Soft medium, hard truths - National Endowment for the Arts recognizes a Navajo quilter

Susan Hudson's studio near Ignacio, Colorado, is often a chaotic mess of brightly colored fabrics and half-finished projects.

"I'm disorganized/organized," she said with a laugh. "I know where everything is. But I did clean up a little when I knew you were coming for a visit."

At the time, Hudson was finishing work on her latest show quilt, "Standing Strong In The Face of Genocide." Trimmed in black fabric, the four-paneled quilt showed a sequence of images focused on a single figure, like frames in a graphic novel.

In the first frame, a Native American boy in traditional clothing stands in front of what appears to be the whitewashed wooden siding of a building. The figure has black braids, leather and velvet clothing decorated in metal and bone, and oyster shell earrings. The light brown area of the figure's face is blank, with no features.

In the second frame, Hudson has sewn pieces of red fabric on the figure's pants, shaped like droplets of blood. In the third frame, the figure is slumped down, with a red smear on the wall behind him. The fourth panel has only Hudson's trademark cursive writing, like lines in a ledger book, dedicating the quilt to the Native children who did not capitulate to the administrators and federal officials who carried out federal Indian boarding school policies.

These frames tell the story of an execution-style killing of a Native American boy.

Indian boarding schools operated for decades across the US, beginning in the late 19th century, as part of an ongoing federal effort to separate Native youth from their families, culture, traditions, and language. Children were forbidden to speak their native language, to wear traditional clothes, and to practice their religion. Their hair was cut, and they were given European names.

In recent years, federal agencies in the US and Canada have begun investigating the tragic histories of boarding schools.

With "Standing Strong In The Face of Genocide," Hudson wanted to honor the children who refused to comply with these practices.

"We all know what happened to these kids who went to the boarding schools," Hudson said. "But what happened to the ones who said, 'hell no, we're not doing it'? When you have a defiant child, what do you do with them?"

The idea for this quilt came to Hudson in dreams and waking visions over the past few years.

"I would wake up crying," she said. "I could smell the blood, the sweat. I could hear the screams."

Initially, Hudson didn't know how she would represent the story in fabric. Eventually, she settled on taking the perspective of the person holding the gun and inviting the viewer to imagine the moral difficulty of the decision at hand.

"So you're standing here," Hudson said, gesturing toward the quilt where it hung on the wall. "You're looking at that kid who's defiant. You've got the gun. Are you going to shoot him or not? There were some people who didn't want to do it. But some said, 'Yes, we're killing a dirty Indian…How dare they buck the system!'"

Hudson travels to Indian markets across the US. Her show quilts often receive ribbons and awards at some of these shows. And each year, Hudson's show quilt finds a buyer.

"The quilts know where they're going to go," she said. "It'll go where it's supposed to go. Some of my quilts have gone to places I never thought they would go to."

By the end of the summer, "Standing Strong in the Face of Genocide," had found a buyer.

Hudson's quilts have been acquired by the Smithsonian's Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC, by the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, and by a number of private collectors.

In September, Hudson was honored as one of 10 National Endowment for the Arts Heritage Fellows, at a ceremony at the Library of Congress.

A Long and Difficult Road

Long before they became tools of artistic liberation, needle and thread were sources of pain and suffering for Susan Hudson and her family, stretching back to her mother's enrollment at an Indian boarding school in the 1940s.

"She didn't learn to sew in the boarding schools. It was beaten into her," Hudson said. "If she wiggled or anything, she got hit. If her stitches weren't straight, tiny, and precise, she got hit."

The experience was so traumatic, that Hudson's mother never spoke of it to her daughter. But when Susan Hudson learned to sew from her mother as a 9-year-old girl, she felt the sharp edge of that trauma nonetheless.

"I got a taste of the brutality that she went through," Hudson recalled. "I hated sewing. I hated it. When I was in my 20's I finally asked her why and then she told me the story. She goes, 'I'm going to tell you once, and I'm never going to tell you again.'"

Still, Hudson kept sewing. As an adult and a single mother, she made shawls and star quilts and sold them at powwows.

"When I started making star quilts, it was mostly to survive," she said. "To buy food for my kids, to buy them shoes."

Then, around 15 years ago, an artist friend told Hudson he thought her quilts were boring and challenged her to make more original work. That friend was former US Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, whom Hudson has known since she was a teenager. Campbell is a jeweler, and he was willing to share his knowledge of the art world with Hudson.

"I was pissed off at first," Hudson said. "After I shared a few choice words and calmed down, I realized Ben was right. That was the kick in the butt I needed. Those puzzle pieces came together, and I knew that I was chosen for this."

Hudson started to learn more about the artistic side of quilt-making. She realized, too, that her family history, as well as the visions from her most vivid dreams, were stories that could be told through her quilts.

Visions, dreams and history

Hudson's human figures have no facial features. At first glance, they seem like paper dolls, but every material detail has a story. Beadwork, leather, yarn, and fabric are arranged into richly detailed narrative scenes depicting some of the most traumatic chapters in Native American history. From the legacy of Indian boarding schools to the Navajo Long Walk, when people were forcibly removed from their homeland in the 1860s.

"Every one of us Natives, we're descendants from boarding school survivors," said Hudson.

One quilt, "Tears of Our Children, Tears for Our Children," depicts boarding school trauma. In one frame a row of children are dressed in colorful, traditional regalia. In another, their hair is cut, and they're wearing drab, institutional clothing. In the bottom frame, children sitting in wagons are guarded by cavalry soldiers with guns.

"The mothers were trying to get their children," Hudson said. "And the soldiers would shoot them if they tried to get their children. But this little girl represented my mother."

Emil Her Many Horses was immediately drawn to this quilt, when he first laid eyes on it at the Heard Indian Fair and Market in Phoenix, Arizona. He's a curator at the National Museum of the American Indian and a member of the Oglala Lakota nation.

"She was telling the story in a new medium–cotton fabric," said Her Many Horses. "And there's a lot of detail that she took the time to stitch into this quilt. And so I thought this would be something that would add to our permanent collection."

In addition to Hudson's family histories, Her Many Horses noticed the ledger art references in her work.

The Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, has two of Hudson's quilts in its collection, including "The Beginning of the End," another quilt documenting Indian boarding school history.

"The details that Susan puts into these quilts are just amazing," said Diana Pardue, chief curator at the Heard Museum. "There's an incredible intricacy to the work. At first, your eye looks at the overall quilt, and then you start realizing there's a very complex story embedded in the artwork, and as you look closer, you learn something more."

Ironic award

Success with collectors and museums has led to more national recognition. When Hudson received word last Spring that she would be honored by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the irony was not lost on her.

"Congress is giving me this award because I make quilts showing the atrocities that Congress did to our people," Hudson said.

In September 2024, Susan Hudson stood on the stage of Coolidge Auditorium at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., to accept a medal from the NEA. In her speech that followed, Hudson's words pierced the silence of the theater.

"I should not be standing here receiving this award," she told the audience. "I should not be having to make these quilts to talk about the atrocities that happened to our people…. My descendants will remind your descendants of the things that happened to our people."

After a long pause, Hudson released some of the tension with a touch of humor.

"But I appreciate the award," she said with a smile. The audience roared with laughter and showered her with applause.

Through the soft medium of quiltmaking, Hudson has found a way to share hard truths–stories her family members would only speak of in whispers when she was growing up.

"You know everybody was talking about it quietly," she said "But no, I don't care, I'm going to talk about it because that's my story. That's my history. My family tree."