ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The work of Navajo quiltmaker Susan Hudson is sought after by collectors and museums. This year, she was named a National Endowment for the Arts fellow. It's been a long and difficult road to recognition for her as KSUT's Adam Burke learned when he visited her workshop.
ADAM BURKE, BYLINE: 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.
SUSAN HUDSON: She didn't learn to sew in the boarding schools. It was beaten into her. If she wiggled or anything, she got hit. If her stitches weren't straight, tiny and precise, she got hit.
BURKE: When her mother taught her to sew, Hudson experienced some of that same trauma as a 9-year-old girl.
HUDSON: I hated sewing. I hated it. When I was in my 20s, I finally talked to her. I 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.
BURKE: Still, Hudson kept sewing. As an adult and a single mother, she made shawls and star quilts and sold them at powwows.
HUDSON: When I started making star quilts, it was mostly to survive, you know, to buy food for my kids, buy them shoes.
BURKE: Then around 15 years ago, an artist friend told Hudson he thought her quilts were boring, and he challenged her to make more original work.
HUDSON: It just freaking...
(SOUNDBITE OF A CLAP)
HUDSON: ...Those pieces came together, and I knew that I was chosen for this.
(SOUNDBITE OF SEWING MACHINE)
BURKE: She started to put family stories on her quilts, as well as visions from her most vivid dreams.
HUDSON: I got gadgets all over the place, stuff I couldn't afford when I was younger.
BURKE: These days, Hudson enjoys sewing. Her studio near Ignacio, Colorado, is a lively mess of colorful fabrics and half-finished projects.
(SOUNDBITE OF SEWING MACHINE)
BURKE: The human figures in her quilts have no facial features. At first glance, they seem like paper dolls, but every material detail has a story.
HUDSON: I use this fabric 'cause I cut it out to make it look like feathers, and I will eventually do the beadwork on there.
BURKE: Hudson's work depicts some of the most traumatic chapters in Native American history, from the legacy of Indian boarding schools where native children were separated from their families to the Navajo Long Walk when people were forcibly removed from their homeland in the 1860s.
HUDSON: Every one of us Natives, we're descendants from boarding school survivors.
BURKE: 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.
HUDSON: And then over here's showing where the mothers were trying to get their children, and the soldiers would shoot them if they would try to get their children. But this little girl represented my mother.
BURKE: Emil Her Many Horses was immediately drawn to this quilt when he first laid eyes on it. He's a curator at the National Museum of the American Indian and a member of the Oglala Lakota nation.
EMIL HER MANY HORSES: She was telling this story in a new medium - cotton fabric - 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.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: In recognition of her contribution...
BURKE: In September, Hudson received an award from the National Endowment for the Arts at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
HUDSON: I should not be standing here receiving this award.
BURKE: During her acceptance speech, Hudson's words pierce the silence of the theater.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
HUDSON: I should not be having to make these quilts to talk about the atrocities that happened to our people.
BURKE: Her message is fierce and uncompromising.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
HUDSON: My descendants will remind your descendants of the things that happened to our people.
BURKE: With just a touch of humor.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
HUDSON: But I appreciate the award.
(LAUGHTER)
BURKE: Through the soft medium of quilt-making, Hudson has found a way to share hard truth - stories her family members would only speak of in whispers when she was growing up.
HUDSON: You know, everybody was talking about it quietly. 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.
BURKE: For NPR News, I'm Adam Burke.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.