Nahohai, Milford and Josephine
Josephine Nahohai was born into Zuni Pueblo in July 1912. Her mother was named La Wa Ta. Another influential relative was named Lonkeena. Josephine learned how to make pottery from watching and working with her mother and with her aunt, Myra Eriacho.
After Daisy Hooee married her second Zuni husband, Sidney Hooee, she moved back to Zuni and participated in founding The Olla Maidens, a dance group who performed in full traditional dress with water jars balanced on their heads. They performed across the Southwest and beyond. Daisy also taught the ceramics classes at Zuni High School after about 1960. First she had to learn to be a consummate Zuni potter, so she learned from Catalina Zunie (the same woman who got the classes started and then talked Daisy into teaching them).
Josephine performed sometimes with the Olla Maidens but when it came to her pottery, Daisy had been unable to help her with the proper mixing of crushed hematite (for black ink) and Rocky Mountain beeweed (for binder).
Milford was Josephine’s son, born in 1953. His course in life started out differently with him being enrolled in Early Childhood Education classes at Fort Lewis College in Durango, CO. from 1972 to 1975. Then his two oldest brothers died and Josephine plunged deep into depression. Milford took a series of jobs with the Zuni Head Start program and helped his mother get through until she started making pottery again. By then she was relying on Milford to do all her firing.
He returned to Fort Lewis College in 1980 and, with seasonal classes, graduated in two more years. Then he returned home and began working more directly with his mother, making small frogs and helping her assemble them as appliqués on her bowls.
In 1985 Josephine was awarded the Katrin H. Lamon Fellowship from the School of American Research and she took Milford, Randy Nahohai and Randy’s wife, Rowena Him Nahohai, with her to the East Coast. There they studied old Zuni pottery at the Museum of the American Indian and at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC. Randy and Milford learned a lot from studying those collections but daughters Irene Nahohai and Priscilla Tsethlikai didn’t make the trip.
Randy, Milford and Josephine shared a booth at the Santa Fe Indian Market for years, beginning in 1986. Randy often collaborated with Rowena and Josephine often collaborated with Milford.
At the Santa Fe Indian Market in 1992 Josephine earned the Best of Division, Traditional Pottery award and a First Place award for one of her Zuni jars.
In 2005 the Southwestern Association of Indian Arts awarded Josephine their 2005 Lifetime Achievement Award. Josephine passed on in 2006.
Milford mused often that Zuni artisans begin with beadwork, then turn to pottery or silversmithing in their middle years and return to beadwork when their eyes weaken and their fingers get stiff. Toward the end of her life, Josephine turned to making beaded dolls, little Olla Maidens with clay bowls and jars balanced on their heads. Nat carved the wooden parts, Milford painted the bowls and pots and Josephine did the rest.