiles that are woven specifically for women, for specific uses. 

[00:27:17] Louie Garcia: The way that the textile is worn may indicate life or death. If the person is gone, then the way they're dressed is different from the way we would wear them in life.

[00:27:31] Louie Garcia: And so there's many indications that as a person is born into this world, there are textiles that are given at the time of birth as that individual grows and matures. If it's a female, there are certain textiles that are given to her throughout her life to indicate her womanhood. And the same goes for the male.

[00:27:56] Louie Garcia: There are certain textiles that are given upon his [00:28:00] initiation into manhood. And then certain religious societies, ceremonial societies, where there'll be certain textiles that are associated with those kind of initiations. And then when the individual is married, when they take on a life partner, then there's textiles that are given at that time.

[00:28:22] Louie Garcia: And then at the time of the individual's death, textiles that they receive at the time of their marriage also accompany them at the time of their death that become their shroud or their what they need in order to return to the spirit world or place of origin. 

[00:28:41] Rebecca Burgess: Textiles that are used today have a very specific meaning and symbolism within Pueblo culture.

[00:28:46] Rebecca Burgess: Textiles indicate milestones within an individual's life, and they have retained their importance and sacredness. Garcia says, that's one of the reasons why, although the tradition is threatened and there aren't [00:29:00] as many weavers as there were maybe a hundred years ago, he thinks the importance of these textiles in a pueblo individual's life explains why the tradition has not completely left.

[00:29:11] Rebecca Burgess: Garcia mentions the cultural practice that has lasted until today, which includes how textiles are cared for once they're not on the human body. He says that every Pueblo home has a trunk where textiles are kept when they're not in use. They're carefully folded and put away, and then taken out only when needed.

[00:29:33] Louie Garcia: There are certain items for ceremonial use that are specifically for certain dances, certain ceremonies that are not displayed, especially to the younger members of the family that may not yet be initiated into the religious societies. So there's special care taken with those [00:30:00] particular textiles, and also many times in some villages because the textiles were so important and valuable, at the same time during certain celebrations,

[00:30:17] Louie Garcia: especially houses that may be hosting a particular ceremony or event. Many times the textiles in shawls are put on display to show the wealth of the family and to create a sacred space or a valuable space, but mostly sacred space for a particular gathering. So oftentimes, maybe blankets, montes, kilts, sashes, shawls, often either displayed on the walls and or hung from the rafters [00:31:00] to add value or create a more welcoming environment for the family, for the community, rather. 

[00:31:11] Louie Garcia: Usually, every pueblo family has the trunk where everything is, is put in and stored until they're gonna be used. Or in the event that an individual has left this world, then traditionally they will be dressed in their traditional clothing to be sent home in that way. So there's lots of cultural practices in the ways that textiles are stored and treated and used and displayed in some instances. It just kind of depends on what the item is and how it's gonna be used. 

[00:31:53] Rebecca Burgess: The way that cotton is understood today in mainstream culture, I do see that it is detrimental to the [00:32:00] plant's own history and the communities that have nurtured and been in relationship with its cultivation for millenia.

[00:32:06] Rebecca Burgess: We know that retaining historically valuable varietals and farming techniques has been a challenge. The Spanish, of course, were the first disruption to these cultural practices, and then the next wave of colonization came with the United States government. Changes in farming practices that were instituted from the federal government did alter the way in which people were able to relate to their traditional food and fiber farming.

[00:32:31] Rebecca Burgess: And I asked Garcia, what specifically did that disruption look like? 

[00:32:35] Louie Garcia: There's been lots of disruption in terms of the modernization, especially during the era of boarding schools, the impact that boarding schools had on tribal communities, not only the Pueblos, but I think across Indian country, [00:33:00] definitely had adverse impact on the communities and this idea of, you know, kill the Indian, save the man mentality of exterminating native culture.

[00:33:17] Louie Garcia: I think that they kind of hit us where it count. In terms of focusing on the children and removing the children from the community, from the family, where they no longer have that interaction and they're no longer participating in these agricultural practices of foraging and gathering fiber and food and participating in those events that happen throughout the year.

[00:33:48] Louie Garcia: Aside from all of the agricultural incentives put into place from the United States government and the shift of subsistence [00:34:00] agriculture to cultivating of alfalfa and other kinds of crops that have a quicker turnaround.

[00:34:11] Rebecca Burgess: There was definitely a shift in terms of moving away from the cultivation of corn, beans, squash, and food crops.

[00:34:17] Rebecca Burgess: The cotton went out the window way before because you can eat the corn, the beans, the squash, and the chilies. Garcia says, less and less do we see Pueblo communities foraging to the degree that was in practice before the boarding school era. It might be due to the distance we've had from growing cotton in these traditional ways,

[00:34:37] Rebecca Burgess: and the advance of contemporary growing practices that have been harsh on soil, air, and water. It's true that today's view of cotton is often mired by its more recent history, but it was not always grown this way. 

[00:34:52] Louie Garcia: On the small scale, the rate that traditional pueblo farmers were farming, it wasn't that type of [00:35:00] monoculture, kind of these this mass ways of

[00:35:05] Louie Garcia: chemical farming and stuff like that. It was very different. There was quite a lot of space between the plants. They weren't planted very close together like the cotton fields are today. That just kind of lends itself to those kind of pests coming through and ravaging the whole crop. So it was a very different approach to how even the cotton was plantedand tended to

[00:35:32] Louie Garcia: that they were able to get fiber from it. But there's been lots of changes and I think for different reasons, more so now in Pueblo and native communities from a very young age, we're always told, you know, go out, get your education, then come back and help the people. So I think for a generation, for several generations now, many of our children are encouraged to go out and get an [00:36:00] education.

[00:36:01] Rebecca Burgess: That takes time to get a good high school education so you can get into a good college and get your degree and work in a field of your choice. Many times when they leave the reservation, not all of them come back, at least not right away. 

[00:36:15] Louie Garcia: Those of us that are more connected to our community and have a strong sense of coming back and contributing or continuing that connection with the community through various ceremonies or things that go on in the village, and there's kind of a mix between those that go and don't really come back and they kind of adopt the mainstream kind of identity and way of life in the city or wherever we find ourselves, and then those that kind of choose to maintain that connection.

[00:36:50] Louie Garcia: And see to it that our participation in the community is important, and then raising our families in the [00:37:00] cities, but going back periodically for certain times of the year when things are going on, and learning those practices and those traditions that go along with Pueblo life and those things that are important.

[00:37:15] Rebecca Burgess: He says others in Albuquerque, like himself plant their own gardens in the city and raise their own food and fiber crops. They carve out a little space to continue these traditions, and this has allowed the traditions to continue. Enhancing and expanding pueblo culture has meant that every day Garcia is practicing some aspect of fiber art tradition, whether that be spinning, weaving, dying, planting, cultivating, tending the garden, growing his vegetables and fiber.

[00:37:46] Rebecca Burgess: It's my hope that this episode will awaken our collective vision of the endurance, the breadth, and the beauty of textile cultures of North America, and will excite us for a future with a new vision of our relationship to the cotton [00:38:00] plant. I'd also like to extend a heartfelt thank you to you, the listener, for joining me and supporting me on this first season of the Weaving Voices podcast.

[00:38:25] Rebecca Burgess: This episode is made possible because of all the people who work behind the scenes on it. I'd like to thank my producer, Jennifer O'Neil, audio editor, Bethany Sands, and intern, Maha Sanad. I'd also like to thank Whetstone founder, Stephen Satterfield, Whetstone head of podcast, Celine Glasier, sound engineer Max Kotelchuck, music director Catherine Yang, associate producer Quentin Lebeau, production assistant Shabnam Ferdowsi and Sound intern Simon Lavender. The Cover Art by Wetstone Art Director [00:39:00] Alex Bowman. You can learn more about this podcast at WhetstoneRadio.com, on Instagram and Twitter @WhetstoneRadio, and subscribe to our YouTube channel, Whetstone Radio Collective for more podcast video content. You can learn more about all things happening at Whetstone at WhetstoneMagazine.com.