Nahohai, Josephine
“The owl is the protector of the night, always on the lookout for your family and making sure that your family is safe.”
Josephine Nahohai was born into Zuni Pueblo in July 1912. Her mother was La Wa Ta. Among her teachers she counted her mother, her aunt Myra Eriacho and Ethel Youvella.
As a child, Josephine would go to Dowa Yalanne (a large mesa to the southeast of Zuni) with her mother to collect clay. They went with a group of Zuni women who spoke beautiful prayers in Zuni and sprinkled cornmeal appropriately on Mother Earth to bless the clay. But Josephine chose to become a jeweler. That was fine until the 1950s when the price of turquoise and silver shot up. She didn’t think making jewelry was profitable any more.
Josephine asked around and everyone suggested she learn to make pottery. She was already a member of the Olla Maidens, a Zuni social dance group who dance traditional Zuni dances with pottery water jars balanced on their heads. The Olla Maidens were founded by Daisy Hooee and Daisy also often taught older women in the pueblo how to make pottery in her home. The door was open. So Josephine walked in and applied herself to learning. However, Josephine said she got some unhelpful information from Daisy in regards to mixing black pigments so she asked another friend, Ethel Youvella, about mixing the black.
Josephine had met Ethel when they were both students at the Albuquerque Indian School and when the Nahohais traveled to First Mesa to see the dances, they always visited with Ethel. Ethel taught Josephine how to prepare Rocky Mountain beeweed as a binder for the black and she gave her a polishing stone (to a potter, a good polishing stone is worth more than its weight in gold).
Until his eyes began to fail in the early 1980s, Josephine’s husband, Nat, did most of her painting. She made the pots, prepared the slips and paints and he decided on the designs. Up to then they had only a limited range of late 1880s and early 1900s Zuni compositions to work with. Then Josephine learned to paint her own pots. Within a few years she was participating in the Santa Fe Indian Market and earning awards for her work.
In 1985 Josephine earned the Katrin H. Lamon Artist’s Fellowship from the School for Advanced Research. It allowed her to teach Zuni women how to make traditional pottery. Later, she filled the gap for a bit after Daisy Hooee retired from teaching ceramics at Zuni High School and finally returned to Hopi. In 1986 Josephine took several of her family with her to participate in the Folklife Festival of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. While there, they toured the vaults of the Smithsonian, drawing as many of the ancient Zuni styles and designs as they could find.
Josephine earned several award ribbons at Santa Fe Indian Market, including a Best of Division for Traditional Pottery and a First Place ribbon for Zuni jars, both in 1992. She demonstrated her techniques at the Museum of Indian Arts and Cultures and at the Idyllwild Summer Arts Festivals in Idyllwild, CA.
Josephine mostly made traditional polychrome owls, frog pots, cornmeal bowls, kiva bowls and jars. Her favorite designs included owls, kiva steps, terraced rain clouds, deer, zigzag flowing water, tadpoles to summon the clouds and frogs and tadpoles for rain. In her later years she sometimes collaborated with her sons Milford Nahohai and Randy Nahohai.
In 2005 the Southwestern Association of Indian Arts awarded Josephine their Lifetime Achievement Award. She passed on in 2006.
Some Exhibits that featured pieces by Josephine
- Home: Native Peoples in the Southwest. Heard Museum. Phoenix, Arizona. May 22, 2005 – September 21, 2005
- Rain. Heard Museum. Phoenix, Arizona. June 19, 1993 – July 1995