Weaving Women's Lives: Three Generations in a Navajo Family

by Louise Lamphere, Eva Price, Carole Cadman, Valerie Darwin

Overview

Louise Lamphere met Eva Price in 1965 in Sheep Springs, New Mexico, on the eastern side of the Navajo Reservation, while Lamphere was doing fieldwork for her dissertation in social anthropology at Harvard University. Over the next forty years, Lamphere developed a strong friendship with Price that expanded to include Eva's daughter, Carole Cadman, and granddaughter, Valerie Darwin.

When Price expressed her desire to pass along her teachings about Navajo life to her children and grandchildren, Lamphere saw an opportunity to pursue her own interest in writing a book on Navajo women that would encompass their transformative experiences through the twentieth century. Lamphere collaborated with Price, Cadman, and Darwin to create a narrative that highlights the voices of three generations of Navajo women, placing them within the context of the larger American society rather than presenting the Navajo as an isolated indigenous culture. Emphasizing the vibrancy and strength of Navajo culture, Weaving Women's Lives illustrates the process of incorporating new practices and ideas while retaining distinctive Navajo beliefs, values, and orientations. As individual threads are woven to create a unique pattern, so have Navajo women pulled together elements of Navajo and Anglo culture to create a new blueprint for their lives.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826342782
Publisher:	University of New Mexico Press
Publication date:	11/16/2007
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.74(d)

About the Author

Louise Lamphere has been a Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico since 1986. She is also former president of the American Anthropological Association.


Eva Price is a member of the Navajo Nation and lives in northwest New Mexico.


Carole Cadman is a member of the Navajo Nation and lives in northwest New Mexico.


Valerie Darwin is a member of the Navajo Nation and lives in northwest New Mexico.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations     ix
Acknowledgments     xi
Weaving Women's Lives     1
The Main Stalk: Placing the Mountain Recess People on the Landscape     20
"I Used To Herd Sheep All Around Here": Eva's Childhood, Sheep Herding, and the Trauma of Stock Reduction     45
"This Is Your Land": Eva's Father, His Teachings, and Coming of Age     70
After the War: Things Fall Apart     96
Eva's Conversion: Regaining a Place of Blessing     127
Carole's Adolescence and Motherhood     160
"It Was Really My Grandmother Who Raised Me": Valerie's Childhood     189
Valerie's High School     217
Valerie's College Years     228
Epilogue: 2006     259
Notes     275
References     304
Navajo Pronunciation Key     308
Index     309