Ritual
The idea of making as
a
conversation resonates through our collaborations with Terrol in other
ways as well. Ritual is
a
conversation between the past and present, and weaving is
a
material
practice performed through ritual. For Terrol’s tribe, the Tohono O’odham of southern Arizona
and northwestern Mexico, ritual material culture and everyday utilitarian material culture are
inseparable. Weaving’s rituals encode knowledge through action; they contain instructions for
making something while simultaneously communicating the foundational values of the society. In
this way, ritual and material action are always intertwined. Through the ceremonial foraging and
preparation of materials and their transformation into
a
basket, the weaver is guided to understand
that the community and its place in the natural world
–
its traditions, myths and memories
–
exist in
an extended process of materialisation.
Essentially, ritual is an encoding of rules,
a
way to pass knowledge from one weaver to the next,
from one generation to the next. Each weaver interprets those rules through the lens he or she is
given by their particular time and place. In this way, material culture progresses collectively through
a
feedback loop that extends to cosmic proportions, with each new generation revitalising the
