A spiritual sense hangs over the Navajo Nation.
Steve Getzwiller felt that. He lived it.
Traversing a landscape that swings from desolate volcanic fields to lush forest land, he was in his element, traveling the same dirt roads for some 45 years. By his side, a cooler of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches prepared by wife Gail. A piece of foam thrown in the back of an old blue Suburban served as his bed.
And while, over the years, he secured more comfortable sleeping arrangements and learned where to buy great tacos and ice cream, he always knew where to find weavers. Great weavers.
Getzwiller, who died August 23, 2023, at the age of 74, leaves a legacy that looms large over a declining industry as weavers age and young Navajos look elsewhere for employment. Getzwiller’s calling, along with Gail, was in promoting and supporting a medium some believe was handed down from Spider Woman, a Navajo deity.
“Steve took weaving to a whole different level,” said Al Grieve, a trader on the Navajo Reservation for decades. “He took it from rugs, to Navajo textiles to fine art. He was able to do that by working individually with the weavers. Most traders didn’t do that.”
Getzwiller’s interest in the Native American culture was ignited at an early age and fanned by the promise he saw in people and craft. He discerned in the weavings and the weavers a craft that deserved to be elevated from utilitarian to fine art.
“It’s more a family relationship than a business one,” he said in an August/September 2013 edition of Cowboys & Indians. “It’s a collaborative partnership, and when you consider I’m working exclusively with the same weavers for 10, 20, 30 years, it tells you something about the relationship.”
Born March 4, 1949, to Marion and Kathryn “Kay” (Harrigan) Getzwiller, Steve was the oldest of two boys and the fourth generation to grow up on a ranch in southeastern Arizona. While he took to his father’s love of ranch and rodeo, he carved his own way in the world of Navajo weaving.
With Ray Manley, Steve wrote The Art of Navajo Weaving (1984). He published numerous catalogs for museums and galleries including Woven Holy People for the Getzwiller gallery, which opened in Benson in 1972, and One Trader’s Legacy: Steve Getzwiller Collects the West for the Desert Caballeros Western Museum in Wickenburg. He did exhibits with, among others, the Tucson Desert Art Museum, Tubac Center for the Arts, the Booth Western Art Museum in Carterville, Georgia, and the Heard Museum in Phoenix. In 2000, Nizhoni, which means “beautiful place” in Navajo, moved to Sonoita.
But perhaps the thing of which Getzwiller would have been most proud was the attendance at an initial celebration of life held in Gallup, N.M., Sept. 28, 2023. There were very few non-Natives present. Which speaks to the relationships he built with the Dine’ over time.
Berlinda Nez-Barber of Table Mesa, N.M. was one of those in attendance at that celebration who counted Steve as a friend. She first met him in 1991 at age 16 years old when he came looking for her mother, Grace, a weaver.
Grace and Nez-Barber would both weave for Getzwiller, as would Berlinda’s seven sisters. Over time, Getzwiller became an honorary member of the family—older brother, counselor, friend and financial advisor. “He took care of us,” Nez-Barber said.
She recalled one rug that was 2 ½ years in the making. A quality she greatly admired in Getzwiller was his patience. “He told us not to rush. If you take your time on a rug, it turns out much better.”
Exactly where Getzwiller’s interest in all things Native American began is not hard to trace. Its genesis lies in the 1950s when, as a youth, he roamed the halls of the Amerind Foundation in Dragoon, his mother was a friend of foundation director Charles C. Di Peso.
“He fell in love with everything Indian,” Gail said, recalling the Amerind’s influence. Following a stint at the University of Arizona pursuing an anthropology degree, Steve began making pottery and trading it for jewelry. His travels took him to Hopi and Navajo lands. Before long, he was dealing primarily in weavings, an affinity that grew from exposure to the Amerind’s native fabrics.
“He was very proud of the fact that at age 18, he traded his collection of .22 rifles for his first Navajo rug,” Gail said.
Gail, an Illinois native, first met Steve in a Benson grocery store circa 1971. A college student herself, attending school in Waubansee, Ill., Gail had just returned from a self-guided, six-month tour of Europe and the Mediterranean. She was in Benson staying with friends after her apartment burned and her job evaporated.
“He was really cute and super nice,” she said, remembering a young rancher who wore his hair back in a “Chongo,” a bun seen among Navajo and Pueblo tribal members. Married in Prescott, Ariz., in 1977, their relationship would grow to a partnership in every sense of the word. She was the wife and mother of their two children, son Sean and daughter Jamie. She also marketed and promoted the weavers and their business while continuing to operate the Benson ranch. When he was home, Steve was “dad” and returned to his ranch roots. But when he was on the road, which was often, he was building relationships with weavers and gallery owners.
One such gallery owner was Jeff Voracek of Red Mountain Gallery in Penryn, Calif. “Steve had one foot in this world and one foot in that world,” Voracek said, referring to the Native American culture. “To some extent, weaving became his identity. It was intensely important to him.”
Bill Malone, a retired trader out of the Hubbell Trading Post on the Navajo reservation, said Steve would meet the weavers at their homes. Recognizing that one work can take months—even years—Steve would bankroll them as they completed their work.
He also did something other traders didn’t do. He critiqued, offering suggestions on how they could improve, whether it be the pattern, dyes or wool.
To the latter, one historic improvement he made to the art form was the reintroduction of churro wool, which comes from a breed whose name in Navajo—Dibe’ dits’ozi—means “long fleeced sheep.” Primarily raised for their wool, the churro population had declined to mere hundreds in the 1970s due to U.S. government policies.
“One thing Steve was very proud of was the fact that the ranch management system he used to run his family’s cattle ranch influenced his research into the weakest link in the tradition of Navajo weaving,” Gail said. That system, Alan Savory’s Holistic Management Theory, addresses four insights and four ecosystem processes that allow for better stewardship. In ruminating on these processes, it became clear to Steve that wool quality was one of the biggest obstacles to the weavers achieving the status of fine art.
It took time, but Steve found the best sources for churro wool. He also found natural dye artists and small operations willing to mill it. This improved fiber was given freely to weavers, allowing them to focus on their craft.
The Navajo Churro Collection was born.
“When he came up, he would stay with me in Ganado,” said Malone. “We used to go down to the (Hubbell) trading post at night and lay on the rug piles and just tell stories” of weavers and weavings. The next day, Steve was off, checking in on the native artists and visiting galleries.
“Steve pulled a lot of weavers up in the world,” he said. “He made them phenomenal. I know one family, six girls, that all worked with Steve.”
The people, the place: it was a life he loved. And his style, when it came to working with weavers, was something that earned the respect of many—including Ray Dewey. Dewey operated Dewey Galleries Ltd. in Santa Fe, N.M., for 36 years before retiring 12 years ago.
“He was a straight shooter. I admired his honesty and directness,” Dewey said. He also appreciated his consistency and extreme dedication, “almost to a fault.”
Back in Table Mesa, N.M., Berlinda Nez-Barber continues to weave, although not as much as she once did. She has six children. And to make ends meet, Berlinda works a full-time job, seven days a week.
“I weave for 30 minutes at a time,” she said.
But she plans to continue. Because, she said, “he is within our weaving. If I continue, he is still here.”
A local celebration of life for Steve Getzwiller will be held Saturday January 20, 2024 at the Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds.