How and why did the most advanced semiconductor manufacturer in the world build a state of the art electronics assembly plant on a Navajo reservation in 1965? The short answer is: cheap, plentiful, skillful workers, and tax benefits. A 1969 Fairchild News Release explains that the plant was “the culmination of joint efforts of the Navajo People, the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs (B.I.A), and Fairchild.” Navajo leadership helped to push this project forward; Raymond Nakai, chairman of the Navajo Nation from 1963 to 1971, and the self-styled first “modern” Navajo leader, was instrumental in bringing Fairchild to Shiprock. He spoke fervently about the necessity of transforming the Navajo as a “modern” Indian tribe, and what better way to do so than to put its members to work making chips, potent signs of futurity that were no bigger than a person’s fingernail?
At the CHM I stumbled upon the prize artifact that would kickstart my research: a 1969 Fairchild color brochure celebrating the opening of the Shiprock, New Mexico plant. It was full of photographs of women weaving rugs as well as bent over microscopes in the fabrication laboratory. The first page of the brochure features only a large photograph of a rectangular brown, black, and white rug, woven in a geometric pattern composed of connecting and intersecting right angles. Adjoining it is a short paragraph: “Thank you for helping us celebrate the dedication of Fairchild Semiconductor’s new Shiprock facility—a partnership in progress.”
The accompanying text reminds the reader that “Weaving, like all Navajo arts, is done with unique imagination and craftsmanship, and it has been done that way for centuries….[for] “building electronic devices, transistors and integrated circuits, also requires this same personal commitment to perfection. And so, it was very natural that when Fairchild Semiconductor needed to expand its operations, its managers looked at an area of highly skilled people living in and around Shiprock, New Mexico.”
The brochure’s following image, which depicts a Fairchild 9040 integrated circuit, “used in communications satellites like COMSAT,” has been enlarged so that its geometry fills the whole page. The resemblance between the pattern of the rug depicted on the first page and the circuit is entirely striking and uncanny. It makes the visual argument that Indian rugs are merely a different version of the exact same pattern or aesthetic tradition found within the integrated circuit. The opposing page states, “The blending of innate Navajo skill and [Fairchild] Semiconductor’s precision assembly techniques has made the Shiprock plant one of Fairchild’s best facilities—not just in terms of production but in quality as well.”