In the March 2013 newsletter we discussed a challenge we were facing with the weavers' groups we work with in Sulawesi. They were adding synthetic dyes to achieve their red color because their Morinda citrifolia dye plant supplies were inadequate to their needs. We wrote about how we solved this problem in our blog.

After a community visit in August 2013, Pung and Sujata were on the way out of the villages when the jeep's gearbox broke. They had to walk for several hours before finding transport, but on the way Pung spotted Symplocos growing beside the road and collected some fallen leaves.

In June this year, during the next field visit, Pung further discovered Symplocos growing in the mountains right above the weavers' villages of Batuisi and Saluleke. Pung used fallen leaves in a red dye process demonstration with a group of weavers. The women were amazed how quickly the red color emerged in their yarns and finally understood that Bebali Foundation's powder did not include any synthetic dyes! Seeing is believing and using their plants from their own forests was even more important as weavers would not need to buy their plant mordant.

With this key ingredient in place the weavers are now back on track and producing very lovely 100% natural-dyed textiles. This June we received our first ten new textiles from two groups of weavers with very good results (see the beautiful sekomandi warp ikat pictured on the heading of this article). Through November and December we have received several dozen more, which are now in the gallery and selling well.

Congratulations to Pung, the Bebali Foundation dye team, and the women of Batuisi and Saluleke.

The island of Timor is divided politically. The western half is Indonesian while the east (plus the little enclave of Oecusse) is the country of Timor Leste. However ethnic groups that straddle the border continue their traditional kinship practices despite these boundaries.

Over the last hundred years there have been several major waves of migration of people from Timor Leste to West Timor due to wars and conflicts. People migrated to where they had family and in one area established replicas of their home villages in Timor Leste. Village structure, traditional house architecture, rituals, traditions, and the textile dyeing and weaving arts represent the common threads of their cultural identity. Whenever the political situation allows it, there is cross-border sharing of information and celebrations.  

With the development of a new airport and oil terminal in Timor Leste, six villages in the area of Cova Lima will be disbanded, breaking ties with their ancestral roots.

In response to this cultural threat, Timor Aid requested the Bebali Foundation to help document cultural and social conditions as well as the weaving arts and plants used by the "mirror" communities in the Betun area of Indonesian West Timor. Concurrent documentation was done in the communities in Cova Lima, Timor Leste. As part of this project, the Bebali Foundation sponsored a workshop in Bokong, West Timor, where villagers from the West Timor "mirror" villages came together to discuss, share and document their dye recipes, dye processes, rituals associated with textiles, textile motifs, and stories.

Jean attended the event, but found she was mostly an observer. "I was so impressed by the Bebali Foundation staffs' effortless facilitation of the process. After all the years of working together to develop these skill sets, it was clear we had reached our objectives. And even more surprising was to see how well the host community of Bokong [who we have worked with for the past 8 years] handled themselves. Not only did both the men and women of the community graciously feed and house their guests but I was touched that they included so many of their customary adat practices in the welcoming of their guests. I saw that, in fact, recovering traditional textile skills and dye recipes also recovers and restores pride in the deeper levels of their culture."

So far this year, Threads of Life staff Wenten and Yansen have carried out a pair of three-week-long field trips in Timor including visiting the villages in the area of Betun that "mirrors" villages in Timor Leste (see the article above). Though we have not previously worked with these villages, Threads of Life sees potential to take on weavers as producers. In some villages our staff met a few weavers who are still using natural dyes. In one village they met an elderly woman who is still using her own hand-spun cotton and natural dyes. She has ten indigo dye pots inherited from her mother. We commissioned a few small natural dye pieces from each village to evaluate their skills and quality. Though we are very excited that some of these villages may have good potential for producing for the Threads of Life gallery, it may take several years working with them to produce consistently high quality textiles and for them to learn how to sustainably manage their natural dye resources in their forest gardens.