Seeing me now, with my hair thinning and skin rutted like a reservation road, you would not know that I was young once my eyes dark obsidian. When my feet arched over the land to the beat of the powwow drum, the People called me Nizhoni, the beautiful one; at 15 it was enough Shi’yazhi. Like you, I first came to the loom out of necessity rather than desire. It was May 1939 and men had come onto the land enforcing a new federal mandate, calling themselves Range Riders though they were the same as all the People. The Depression had changed them, as hard times will, turning them into government-handout types, loitering by the Bureau of Indian Affairs trailers, keeping their ears open for benefits and government contracts to fulfill. They’d take a shovel, a gun, a life if necessary. I saw it etched in the hard lines of…