Funding for Colores was provided in part by New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund, and the Nellita E. Walker Fund for KNME-TV at the Albuquerque Community Foundation New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts and Viewers Like You Activist, storyteller, quilter, Susan Hudson, transforms a skill once forced upon her family in boarding schools into powerful quilts that honor generations of truth.

Young dancers compete for scholarships and mentorship in a National Society of Arts and Letters competition designed to launch the next generation of artists.

It's all ahead on Colores!

QUILTING HISTORY >> Faith: So, Susan, thank you so much for joining me today on Colores!

And thank you for bringing these beautiful quilts with you.

This is amazing to see in person.

>> Hudson: Okay!

I█m going to introduce myself in my traditional way.

Susan Hudson yinishyé [My name is Susan Hudson] Kiyaa'áanii nish███ [I am Towering House clan] Deeshchii█nii bashishchíín [born for the Red Streak clan] Táb██há dashicheii [Water█s Edge clan] Naakaii dashinalí [Mexican People clan] I█m from Sheep Springs, New Mexico on the great Navajo Nation.

And so I really, really appreciate you, all of you doing this for me and giving a voice to my family.

I appreciate that.

>> Faith: Yes, and I want to like, get into how all of this started for you.

So how did your quilting journey begin?

>> Hudson: I was around nine years old, and my mom had, been to the boarding school and we were really, really poor.

My mom knew how to sew from the boarding school, and she knew how to do alterations on clothes.

So that's where I started to learn how to sew.

I started doing a little investigations you know, talk to the rest of my family.

And, you know, quilting is not indigenous to us Navajo.

So it was forced upon us through the boarding school.

But there was a lot of family members, a lot of cousins, brothers and sisters there that were forced and beaten.

If they did the wrong stitch.

And my mom always said that they would make these the clothes, you know, they would make everything, and they would make quilts and but they would always have, like, really thin army blankets and they would be freezing in the wintertime.

It was more like forced child labor.

And other people were benefitting off of their -- agony in the brutal things that were happening to them in the boarding school.

I wanted to, bring a voice to that to recognize that if it wasn't for my mother and my ancestors surviving, I wouldn't be here.

And knowing that my mom what she went through.

So I wanted to take a step up and honor all of them.

I don't talk for other tribes.

I don't even talk for my tribe.

I talk for my family.

And from what I know.

And I just wanted to honor them.

And this is the way I was going to do it.

All these quilts I make is for them.

>> Faith: The first story that you told through a quilt was the one that is currently behind you.

Would you tell me a little bit about that quilt and what the story behind it [is]?

>> Hudson: It█s the stars amongs the █ú█kawak█á█ in Cheyenne.

The █ú█kawak█á█ means “Holy Dogs” That's what they call horses.

The █ú█kawak█á██s And I was known for my stars.

And so I decided to make a star showing -- the sun during the day and at nighttime in our creation stories, we have horses.

And I keep telling everybody we -- as Navajo people, did not sit on the side of the road and say, “wow, I waited for the Spaniards to come because they're going to bring us horses.

We've always had those horses they█re in our creation story.

So I wanted to show how the horses were going across the world, and they're protecting us.

They're watching over us.

And I always joke around and said, “one day I'm going to get my back tattooed, I will put my family tree there.

And that way when they dig me up and turn me around, Yes, she's Navajo!” So in order to do that -- what I did was I put my family tree.

So that's my family tree on there all the way down to my grandchildren.

>> Faith: And then you brought this one along with you too.

Can you tell me the story behind this one?

>> Hudson: This one -- it█s called, Forced Sterilization.

It is genocide.

And it's not -- a cow, it's not a ram.

It's every human being's first home.

It's a womb or a uterus.

So in the boarding schools, what happened is the men would rape the children, boys, too.

A lot of these girls became pregnant, and -- that was proof of being raped, was the pregnancies.

And what█s one way of not being convicted for being a rapist or a pedophile?

They rip out the little uterus out of little children.

And it became prevalent in the 60s and 70s, young girls and women would go into the Indian Health Services, IHS, and they wouldn█t realize that they were being sterilized.

So what happened with this and the reason why I did this, because it is genocide.

Because when you do that to little girls or, you know, young women, you mess up their bodies.

And I wanted to show that, every one of those little -- little dresses and little pants represent the children that will never be born.

So this one was my way of saying, I█m going to bring it out.

It's going to make you uncomfortable.

Who cares?

I don't care.

I'm going to do it, and I'm going to keep doing it.

>> Faith: The Tree of Many Dresses has a lot to do with what's going on today.

Can you talk a little bit about that and what the symbolism in that quilt means?

>> Hudson: I usually talk about three things in my quilts, forced relocation of indigenous people when the colonists came.

And then I talk about boarding schools, and I talk about missing and murdered indigenous relatives.

You see the tree there, and there's a lot of dresses there.

They would make their clothing and they would return it back to Mother Earth.

They would take it back to a tree.

Well, when you do that with a tree, that tree absorbs all the history and everything that, you know, that person has gone through.

And you see one lady, she's on her tippy toes putting a dress up there.

Then you see the grandma hugging the tree.

And if you start looking down, you start seeing -- where the roots are going down.

you start seeing where it goes down to the conquistadors.

And I want to show that those trees have a lot of knowledge.

Those trees were the last witness to that little girl or that woman, that child's last breath or was a witness to seeing when their bodies were dumped like a piece of trash.

And in the center, you see, there's a woman there holding a little girl.

And I did it with the red for the Missing and Murdered, and then the little girl in yellow.

That's for the Ashlynne Mike, Amber alert across Indian Country.

And so that's what I was showing on that and saying that we have an epidemic in this country.

>> Faith: Were you, like, personally affected by the epidemic of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous women?

>> Hudson: Oh, yeah, my whole life.

I remember when we were -- when I was little, they would talk about it and then there would be searchers looking around, and then -- a lot of funerals would happen.

Recently, the one that was Ashlynne Mike Ashlynne Mike█s mother, we█re first cousins.

When that happened, that was devastating.

So I just -- I don't care.

I'm going to talk about it, and if it makes people uncomfortable -- I don't care >> Faith: but that's kind of a good thing, isn't it?

Making people feel uncomfortable.

>> Hudson: Yeah, the truth.

And, a lot of people come into my booth and say, “that didn't happen.” >> Faith: And that brings me to the other quilt that I wanted to talk about, the “Coming Home” quilt.

>> Hudson: This quilt is the second part of the third and fourth year of the Long Walk of the Navajos, where we were imprisoned.

My three and four times Great grandmothers were forced on this walk, and they had to survive.

In there -- I have a grandma with a Blue coffee pot.

That was my nod to my great grandma because my great grandma had this blue coffee pot.

And I█m showing on the third year soldiers there because soldiers were pedophiles.

They were rapists.

They were pimps.

And there was a part where -- STDs were so rampant going through there that a lot of them were dying.

So you had a big gap of -- what should have been, teenagers and young adults.

They were dying off.

So what you have was the young kids and the elderly.

Part of it was when the crops were failing because the soil wasn't good and the water wasn't good.

So they weren't able to, really plant and survive in that way.

In the next scene I have is they got together and they did a ceremony.

And in this ceremony, they went and got a young female coyote.

So you'll see in there, I put the coyote because I'm honoring her, because they had the ceremony.

When they put this coyote down.

If the coyote went east, That means they were going to stay there for a while.

If the coyote went west, they were going to be released.

So that was the third year.

So on the bottom, I do the fourth year and we█re a Matriarch system.

But the federal government gave the power to the men.

And I show where they signed the treaty.

And then you see parts of where they're starting to go back.

And then in that treaty, those kids that had to travel all the way -- go through all that, survive the four years, go all the way back and go to a boarding school.

And you wonder why we have problems.

>> Faith: And you've described yourself as an activist.

So how has quilting become activism for you?

>> Hudson: It's the way that everything is placed.

I would say less is more because when you look at something, that's what should impact you.

Because every part of my quilt has a story.

It's our stories.

It's my stories.

It's my mother's stories, my grandma's stories.

When I am no longer around, these quilts will be going to a museum.

And millions of people are going to look at my quilts and they're going to learn part of history, and then I'm going to educate them, and I'll tell them a story And all of that is recorded and 100 years from now, my descendants go over there and they're going to know the story.

THE NEXT GENERATION >> Stephenson: Around the time of World War II, the morale in the country was a little bit down.

We were just coming out of the war, and there was a group of very influential women who got together and they wanted to bolster the spirit of the country, and they felt that a society was only as good as the art that it produces.

This group of influential women, they started the society that would take young artists and mentor them, have competitions and scholarships and get them at the very beginning of their career and help bolster their career.

You know, they brought in experts to work, to do masterclasses.

They brought in people that could, you know, help financially support them.

And that's exactly what we're doing to this day.

The Florida chapter's been around since 1981, and we encompass the entire state.

Today, you're going to have a wonderful opportunity to see, an in-person competition.

They compete against each other, they win financial prizes, and they get in our hearts and our souls, and we stick with them, you know, we follow them and we help them in any way that we can.

Everything that we make goes back into the students.

We do not have any paid staff at all.

It's purely volunteer and we don't spend money on anything really but the students.

>> Velazquez: What NSAL does is it attracts very talented students from the high school level and through college, and we really provide a platform for them to be able to share their talents and also afterwards, as they win scholarships with NSAL or they win competitions, then we also provide mentorship.

And that mentorship has enabled a number of our recipients to go on and to reach a professional level.

In order to be able to provide this type of support to these talented young people, we do have an annual gala where we appeal to the public to support these same students.

The Star Makers Awards is almost magical because this is our showcase of the finest talent that you have for these students and young professionals.

And the wonderful thing about it, it does take so much work to continue an organization of our sort.

But when you go to the Star Makers Awards gala and you see these students perform, you hear them, then everything comes alive and the full meaning of what NSAL is showcase.

And so I would say the really heart of Star Makers Awards is being able to see and hear those young people, because that often is what will stay with people, to encourage them to come back again and also to support us during the year.

>> Upbin: It's different than it was years ago.

Young artists used to be, very nervous and a lot depended on it.

Now, I think with social media, constantly be on our cell phones, we're connected so much more that there's less nerves and more I'm here and I want to win.

And, this is my big chance.

And I'm going to advertise this all over social media, and you're going to know exactly what I'm doing every minute.

So they're a little more confident than they were years ago.

That's what I'm noticing.

This particular competition, there's classwork, judged classwork.

Each one of them come in with a number on the front, a cloth number, and the judges will judge them on their form, on their technicality, how they fit in.

And there's always that umph factor that, a dancer has.

Some dancers are just very technical, and they can get a ten, but they don't have that other factor of the confidence.

And so that's where it starts.

That's an hour, over an hour and a half of, juried class work.

Then they do ballet variation and national sets up, about ten that they pick, they send in their music and it's about a minute and a half and they do their ballet variation, and then the next one is contemporary, which is interesting why we call it a dance competition rather than a ballet competition.

And so they can make up their own contemporary, they can choreograph their own, they take it from somewhere else.

It's very, freeform and it's wonderful.

And it shows a different side of the dancer.

And also they're judged on that.

And then at the end, the judges add it up.

And the one who gets the highest score gets $2,000 from this competition.

>> Upbin: Last year, one of our scholarship students won a place at the Royal Ballet.

Nadine Sierra has turned out to be one of, if not, the most prominent sopranos in the world.

She was asked to sing at the opening of Notre Dame.

She has been all over the world, and Nadine Ciara started her career by winning a competition at the National Society of Arts and Letters, and we are so, so proud of her.

Well, let's talk about Megan Hilty, for instance.

She won a competition and she's starred in WICKED, Shirley MacLaine, we're going back, won a competition.

Jessye Norman, the great vocal artist, won competition.

It's a great opportunity because it can start everything in your career.

>> Caras: They invited me again to come in and be a judge for this because of my dance background.

>> Schneider: I'd never been on the jury before, and I found it to be a very honest competition and something that gives the students an opportunity to to be in front of people and perform their variations and take their classes and, give them a little bit more self-confidence for when they go out into the professional world.

>> Prinz: When I think about it, I can imagine what it's like for a young person to have the opportunity to do this in front of us.

And I'm thinking about them and how they -- what they're doing is really important in their lives.

And, I'm glad I'm here to experience with them, and I'm going to do the best I can.

>> Caras: I'm not overly a fan of competitions when it comes to ballet, because we're all competing wth ourselves to be better.

Balanchine -- my boss, the great George Balanchine and John's boss for a while, too, used to say, “what are you saving it for, dear?” When we did it “this way” as opposed to “this way.” So I think that's the validity of a competition like this, because these young, talented, gifted kids are competing against themselves at the end of the day, not one another.

And something like this gives them that kind of nervous inspiration to do great.

>> Schneider: Don't give up.

You'll find your calling where you fit within the world of dance.

Keep your mind open.

It may not be classical ballet.

There are many avenues.

What was important to me was to be in ballet.

My teacher used to say -- >> Caras: Be a team player, where ever you land, and, believe in yourself in a healthy way.

And know that the good news is you're never as good as you will be tomorrow.

And not take it too personally if you have a good day or a not so good day, because that's normal.

That█s life.

We, Dance People, we're our hardest critics of ourselves.

>> Schneider: I try to write little notes of encouragement or what could have been done better.

>> Prinz: I would just say, okay, if I have to be honest, you're just -- you're an artist.

Are you an artist?

Are you someone that -- is this is what you're supposed to do?

Well, then that's your answer.

>> Caras: You'll find your place in that art form, regardless -- >> Prinz: The energies are set up for you -- >> Tyree: I applaud them for using class work as part of what is being adjudicated as opposed to just one dance or a solo that they practiced for weeks or months for that matter.

The technical aspect is so important because they are students.

They are, they haven't started their professional careers yet.

So we need to see how they train, how they function, how they think, how they pick up movement as well as class prepares them for being able to dance.

So it's dually serves that warms them up, ready for their dance competition as well as the judges get to see them working individually in a classroom.

I just want to thank them, certainly, for keeping this organization alive regionally and then going to nationals so that it's not even just an important thing for each dancer that competes, and especially the winner that gets a prize.

But I think it's so important that the National Society of Arts and Letters is making, known within communities that it's important to support the arts.

We can't do it without support.

And so really, it's like National Society of Arts and Letters are a cheerleader for the arts.

God bless them.

>> Ng: My name is Jacqueline Ng.

I'm from Miami, Florida, and I train at Hollywood Ballet Academy.

I just entered this competition.

I thought it would be a great opportunity to get in front of judges, get feedback, and yeah, it was just so much fun.

I've never been in front of such amazing people before.

I felt really comfortable in the studio, and it was more of like an atmosphere I'm used to with the mirrors and everything.

So yeah, I just felt like I just try to think of it as a normal ballet class.

And then just doing my variation in contemporary.

>> Upbin: The nationals are in May, so they have two months to get together.

I'm absolutely certain that one of the judges will, speak to them, the winner, and say, why don't you come to this studio and we█ll work with you?

Why do we do this to, with young people?

Mainly because so many of us who are in the business, I happen to be in the business and the judges are in the business.

We never retire.

What we do is, it's a giving back, that's what it is.

It's our responsibility to give back.

>> Sephenson: These are children -- well, young adults that, professionally, want to pursue their discipline, whether it's opera singing, whether it's musical theater, whether it's literature, it's the excitement of the students that come in.

And that is really why we do this.

You know, we love to see how excited they are.

We love to see students that love the arts.

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Funding for Colores was provided in part by New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund, and the Nellita E. Walker Fund for KNME-TV at the Albuquerque Community Foundation New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts and Viewers Like You