Day 17. Weaving as Language, Threads of Connection.
Every woven piece tells a story. From Diné textiles that map the cosmos to Andean quipus that record history in knots and colors, weaving is a form of language. Patterns encode prayers, geography, and kinship lines. To weave is to speak with one’s hands-to converse with ancestors through texture and thread.
Ceremony and Memory
For many Indigenous weavers, the act itself is ceremony. Each thread connects body, spirit, and land. In the loom’s rhythm, memory becomes visible. Colonization sought to unravel these traditions, but weaving endures-bright, patient, and alive.
The UU Tapestry
As Unitarian Universalists, we understand the power of interconnection. We, too, are weavers-of covenant, community, and care. Our collective tapestry gains strength from diversity; each strand, each story, gives the whole its beauty and resilience.
“Our weaving is our remembering.” – Navajo Proverb
Reflection: What threads connect your life to those who came before-and those yet to come?
Learn More
- Visit the Diné Weavers Collection at the Heard Museum – Explore highlights from the Heard Museum’s extensive textile collection, which includes works from Diné (Navajo) weavers that showcase the depth of this sacred artistic tradition.
- Read about Andean Quipus – to learn how the Inca and pre-Inca Andean cultures used knotted and colored cords called quipus as a sophisticated, three-dimensional language for record-keeping, census, and potentially narrative history.
- Read Quipu: The Ancient Computer of the Inca Civilization – about the history and purpose of the quipu, with insights from anthropologist and best-selling author of The Last Days of the Incas Kim MacQuarrie.
- Read The Sacred Hoop – a seminal work on Indigenous traditions by Paula Gunn Allen, the late Laguna Pueblo-Lakota Sioux scholar who wrote extensively about the significance of Spider Grandmother in Pueblo cosmology as the original weaver and the source of all stories.
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