Lucy Friedlander Covington

As happens more often than I'd like to admit, I went looking for a subject for a short post for today, and instead fell into the internet. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, of course. But it makes writing a short, conversational post that much harder when I've got enough fascinating information to write pages and pages.

I saw a mention that today is the birthday of Lucy Covington (November 24 - September 20, 1982), a tribal leader with the Colville Indian Reservation in Washington State. Thinking I'd find some bits and pieces of interesting facts about her, I started my research. Instead, I found out that she was likely single-handedly responsible for protecting her reservation's protected status from being "terminated" by the federal government and the tribal leaders at the time.

Termination sounds terrible, and according to Lucy, it would have been. In the 1950s, the US federal government's approach was to induce tribes to liquidate their holdings (usually land) as a way to better assimilate into the wider society. When Lucy first heard about the plans for termination of the Colville Reservation, it had already been approved by the tribal elders. Many of them saw it as a way to get a very large check from the federal government. Lucy saw it as selling off the economic and social future of her people for short term financial gain for only a few.

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Clara Sherman

Clara Nezbah Gould Sherman (February 18, 1914 – July 31, 2010) was a renown Navajo weaver who was instrumental in the development of the Toadlena/Two Grey Hills style rug.

"When you weave, everything comes back to you and you feel fresh again."

Clara grew up herding sheep and cattle, and raising corn and watermelons, often working side by side with one of her sisters, Yazzie Blackhorse. The two would often herd sheep, and pick up the bits of wool that would catch on the barbed wire fences. In defiance of their mother, who didn't think they were ready to learn how to weave, the two built a secret loom in a dry arroyo, and taught themselves.

"When we would herd sheep, the wool would stick to the barbed wire when the sheep passed through the fences. Yazzie told me to hide the wool carders under my coat and go out. At the time we were herdin' sheep over there at the place where I was born. We would card our wool over there in secret. And the same thing we did was hide a spindle from my [older] sister. She didn't know that we used it. And my sister [Yazzie] already know how and she taught me how to spin. We put up a rug like this size [approximately two feet high] on those bushes, and we covered it up so no one would know."
source: Convocations: Indian Arts Research Center

What sets her region's rugs apart from other Navajo rug designs in the reliance on colors that occur naturally in sheep's wool. While other Navajo weavers make dazzling rugs from brilliant reds and blues, the Toadlena-Two Grey Hills weavers work with the colors the sheep provide naturally.

As the weavings of the Toadlena-Two Grey Hills have become more and more renowned for their quality and artistry, the weavings have become finer, and more intricate and precise, including an emphasis on the evenness of color. Through the years and generations, these qualities have won these weavers top prizes and escalating prices. But sheep's pelts are unevenly bleached by the sun, and from one year to the next, a sheep's wool is different. For the master weaver with her own herd, the mind boggles at the complex considerations from preparing the wool, envisioning the elaborate designs, and weaving it through every season's change of humidity. Unlike modern pilots or surgeons, these weavers do not work from checklists to make sure they have the exact length of each handspun and blended color they will need.
source: Art of Outside: Exhibition of weaving shows timeless dynamic

In 2004, at the age of 90, Clara won a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts. And in 2006, she was awarded the New Mexico Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts.

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Ruth Roessel - Navajo teacher and author

As a teacher and author, Ruth Roessel played an influential role in the lives of several generations of Navajo students. Drawing on her experiences in the limitations of the education system that removed native children from their culture and yet left them unprepared for careers after college, she worked hard to improve and revise the educational opportunities for her community, stressing the importance of including native stories and cultural values.

"Our past is our strength, and our future is uncertain unless we have our roots in our traditions. I believe that we need to follow the path given to us by the Holy People and try to raise our children in similar ways."

Ruth Roessel. Photo source: KUED

Ruth Roessel was born in Rough Rock, Arizona, on the Navajo Reservation, April 15, 1934. Her father, Ashi'ii, medicine man, and mother Hasbah made sure Ruth and her ten sisters and brothers grew up with traditional Navajo values, practices, and crafts. At the age of five she had already learned how to weave. When she was eleven, she was responsible for the care of two hundred sheep in her family's herd.&

As a child Roessel also learned to build a corral, chop wood, and construct a hogan, the traditional Navajo dwelling. Through this hard work, Roessel later recalled, she "was learning to become a Navajo woman." She was also taught how to be a good Navajo by elders through their retelling of the ancient tribal tales of Changing Woman, Monster Slayer, and other mythic beings. According to Roessel, "I felt that my education really started when I began to hear and learn these Navajo stories."
(source: A to Z of Native American Women)

In 1942, she began attending the the Lukachukai Day School. Five years later, she was sent to the Fort Winegate Boarding School in New Mexico, the only high school open to native girls at the time.. The policy at the school was to force the students to turn their back on their cultural heritage and to assimilate to the expectations of white culture. Homesick and trying to adjust to the new surroundings, food, and expectations, she studied hard and earned a vocational education in home economics.

Roessel has explained that after arriving there she felt as thought she "had gone to a new country or at least to some place far, far away."
(source: A to Z of Native American Women)

Ruth Roessel give the keynote address at Diné College's 2009 commencement. Photo source: Navajo Times

The school gave her an aptitude test that indicated that she would be ideally suited for a career as a waitress. Roessel wanted to do more with her life, and maybe find a way to give back to her community. She applied to college, but was rejected because her boarding school education wasn't considered adequate. Angry, she reached out to friends and people in positions of power who finally helped her to gain admittance to Arizona State College in Flagstaff. There she earned a bachelor's and master's degree in elementary education.

In addition to raising a family with her husband, Robert Roessel, Jr., Ruth Roessel has taught at many educational institutions on the Navajo reservation and served as the principal of the Round Rock Elementary School. She has also been an instructor at the Navajo Community College, which in 1968 became the first tribally controlled school to offer a two-year associate's degree. In the early 1970s, she was the director of the college's Navajo and American Indian Studies Program. Throughout her teaching career, Roessel has been an advocate for bilingual and bicultural education for Indian students. As she has explained, "I grew up with parents and family who were Navajo, who were proud of it and who taught me... That is what we must do [for children] at home and at school if we wish to remain strong Navajos."
(source: A to Z of Native American Women)

Ruth Roessel standing in front of a Navajo Rug. Photo source: NavajoPeople.org

In addition to her work in schools, she has also written several books showing Navajo history from a Navajo perspective. Her works cover a wide range of topics including collections of personal accounts of tragic events in Navajo history, as well as taking a closer look at historic events and Navajo culture.

Navajo Stories of the Long Walk Period (1973) focuses on the U.S. Army's forced relocation of more than eight thousand Navajos to Bosque Redondo, New Mexico, in 1863. Navajo Livestock Reduction: A National Disgrace (1974) tells the story of the U.S.government's slaughter of Navajo sheep herds to prevent overgrazing during the 1930s. Roessel also has compiled Stories of Traditional Navajo Life and Culture (1976) and written Women in Navajo Society (1981), which combines historical essays and her own remembrances of growing up as a Navajo.
(source: A to Z of Native American Women)

She did not simply focus her attention on the Navajo children, but also worked to improve the whole community. She started a medicine person training program. She and her husband ran summer workshops addressing issues in the Navajo community -- alcoholism, jealousy and native medicine. She was involved in a number of women's advocacy projects. She served as the Navajo Women's Association president, was a charter member and state president of the North American Indian Women's Association, and Arizona Women in Higher Education. In 1980 she was named Navajo Woman of the Year.

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More reading:

A to Z of Native American Women, by Liz Sonneborn
Native American Women: A Biographical Dictionary, by Gretchen M. Bataille and Laurie Lisa
Native News Network: Ruth Roessel Obit
ipl2: Native American Authors: Ruth Roessel's Bibliography
The Denver Post: Ruth Roessel Obit
Navajo Times Ruth Roessel Obit

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