This article is part of Hyperallergic’s 2024 Pride Month series, featuring interviews with art-world queer and trans elders throughout June.
Diné weaver and fiber artist Roy Kady sat down for a video interview wearing a shirt that read “Sheep is life.” Kady is a shepherd and an artist, roles he sees as definitively intertwined. “I am first a shepherd, then art comes with it,” he said.
Kady’s decades-long career has been one of constant learning, and in recent years, teaching. He shares weaving techniques and Diné stories that he says are too often missing from younger generations. Kady spoke to Hyperallergic about Diné conceptions of gender, apprenticeship in his small Arizona town, and being accepted as a gay man in his community.
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Hyperallergic: What are your earliest memories of weaving, and how did your mother’s practice influence your own?
Roy Kady: My sisters and I grew up in a single-parent household where my mother brought us up, so we were taught everything from building a house to repairing a roof to working under the hood of a vehicle, the sort of things the colonized world would call “man’s work.” We learned inside, too. From washing dishes and getting the house tidied up to cooking and baking, we did what would be considered “women’s work.” But for us, it’s not.
I was taught about weaving at the young age of nine years old. I have some recollections before that of sitting by my grandmother, grandfather, and mother, who all also partook in fiber arts — weaving and processing the fiber. My mom gifted and shared weaving techniques with me: vegetable dyeing and some of the family designs that came with it. I was fortunate; I was given the tools she and our kin relations had, and that’s what inspired me to become an artist. We learned farming and goat and sheep herding, too.
H: How do you see the relationship between shepherding and weaving?
RK: Sheep provide you with sustainability, food, and the opportunity to learn how to maintain the land. We take care of them so that they can take care of us.
As a shepherd, you know what they like to eat and what keeps them healthy. They also know that themselves, so they’ll take you on journeys to where particular plants exist. On those journeys, you’re able to be inspired by color and the environment, by the mesas. You start to see geometric forms that you can bring back to your weaving repertoire.
That’s what traditional Navajo weaving is: an interpretation of your environment. A lot of my earlier pieces were designed with that in mind. They’re not necessarily just stripes; they represent rainbows. They’re not just step patterns; they’re mesas or clouds.
There’s a whole opening of the universe that is represented. In order to understand and have that knowledge, you must have the knowledge of shepherding. But it’s a rarity now because there are not many shepherds. The sheep population has really declined. Navajo fiber artists and textile weavers create beautiful artistry, and while they may no longer have herds, they have memories from their grandparents or parents or maybe from within themselves around growing up with sheep.
H: How does mentoring and apprenticeship work in the world of weaving?
RK: My mother would sometimes say something like, “You’re at the age when you are going to learn about horsemanship.” She was a horsewoman type. She would teach us, then she would want us to ask a neighbor or other kinfolks to learn other forms. I remember growing up and learning a lot from the neighboring kids. We would go to their houses and learn different types of fiber arts, traditional recipes, or plant foraging. I’ve also apprenticed with French tapestry weavers, and I incorporate that knowledge into some of my own pieces.
I have been mentored by so many people that I can’t recall them all. There were people throughout the reservation who knew different kinds of weaving styles, techniques, and designs, and I would go spend a day, a weekend, or even a month in their home and helping them with their livestock. That’s how I would earn the opportunity to learn from them. They’ve always told me that this knowledge doesn’t just belong to one individual, saying, “It was gifted to me. It goes all the way back to the creation story.” That’s how I model my apprenticeships now.
H: Are there other types of motifs you employ in your work?
RK: After I learned about the French tapestry style, I started getting into pictorial work, my hobby since high school when I picked up photography. We were working with 35mm cameras and I had the opportunity to learn. To this day, I still have a camera, whether it’s my phone, my 35mm, or a Polaroid. Wherever I go, I’m always snapping. Sometimes I’ll see an image and think, “I would like to recreate that in a textile weaving.” Then I start my journey with it by creating the colors and fibers I want to use.
I don’t just use wool. I use anything that’s of natural origin, including tree bark and wild cotton, nettle, silk, you name it — whatever I can get my hands on. If I can find somebody who says, “I have a herd of bison,” then I say, “What do you do with their wool?”
H: Are there any works that you particularly love?
RK: That would be the one titled “Shimá,” meaning “my mother.” I would wheel her into the sheep corral in her wheelchair, and the sheep knew who she was and come up and greet her. They knew the scent of her hands and how she cared for them. I took a beautiful picture of her making those interactions and decided to weave it. I broke ground for myself by incorporating all different types of techniques that I’ve learned along my weaving journey. At this point, that would be my favorite.
H: What does Pride Month mean to you?
RK: To me, Pride Month is every month; Pride Day is every day. But it’s good that it’s a designation, because not everybody is coherent or knowledgeable about what Pride Month might be.
I’m proud of who I am, and I’m very well-accepted in my community and my family. When I came back from high school and sat down with my mom and told her I was homosexual, she just looked at me with a smile and said, “I know, I’m your mother.” To her, it’s not about being different, it’s about being special and gifted.
The creation story tells how the six genders were created. She told me about some of the local community members. I had always known there was something different about them and that I could connect with them. We don’t necessarily consider two spirits in Navajo culture, even though other Indigenous people identify that way. We have one soul and one spirit. The only thing different between a straight person and us is that we were gifted the ability to transform within ourselves and hold femininity. We were utilized in ceremonies for that reason.
My grandfather respected and knew about this, but somewhere along the way, those stories were forgotten. Maybe it was because of colonization, when they were teaching us, “This is your role as a man; this is your role as a woman.” In traditional Navajo culture, there are no sex or gender roles; we’re taught survival. There are stories, for example, about women turning stirring sticks into weapons. They can be considered warriors in that sense. In my apprenticeship, I share those stories with the young people.
For the rest of my journey, I’m sharing them. I invite people, we sit down, we prepare food together, then we talk about these things so that these stories continue to live and get to be told by the next generation. That’s part of apprenticeship.
It all goes back to sheep. Without sheep, we wouldn’t have this kind of lifestyle as humans.
H: Do you represent any of these types of stories, or your identity as a gay person, in your work?
RK: I do, although it may not be in an identifiable form. I often incorporate all of the genders into an interpretation of how they can be represented. Even in something such as stripes: I don’t just create four, I create six. Other times, I honor certain people in my life.
H: Are there any projects you’re working on now or that you’re excited to start in the future?
RK: There’s an upcoming gallery exhibit near us in Cortez, Colorado, that I’m starting with my grandson, Tyrell Tapaha. He’s come back to learn about shepherding and be my apprentice. We’re doing a collaborative type of show. I will show what took place between the two of us, and it will include his interpretation of what I taught him about sheep, the landscape, or a particular plant.
We are utilizing what we call barbed wire art. When you’re a sheepherder in this country, you have barbed wires lying around everywhere that are rusty, but we create these wonderful shapes and incorporate that into our textiles or fiber work. We’re excited to venture.
