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Dyed and Enduring In The Wool

Shearing sheep is an art with a long history, and Sonnie Gustamantes, an Apache who travels the Four Corners to shear-for-hire, is one of its longest-lasting - and perhaps one of its last - artists.

story and photos by Stina Sieg

Found in: | Inside | Art |

With his white ponytail and wrinkled, sun-soaked face, Sonnie Gustamantes looks all of his 70 years. But that's before he starts to shear.

With hardly any help, he wrangles a 300-pound sheep and pins it to the dirt with the force of his lean frame. He starts to methodically shave off its fleece with a loud, electric razor. He whistles as he flips the creature over and hogties it. After about 10 minutes, he pulls off its fuzz in one big, gray and brown mass. By the time the sheep leaps up and shakes off the experience, Gustamantes seems much younger and nimbler than a few minutes before. He looks in his element.

And no wonder.

"I've been shearing for?," he says, taking a moment, "since I was 14. That's 56 years."

An Apache out of Cortez, Colo., Gustamantes is one of the very few Native Americans shearing-for-hire in the Four Corners region. He thinks he might be the only traveling one, to boot. The certified shearer recalls the days when he would work with big crews of 10 or 20, but he now he goes alone and has for years. From mid-February to mid-July, he hits the road frequently and travels as far as Granby, Ca�on City and Buena Vista, Colo. It's hard to find a shearer these days, he insists. Like many in the rural world of sheep and shearing, he can see his line of work waning.

Not that he dwells on that. No, in this moment, on this morning, he's focusing all his energy on his work at Moab's Cunnington Farms (cunningtonfarms.com).

"This is Sonnie, and he can shear anything that moves," says owner Sam Cunningham, nearly laughing.

Like most of the audience of middle-aged women there to help with the shearing day, she seems to have a soft spot for him. For years, he's been coming to work on her sheep and alpacas, which this season number around 50. As Gustamantes shears, she and her friends check off the animals on a worksheet and give them medicine. She watches as the sheep buck and fight Gustamantes until finally submitting to their fate. After they're shorn, she stuffs their giant webs of wool into plastic bags. Soon, the fluff will be shipped off to a mill in Frankenworth, Mich. where it will become roving (carded wool), which she can use herself and also sell.

Before any of that happens, though, Cunningham has to entrust Gustamantes with her animals. As they can be easily maimed during the shearing process, it's a delicate thing. Once, a Kiwi shearer left a gash in the side of her sheep. Yet she has no worries about Gustamantes.

"He's so gentle with them," she says. "He's as good as it gets."

In his low-key way, Gustamantes seems to know it.

"A lot of people try, but they quit real quick," he says. "You've got to have a talent for this."

Perhaps you have to have it in your blood, as well. His great-grandfather, grandfather and father all did this, even as sheep-herding started to lessen in their tribe. Growing up in Roswell, N.M., Gustamantes picked up the electric shears as a kid, and he still remembers the steep learning curve. He got blisters. He never knew when to change the blades.

"There were times I wanted to cry," he recalls, "but I never shed a tear but kept trying ?til I learned."

By 14, he decided he was done with school, and he took up shearing fulltime. In the decades since, it has been his sole livelihood, save a few years of construction somewhere in his past. Nowadays, he travels to about 30 ranches and farms with flocks of all sizes. He likes visiting with the people he meets, and he likes the hard work. And while he's jovial and overly polite as he explains all this, there is a sad pride to his voice, as he knows he's describing what could become a lost art. He has only met one other "feller" shearing and traveling as he does, he says, and he wasn't a Native American but a guy from New Zealand.

"Nobody wants to learn, because it looks easy, but it's not as easy as you think it is," Gustamantes says. "It's dying right now."

This shift might be larger than he realizes.

For other Native Americans in the Four Corners region, it's not just the shearing of sheep that's dying but the raising of them as well. While those in the Navajo Nation may not be kin to Gustamantes, their dedication and sense custom surrounding sheep is similar, historically, to his family's. In the past, many Navajos continued to raise sheep even when other tribes had given up on the animals. Even now, with modernity biting at the ankles of the most rural of regions, there are still Navajo families that raise, eat - and shear - their own sheep and have for generations.

But those numbers are relatively small.

"The kids used to shear sheep. Everybody used to shear sheep," said Suzanne Jamison in a recent phone interview. "The days of thousands and thousands and thousands of sheep are over."

Jamison, who lives in Southwest New Mexico but works in community development in the Navajo Nation, gave historical perspective on this changing world of sheep. Raising the hearty, Southwestern-born Navajo-Churro was a way of life for Navajos for centuries, she said, but that was before intense involvement by the U.S. government. Besides trying to break up tradition by sending young Navajos to boarding schools, the government seemed to take direct aim at sheepherding. It instituted grazing permits, which restricted the area where flocks could be run. This degraded the allotted land and forced herds to become smaller. In a show of force and audacity, the government also tried to replace the Navajo-Churros with fine wool varieties of sheep in the 1940s. Officials shot about half the Navajo herd then. The Moreno and Rambouille breeds, which were introduced as a substitute, were found to be badly suited to their new climate and rugged terrain. They never caught on.

Now, estimated Jamison, about 45 percent of those in the Navajo Nation still raise sheep. These are labor-intensive animals, as they require constant care, and she feels that may also have led to their decline. She thinks that those who still raise the animals are mostly older folks trying to keep the tradition alive for their families.

"It's not just out of nostalgia for sheep," she said. "It really pertains to the whole culture and philosophy of the people."

That's why, every year, a group she works with puts on a festival in dedication to this wooly culture. Diné be' iiná (known as DBI), a grassroots organization aimed at preserving Navajo-Churros, will host the annual Sheep is Life celebration from June 16-20 in Farmington, N.M. There, the public can see demonstrations on subjects like dying and weaving, eat Navajo food and meet Navajo-Churros and their owners face-to-face. Yes, there will even be how-to workshops on shearing.

This all sounds fascinating and rich, but can these kinds of cultural exchanges really make a difference in the world of Native American sheep raising? Lifelong shepherd and former DBI president Roy Kady hopes so.

"It's not just the shearing that gets passed down," he said. "There are some other teachings that get passed down."

As the chapter president (the Navajo equivalent to a mayor) in Teec Nos Pas, Ariz., he's deeply vested in keeping that education going. Like Gustamantes, he grew up surrounded by sheep. His mother even started her labor pains with him when she was tending to her flock. And also like Gustamantes, he has been shearing since childhood (though he has always used the traditional, non-motorized shears). While the 44-year-old has seen sheep populations decline dramatically in his lifetime, he seems to think a resurgence is possible in his community. At government meetings, the Navajo-Churro always seems to be a topic, and it's people his age who have the most interest.

"They remember growing up with the sheep," he said. "They want to acquire the sheep because it had good memories for them."

For him, those memories aren't just of his family's experience but of his community's. He remembers the days when shearing was a huge production during which stories, food and work was shared. Those who helped out weren't compensated in money but in trade. The experience wasn't about making a living but about keeping something alive that felt both natural and completely integral to his culture. While he doesn't see that across-the-board dedication anymore, he does feel hopeful. As a fiber artist and owner of 160 sheep, he knows that the survival of shepherding is a bigger issue than practicality - and he trusts other Native Americans will feel the same.

"I don't feel it could die out completely. I feel it's going to survive," he said, adding, "It's going to be necessary to re-teach the younger generation."

Though community development organizations and conventions dedicated to this purpose probably do a world of good, the task of teaching is really left to individual shepherds themselves. At 57, Grace Shoni, is one such lady. A resident of Piñon, Ariz. all her life, she was raised with sheep and still keeps a herd of about 10. All of her seven children know how to shear, as do most of her 26 grandkids. She, like several shearers she knows, not only shears her own flock but also helps elderly or sick sheep owners who need a hand. Though the price of wool isn't terribly high these days, Shoni isn't about to stop shearing.

"I want to keep doing it, as long as I can handle it," she said. "And after that, maybe my daughter, my granddaughter might do it."

She didn't mention anything about the taste of mutton or the special qualities of yarn made from Navajo sheep. Her concerns are bigger than that. In her words, she simply wants "to carry on all that tradition."

"Everyone thinks that way over here," she said. "The Navajo people - that's how we are."

And that's how Gustamantes is - even though he's an Apache originally from southern New Mexico. In his own way, he's continuing customs that transcend tribal boundaries. He would never describe his work in such a wordy fashion, however.

That morning, as he takes a break at Cunnington Farms to smoke his American Spirits, he admits that shearing has never got him rich. But he's still brimming with good family stories about it. He describes how his grandfather moved off an Arizona reservation to start raising sheep and how, in recent years, Gustamantes and his wife, Priscilla, have made little vacations out of traveling to his far-flung shearing destinations. He explains that it's because of his teachings that the men in his family can still shear.

"We just like it. That's all there is to it," he says. "It's a way to make a living."

He then describes how his grandsons have recently found that out, first-hand. When the 19- and 20-year-olds lost their oil rig and pipeline jobs, they inadvertently became part of the next generation of sheep men. Shearing was the one thing they knew they could do that was in demand, and Gustamantes seems kind of proud of that.

"They still had something to fall back on if times got rough," he says.

It doesn't take tough times to get Gustamantes to pick up his clippers, however. No, the fascinating thing about him is that he truly looks content, even when his body is clamped around an angry, half-shorn sheep. Even at 70, he makes no mention of retiring. When asked, point blank, if he might give all this up anytime soon, he answers quickly, without a moment to reflect.

"Not as long as there are sheep to shear," he says.

Here's to hoping that will be a long while.

For more information on DBI and its annual Sheep is Life celebration, visit navajolifeway.org.