Thanks to my friendship with Judy Lynn, an author, entrepreneur and Coupeville community weaver, we were introduced to her friend, Navajo weaver Sarah Natani, who has traveled the world, and has hosted weaving classes in Coupeville, and at her home near Shiprock NM.
While there was no address, we easily found Sarah’s hogan amid her family’s home compound. She was waiting outside her log-sided home with her dog Delilah when we pulled up. Inside, I sat on a blue couch, and Bill on a green chair petting Sarah’s Siamese cat. We listened with appreciation to Sarah’s stories about growing up, learning to weave, traveling and teaching.
Turning 90 this January, Sarah speaks with great energy and weaves her hands to make her point. She laughs often, recalling stories as she shared them with us. Her hogan, built by her late husband Leo Natani in the 1990s, is lined in wood and is filled with photos and art, Sarah’s weaving projects and photos of her family.
It was her father who taught her to weave, Sarah told us, adding that her parents’ marriage was arranged, with her mom being much younger than her husband. Sarah and her siblings attended boarding school, where she finished a third grade education, and returned home. Later she taught at a Navajo college, and was awarded an honorary doctorate degree.
Over the years Sarah has become a respected weaving teacher, a “Jill of all trades,” as she described herself. Sarah’s daughter Tahnibaa—also a weaver—told us her mom was one of four citizens honored with the 2026 Jennifer Easton Community Spirit Award from the First Peoples Fund Organization as a culture bearer, an honor recognized across the Navajo Nation.
“First Peoples Fund is delighted that we are able to honor these four incredible artists in 2026,” Fox Spears, Program Manager of Fellowships at First Peoples Fund is quoted as saying on the First Peoples Fund website. “They are representative of the many outstanding and talented individuals who are nominated for this award each year.”
First Peoples Fund has honored artists and culture bearers since 1995. Its website notes: “The 2026 Community Spirit Award honorees were selected through a national review process. It is an honor to uplift these culture bearers for their contributions to strengthening the cultural fabric of their communities.”
Sarah’s skills in weaving, textiles, pottery and ceramics are noted on the First Peoples Fund website: “Sarah Natani is known for her weaving and pottery. She has been producing Navajo pottery since she was eight years old and begin her journey with twill weaves in her late teens. She teaches weaving to students of all backgrounds and, as an elder, expresses the importance for Navajo youth to learn their language.”
Sarah’s quote on the website notes: “I’ve discovered powerful medicine through fiber and clay. They’ve helped me overcome many of life’s challenges. I continue to learn; it gifts me with stamina, creating a healthy, contagious lifestyle.”
Sitting with Sarah from late morning till early afternoon, we felt inspired by her years of learning and life experience.
It was through a chance meeting with a creative weaver decades ago, Mary Black, that Sarah found her way to teaching Navajo weaving at the then Coupeville Art Center, operating today as the Pacific Northwest Art School. It is a long story, she told us.
“It was my first spinning wheel,” Sarah told us, that ignited her eventual visits to Coupeville. “We lived in Window Rock (AZ) in the 60s. My husband worked in the office training Navajo how to work. I went to arts and crafts with the Window Rock Guild. I went there one day. I saw two ladies from Ganado (AZ). They were weaving a rug. I really liked the pattern. I was thinking we should be friends. I asked them to come for lunch. I asked them their clan. They were the same as my late husband’s clan from Jemez. That was something we had in common.”
Sarah went on to tell us she is of the Many Hogan Clan on her mother’s side, and a Mexican clan on her father’s. The Ganado women did not wish to share what they knew with the young Sarah, so she taught herself, it took about two or three weeks, but after hard work she puzzled out the pattern’s weave and won a prize for her design. Then she became interested in acquiring a spinning wheel. A cousin said she knew of a woman in Phoenix, Mary Black, whose husband built spinning wheels. Sarah called Mary Black.
“She asked me if I was a weaver,” Sarah recalled. “Mary told me: ‘My husband will make a wheel for you.’ Just like that! My thought was I would make her a rug and trade it. She gave the spinning wheel to me for free. She became a good friend, but we hadn’t met yet.”
Serendipity arrived later as Sarah was invited to teach a weaving class in Tucson. She wanted to bring her teen daughter, who was going to school in nearby Aztec, a border town. Sarah asked the principal if her daughter could spend an educational week away from school. The principal agreed.
“We went there. Got myself a babysitter to watch the little ones and cook for Mr. Natani,” Sarah recalled, saying it was unusual for Navajo women to leave their husbands at home. “The hippies began to do their macrame. I saw this woman with strings cut in two yard lengths. She was walking. She had on a name tag. Mary Black. I said are you the Mary from Phoenix? I said, ‘I’m Sarah Natani.’ That’s where I met her. She was just beginning to teach. I became good friends with her.”
Soon after, Sarah was invited to attend the first weavers convergence in Half Moon Bay, near San Francisco. Mary Black was the chair, and asked Sarah to bring her mother.
“We flew from Phoenix,” Sarah said. “My mother was old then. That’s the time I saw all these different wheels. We met Chinese people spinning silk. I was interested in all we saw.”
Judy Lynn met Mary Black through the Whidbey Weaver’s Guild.
Mary Black, who has since passed away, moved to Whidbey Island. She invited Sarah Natani to teach Navajo weaving classes there. Judy Lynn, also friends with Mary, became friends with Sarah as well.
“Mary’s husband was from Washington,” said Sarah. “They found a place on Whidbey. Mary invited me. She said there were a lot of hippies there. They like weaving.”
Sarah taught classes at Camp Casey in Coupeville for eight years or so, Judy Lynn recalls: “She brought the whole Navajo experience to each class. In addition to weaving, she taught them how to spin. She made fry bread and she brought plants that she used to dye her wool. She loved being on the island and would go down to the beach and collect rocks.”
Speaking of fry bread, Sarah recalled her first plane trip, and her making fry bread for a Southwest Indian cultural demonstration at the White House.
Navajo fry bread originated out of necessity from the infamous Long Walk of 1864—one in which Sarah’s ancestor took part—when Navajos were forcibly removed from their land. U.S. troops destroyed traditional Navajo crops, orchards, and livestock, forcing thousands to walk from Arizona to a barren reservation where traditional staples like corn, beans, and squash could not grow. To prevent starvation, the U.S. government provided the Navajo people with rations, including white flour, lard, sugar, salt, and baking powder. Following the passage of the Treaty of Bosque Redondo, the Navajo were allowed to return to their ancestral homeland in 1868.
“My first plane trip was to Washington, D.C.,” said Sarah. “I was invited to make fry bread in front of the White House in an art show on the Fourth of July. They chartered an airplane.There were sand painters and potters. One thing, all the artists would get paid. I was one of two fry bread makers. I was a bit of a weaver then, getting a little bit of fame. I was told: ‘You’re not going to get paid.’ I said, ‘I don’t care. I want to see Washington.’ I said, ‘OK.’ Later, I got two checks from the tribe and Washington.” She laughed at the memory. “I said, ‘Do I have to return these checks?’ They said: “’You keep it!’”
After Judy Lynn left the art center she volunteered to organize weaving classes at Sarah’s hogan outside Shiprock NM.
“So many memories,” said Judy. “When I stayed, Sarah took me around and stopped by the vendors to ask which clan they were with. Her husband Leo brought to her classes his work with the kids in the judicial system. He wanted to keep them out of prison. He worked with them in Table Mesa about being a Navajo.”
Judy mentioned once jumping in Sarah’s pickup truck to wrangle sheep and goats who had wandered off.
Sarah told the story: “When Judy came, my late husband bought me a small pickup. He used to work in Shiprock. He’d lease a truck every year. People thought we had it made. We had a lot of sheep. My sheep herder, one time in springtime, took the sheep and goats out. If a goat begins to have babies, we let it be. They’re hard to move. We make sure you know where they are. One day Judy was here. The sheep herder said the goat had her babies. I said I had to go there and pick them up. I know how to drive.” She laughed. “It was so funny. We were laughing. We couldn’t lift the goats. Judy didn’t know the reservation life. It was new to her. Finally we did that.”
Over the years Sarah traveled to Peru to visit indigenous weavers. She taught people from all over the world at her property. Judy attended Tannabah’s wedding and has stayed in touch with the family.
Sarah was asked to be the grandmother in a Netflix film: Fry Bread Face and Me.
“The movie is about children born in the city life and their parents wanted them to go back and learn about reservation life, to learn the Navajo Way,” said Sarah. She was asked to play the role of a dying grandmother for another film, but she declined, telling us, “I like living and have more life left.”
After meeting Sarah’s daughter Tahnibaa, we said our goodbyes. We will always remember this day.
Sarah’s art is on display at the Island County Historical Society Museum.
