It was a part many Native people found themselves playing. The dynamic had been in place at least since the 1880s, when the nation’s capital witnessed demonstrations on the loom by We’Wha, a Zuni lhamana (two-spirit person, born with male sex characteristics but living as a woman). Born in 1849, We’Wha was a skilled potter as well as a weaver. On her visit to Washington, D.C., she was received in grand style as a “Zuni princess,” and met with President Grover Cleveland. She made a series of blankets on the National Mall, then donated them to the Smithsonian. A surviving photograph shows her
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