Teresa Wilkins was fascinated with weaving from childhood. Born in rural North Carolina, where textiles were a major industry, she picked up scraps of material from her grandfather’s mill and wove them on a small loom. That youthful interest would eventually inspire her to focus on textiles while she earned a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Colorado at Boulder. From there, she would embark on a course of research, writing and teaching that would lead her into the heart of the weaving world on the Navajo Nation.
Wilkins, an associate professor of anthropology at UNM-Gallup, is seeing the fruits of her lifelong interest now that her book, “Patterns of Exchange: Navajo Weavers and Traders,” has been published by the University of Oklahoma Press.
“I did research in trading post archives, and I also conducted interviews and ethnographic studies with weavers. I asked weavers about their experiences today, and they also told me about their mothers and grandmothers,” Wilkins said.
Wilkins also looked at the relationships between weavers and traders, and how the traders influenced them as far as patterns and ideas and how much sovereignty they had for their own productions.
Besides researching, writing and teaching about textiles, Wilkins has been a judge at various juried native art exhibitions, including the Intertribal Ceremonial and Santa Fe Indian Market. She was recently accepted into the first annual New Mexico Women Authors’ Literary Festival, set for Sept. 27 in Santa Fe and sponsored by the Museums of New Mexico.
For more information, contact the UNM-Gallup Bookstore or the University of Oklahoma Press, (405) 325-2000.
Media Contact: Linda Thornton, (505) 863-7565; e-mail: lthornton@gallup.unm.edu