A Weave of Time The Story of a Navajo Family

Streaming video - 2015

A Weave of Time powerfully documents 50 years and four generations of change in one Navajo family. In 1938, noted anthropologist John Adair travelled to the Navajo reservation in Pine Springs, Arizona with a 16mm hand wind motion picture camera. There Adair met and filmed the Burnside family, creating a visual record of Navajo life in the 1930's. In an unprecedented composite, Adair's previously unseen historical footage is juxtaposed with contemporary scenes and in-depth interviews with family members 50 years later. As their story unfolds, the conflicts between past and present emerge. The eldest family member, John Burnside, 84, fears that Navajo customs will disappear in a world of fast food and super highways. John is a tradi...tional medicine man who spent most of his life learning the Blessingway — the foundation of the Navajo religion. He speaks only Navajo — his grandchildren speak only English. "I wonder if it will all be forgotten, those things I have learned. Today everyone speaks English. I do not speak English. I live in silence." In A Weave of Time, the daily struggles for family stability, education and economic survival in contemporary America challenge the existence of traditional identity including the Navajo religion, language and arts. This rich and telling film of the Burnside history becomes a complex microcosm of Navajo culture in transition and raises questions about the survival of ethnicity in 20th century America. more