How We Handle Teachings Shared With Us

Some of what appears on these pages was not read in a book. It was told to us — at a bench, at a show, in a conversation that turned to what a shape means. Knowledge that arrives that way carries obligations a citation does not. This is where we set them down, once, so that every page carrying a teaching can point here instead of explaining itself again.

“Native American” is a blanket term

We say that about jewelry. It is just as true of belief. There are many nations, each with its own beliefs, its own ways, and its own authorities on both. A teaching we publish may belong to one nation, or to one clan inside it, or to one family inside that clan. Printing it here does not widen it.

About the term itself

You will find “Native American” on this site — in page titles, in the questions people type into a search box, in the questions we set out to answer. We use it where it is how you would find us, and we anchor it to the nation everywhere we can: not “a Native American artist,” but “a member of the Navajo Nation.”

You will also find it on this page, inside a statement about why it is too broad to trust. That is deliberate. We cannot tell a reader to speak with their own Diné leaders when they may be Hopi, or Zuni. And a term cannot be named as a blanket term without being used. The general word is the only one that reaches a reader we have not met; the specific one is what we owe the artist.

Some of it is not ours to repeat

We ask what may be shared, and we publish only that. Where the answer is no — or not in print — the page stops there. A page that stops short is doing its job, not failing at it.

A teaching speaks for the person carrying it

A man who shares a teaching with us speaks for himself. He does not speak for his nation, and he does not speak for anyone else’s. We publish him as he asks to be published — by the name he gives us, in the role he names for himself — and his words sit beside the other readings on a page, never above them.

Why we name a source, keep the hedge, and stop where we stop

Three habits. Each one costs us something, and we would rather pay it than have you take our word for anything.

We name our sources — because a source you cannot check is a source you should not trust. Where we cannot name someone, whether because we have not asked or because the answer was no, we publish the teaching without the name rather than the name without permission. Understating who a person is can be repaired in a clause. Publishing who they are cannot be taken back.

We keep the hedges. For him the shape carries this meaning. On his reading, that one does. The sentences would run smoother without those words and we leave them in, because a teaching lifted away from the person holding it becomes a doctrine he never claimed. Quotations travel now in ways no one controls — pulled into an answer box, repeated by someone who never saw the page they came from. The hedge is what a fragment carries with it when it leaves.

And we stop. Some symbols carry sacred meaning inside living traditions. Where they do, our pages are deliberately shorter than they could be — limited to what the artists themselves have said publicly and what the trade record documents, and nothing further. Another page on the same symbol may tell you more. More is not the same as better sourced.

The note that travels with every teaching

Wherever we publish a teaching, a short note is attached to it — in the same block, not a link at the bottom of the page. A link can be missed, and the whole point is that the qualification cannot be. One sentence inside that note carries the same statement every time, so you can check that it is there.

Here it is as it appears with a Diné teaching:

A note on this teaching. We share it with respect, and with limits. Much of what the Diné carry is passed by voice rather than print, and some of it is sacred and not ours to repeat — so what you read here is a part, never the whole. The Diné are many clans, and a teaching held in one family may be told differently in another. Native American is a blanket term — many nations, each with its own beliefs and its own ways — and one Diné man’s teaching does not speak for any of the others. If you are Navajo and this differs from what you have heard, follow your own family and your local elder.

For a teaching carried by someone of another nation, the sentences on either side name that nation instead. The statement in the middle does not change.

If you belong to a tribe, speak with your own tribal leaders

They can tell you what is accurate for you, and we cannot. We sell jewelry and we keep records. We are not an authority on anyone’s religion, and we do not want to be mistaken for one.