(a tale of my, somewhat depressing, journey working with endangered crafts in Indonesia)

After two or three months of regular visits to the weavers, it felt as if I was the only one who found it important to preserve the patterns and dyeing techniques that defined weaving on the small island that served as my research area.

The island was ravaged by water shortages following a prolonged drought, making it nearly impossible to dye textiles with the wild plants that the weavers typically used. Almost all the plants had withered, leaving the island brown and dry. I sailed over once a week and rode a rented motorbike through the parched mountainous landscape, where the air was so dry and warm it reminded me of a sauna, until I reached the weaving village I was writing about.

My focus in the article was on ‘women’s empowerment,’ as textile weaving was traditionally a female craft. Initially, I approached the task with a bold and uplifting sense of fighting for women’s rights, which, I must admit, inflated my ego quite a bit. 

However, during my numerous visits to the island, both my enthusiasm and my ego became nearly as dried up as the dye plants. The women appeared indifferent to my mission — some quite openly so — and they seemed to use the drought as a reason to embrace synthetic colors, which required far less water than developing plant-based dyes from scratch. Given that most of the plants had also perished due to the drought, it was a no-brainer to seek alternative solutions. Furthermore, they all seemed to agree that the vibrant synthetic colors were far more beautiful than the muted hues of plant dyes.

“But the waste dye you pour into the ground is extremely polluting,” I piped up cautiously during what would become my last visit with the weavers.

One of the oldest weavers, a beautiful tall woman of about 65 with an impressive mane of jet-black hair, loosely rolled into a bun, dressed in a long indigo colored handwoven skirt and smoking a curved wooden pipe, looked at me with a condescending expression and said in her deep voice, “With all due respect for what you’re trying to do for us, you shouldn’t talk to us about pollution. I’ve seen pictures of all the clothing that gets thrown away in countries like yours and ends up in large, steaming piles in places like ours. Compared to that, our pollution is minimal, and I know you understand that.”

I could feel my cheeks burning.

“But what about aesthetics?” I piped up again.

“What do you mean? The new colors are much prettier than the old ones,” laughed one of the middle-aged weavers as she pulled out a sarong in a bright red and pink pattern. “Just look at this! It’s something entirely different from that!” She pointed to a wooden stand where two handwoven pieces of fabric in a jagged pattern hung, colored in dusty light brown, pale yellow, and soft pink. 

I knew that the delicate colors were the result of a painstaking process involving the development of dye powders made from coconut shells, mango leaves, and avocado pits.

The patterns woven by the women had grown less intricate over the years, highlighting the distinction between their new creations, the slightly older ones, and the very old textiles passed down from their mothers and grandmothers. There was a noticeable and gradual dissolution of complexity, a smoothing out of designs. The very old textiles must have taken months to create, showcasing a sublime mix of zigzagged lines, wavy shapes, and figures. 

In contrast, the new pieces, which lacked any recognizable figures and consisted only of jagged lines or simple lines — never both — probably took just a couple of weeks to complete. 

In keeping with the capitalist spirit that even the women in this remote village faced, everything had to be measured in terms of profit and loss. Whether something was worth pursuing depended on how much one could earn from it. Spending several months creating a single piece of fabric simply couldn’t be justified when the financial rewards were so limited, especially when competing with machine-made textiles that, to the untrained eye, looked indistinguishable from handmade ones. This reality was unyielding and incredibly difficult to counter.

The tsunami of uniformity brought about by globalization was so overwhelming that it had nearly eradicated the diversity of local expressions, along with the irregular, jagged, and raw beauty that accompanied them. I understood this well, yet during the months I spent visiting the women, I endeavored to plant that seed of truth and advocate for my cause, which could be largely summarized as follows: by raising awareness of the treasure trove of jagged, nourishing beauty and cultural diversity inherent in traditional craftsmanship, many would awaken to the importance of supporting, investing in, and preserving local craft traditions. 

I convinced myself I was fighting this cause for the sake of the weavers. 

However, the young women were leaving the village — they preferred working in hotels along the coast or in bars and restaurants on the main island. It seemed far more glamorous and exciting than sitting in a remote village with a bunch of snot-nosed kids clinging to their skirts while weaving day in and day out. Submitting to the painstaking, slow process. In small, far too warm rooms with poor lighting. With limited earning opportunities. Without a strong community. And without comforting, affirming glances.

I believe the death knell came when one of the few younger weavers, a pretty, round-faced woman of about 25 who had three small children and lived in a small wooden house without running water, looked up from her phone, which she and her three kids had their eyes glued to almost constantly (perhaps because everything pouring in from the big world through that small screen seemed more interesting than life in the village), and said with an indifferent expression: “No one reads anymore, so I can’t really see how your article is going to help us.”

She was absolutely right! No one cared to read more than the few lines that accompanied a social media post — and even that was stretching it. If I wanted to reach a broad audience with my message about dying craft traditions, I would need a completely different approach — preferably a flashy one in the form of short entertaining videos with music or sound effects. Maybe even spiced up with a few special effects. And that was far beyond both my abilities and my willingness.

Moreover, my “here I come to save you” attitude left an increasingly bitter taste in my mouth. There was something almost colonizing or missionary-like about it that I couldn’t bear to think about without feeling nauseous.

Ugh.

As I drove away from the village that afternoon, I knew I wouldn’t continue working on the project. I realized the women’s skepticism was justified, and what I was up against here was so extensive that my awareness campaign in the form of an article in a relatively insignificant academic journal wouldn’t even create small ripples in the water.

I would finish my article and receive my fee (for I, too, was part of the capitalist age), and then I would abandon my arrogant mission to uphold traditional weaving.

“Yes, that must be it,” I thought as I drove through the parched landscape with the wind in my hair and the dry, sauna-like air in my nostrils.

And then it started to rain.

It felt as if the rain was giving up too, releasing its life-giving drops with a resigned, or perhaps rather a relieved, sigh. The drops were heavy and large. When they hit the warm asphalt, I could almost hear them sizzle. Tsssss, tssss.

Had the rain held onto its water to emphasize something or punish someone? To punish me? No, how egocentric could one be?! I scoffed at myself.

But as I continued driving, I couldn’t shake the feeling of resignation reflected in the raindrops, oddly mirroring my state of mind. It truly felt as if the rain sighed with relief when I finally surrendered, allowing it to follow its most natural impulse — to trickle, flow, and stream. 

The drops quickly transformed into a downpour that drenched me within minutes, as if the rain were conveying a message I already understood. Namely, that if you try to prevent the changes that occur around you, whether subtly like the babbling of a brook or loudly like the crashing of waves, you will ultimately be the loser. Believing that salvation can only be found in what once was, elevating the past to a pedestal of truth, light, beauty, and goodness, is as unnatural as attempting to stop water from flowing.

Why impose guilt on the weavers for simplifying, optimizing, and developing their craft in a way that perhaps contained the seeds of its destruction but was simultaneously the only way forward in the specific situation they found themselves in? The dissolution was inevitable. It had to happen.

Perhaps something was being lost when the weavers simplified their traditional patterns and substituted natural dyes with synthetic textile colors to increase their earning potential. And undoubtedly, transforming their traditional craft into a business would lead to its demise. 

But perhaps that was exactly what needed to happen for something new to emerge — something new that might be based on passion and the urge to create. New forms of craftsmanship might arise. And perhaps they would lay the foundation for new forms of collaborative work, the emergence of new materials, new ways to create with their hands, new methods, new patterns and color combinations, new rituals, and new traditions.

The only constant is change, as a wise man said thousands of years ago. How could I have forgotten that?