Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
April Stone, left, beats down the outer layer of an ash tree while Liandra Skenandore peels it away from the log to create a splint that will be cut into strips for basket weaving on Saturday at Miners Memorial Heritage Park, as part of the Emberlight Festival's "Discovering Artists In Nature" event.
By TOM LAVENTURE
Ironwood - There were many lessons to learn by observing the process of basket weaving, from sourcing and processing of wood into materials and construction, but it was also a chance to witness the resurgence of a local art form that was nearly lost to history.
April Stone of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, brought her talent for basket making and storytelling to Miners Memorial Heritage Park on Saturday as part of the Emberlight Festival. She walked a crowd of more than 40 guests through the process of making splints from a black-ash log - by pounding and then peeling the annual layers up for cutting into weaving strips.
Stone said she taught herself baapaagimaak - the art of basket weaving - by reading and learning from others. She looked for proof that it was once practiced in the Lake Superior region, and it was at the Madeline Island Museum that she found a basket dating back to Ashland, Wisconsin, in 1902. The journey led to elders who remembered learning basket weaving as children and still had some of the baskets.
"The elders are the ones that answer my questions," Stone said. "They have baskets that have been handed down to them from their grandparents and great-grandparents. So, that's my proof right there."
There were no instructions left behind to work with as the oral tradition was passed down by each generation. Basket weaving seems to have stopped in the earl20th century among other as first nations were decimated and relocated.
The nations of the region are incorporating basket weaving into the cultural classes. The sacred teachings come through in these classes because they exist in everything that people do, she said.
"I think that it's not all about making the baskets, it's about the connections that we make with each other," Stone said. "It's about listening to each other's stories, and hearing about each other's lives, you know, because we really are all connected."
People of various cultures around the world made baskets from the materials available in their areas, Stone said. In this area the ash tree is easier to work with in processing wood into splints. The black ash is somewhat easier to work with than the green or white ash varieties, she said.
Weaving, along with woodworking and carving a bowl or spoon, knitting or crocheting clothing, and making rope or candles are also ways to incorporate necessary skills into our lifestyles, she said.
It helps to expand the idea that most of what we need can be produced around us with a small environmental footprint. The impact of consumerism and plastics on the environment including its effect on people is disturbing, she said.
"We don't need to get plastic at the grocery store because we can just take our basket," she said.
Stone talked about how to split the materials thinner or thicker to adjust for strength, height and width, cornering and rounding the bottom of the baskets. These are baskets that are filled with groceries, laundry or anything else people tend to buy plastic containers to hold.
There are fancy baskets and utility baskets, Stone said. She prefers to make utility baskets that are also beautiful in engineering the shape and design.
It has taken around 20 years for the Emerald Ash Borer to make its way from lower Michigan to the western U.P. and northeast Wisconsin, she said. But it's here and it now threatens the species.
"That makes me very, very sad," Stone said. "Because I don't know how much longer the trees will be healthy up here."
Leiandra Skenadore from the Oneida nation was completing a degree at Northland College when she met Stone The two have been working together for nearly two years under a mentorship grant from the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation.
She said the apprenticeship experience has "completely changed my life for the better." She appreciated that an art was missing for the past four generations before someone in her family started to learn it again.
"So that's really cool," she said. "This is something that I'm trying to help my community back in Oneida get back into too, because it's beautiful, and amazing."
Karen Mallum, the performance infusion coordinator for the Emberlight Festival, said Stone is a wonderful resource with talents that fit perfectly into the "Discovering Artists in Nature" theme. The weaving exhibition will be followed in successive weekends with "Fantail Birds and Fanciful Trees," by a Finnish American woodcarver on July 31; and "Rainbow in the Woods," where an artist will dye locally sourced and naturally colored wool using plants on Aug. 7; "String Time in the Park" on Aug. 14, and "Poets in the Park" on Aug. 21.
"This kind of thing is great for people to see and participate in," Mallum said. "It's kind of a performance art where people can see or hear or experience art in the making."
Stone is working to share her knowledge by teaching a process that starts with growing and harvesting of trees, and processing them into material for weaving in a utilitarian but very soulful way, she said.
"She just really, really loves the traditional methods," Mallum said. "It's really important to her. So I'm so glad she's here...and I'm so glad that we have some indigenous people who are part of this festival because that's been missing."
