Niha’hané (Our Collective Stories): Matrilineal Narrations of an Intergenerational Diné Weaving Legacy

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Abstract

This paper proposes a potential pathway to rethink how Diné matrilineal knowledge can work to inform a Diné female academic identity. In keeping with the decolonizing traditions of Indigenous scholars, I will use a Beautyway lens—as mediated by Diné traditional learning modalities—to explore how the narrations of three generations of Navajo rug weavers point to the primacy of feminine agency and the familial process of creating Diné learning modalities. To this end, I will engage the transformative possibilities that can dialogically emerge from a rewoven matrifocal understanding of the world, and its implications for conducting doctoral research, as well as how it informs institutional persistence as a Diné scholar and my practice as a student affairs professional.

Author

• Charlotte Elizabeth Davidson, South Dakota State University