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To: Native art lovers should let La Posada Hotel know it's unacceptable to name Julia Joe's epic Navajo weaving after the exploitative white trader, Lorenzo Hubbell Jr.

Take the white man's name off the Navajo woman's masterpiece

The hotel owner and museum operator changed the exhibition, removing the trader's name from Julia Joe's masterpiece, and adopting the name family used all along: "The Big Rug."

https://ammwsa.com/news/the_big_rug/

La Posada Hotel and Winslow Arts Trust should stop calling this amazing piece of art "The Hubbell-Joe Rug." It took Julia Joe and two of her daughters five years to create this weaving in the 1930s. It was the largest one ever made. Yet for all that work, not to mention all that wool, Hubbell paid them less than $1,900 in trading post credit and redeemed pawn. That works out to $126 per person per year—a pittance even by the standards of the Great Depression.

Why is this important?

Tell the owners of La Posada Hotel it's time to re-center the story of Native arts where it belongs: on Native artists, not white traders.

La Posada Hotel and Winslow Arts Trust should stop calling Julia's Joe's weaving "The Hubbell-Joe Rug," and add a placard to their museum acknowledging why such practices are no longer acceptable.

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Updates

2025-09-02 12:39:20 -0400

Petition is successful with 1,513 signatures

2023-10-29 22:27:20 -0400

1,000 signatures reached

2023-10-24 20:44:48 -0400

500 signatures reached

2023-10-23 18:00:51 -0400

100 signatures reached

2023-10-23 16:33:08 -0400

50 signatures reached

2023-10-23 15:41:51 -0400

25 signatures reached

2023-10-23 15:06:22 -0400

10 signatures reached