Gender, Baskets and the Cherokee Today
A Living Society
COLONIALISM IS NOT DEAD...
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"If you are reading this in the United States or Canada, whose land are you on, dear reader? What are the specific names of the Native nation(s) who have historical claim to the territory on which you currently read this article? What are their histories before European invasion? What are their historical and present acts of resistance to colonial occupation? If you are like most people in the United States and Canada, you cannot answer these questions. And this disturbs me." (Qwo-Li Driskill 2010, 71)
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Above: A modern day mission in the old Cherokee country. (Hill 2017)
...AND NEITHER ARE WE
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Today, the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma has more than 300,000 enrolled members, and there are many more Cherokee who belong to the Eastern and United Keetoowah Bands of Cherokee people. About half of the Cherokee Nation's citizens live in a 14 county area of what is now called the state of Oklahoma, and the other (more-than-) half of the nation lives amongst Americans and Indigenous people around the United States. These Cherokee are referred to as "at large", and I am one of them. There are Cherokee satellite communities in many areas, including The Mt. Hood Cherokees, who meet in my home town of Portland, Oregon at least once each month in order to connect, carry their culture and, simply, be a community (Cherokee Nation Citizens AtLarge 2019).
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While gender roles in Cherokee culture have been affected by ongoing settler-colonialism, they have most certainly not succumb to Western values. In the 1970's Wilma Mankiller, a Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma citizen, but longtime California resident, returned to Cherokee country and began work with the local Cherokee population. In the 1980's she was elected the "first female chief" of the Cherokee Nation. Concerning Cherokee gender and culture in modern day, she made a concerted effort to encourage the Cherokee people to recognize and utilize their own frame of thought, independent of settler-colonial America:
Above: Current plans for the new Cherokee Nation river cane garden. (Cherokee Nation 2018)
Above: Wilma Mankiller, the first female chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, talks about Indigenous Women in politics today. (MediaBurnArchive 2010)
THE CHEROKEE PEOPLE AND SCHOLARSHIP TODAY​
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Today the Cherokee culture thrives, even as it remains scarred by, and embedded with, colonialism. Within modern Indigenous scholarship, there is important discussion about the continued effort to silence and disappear Indigenous people in the United States (Tuck and Yang 2012). Such literature aims to incorporate an Indigenous voice that is independent of Western undertones and assumptions. It also seeks to unite Indigenous people, and inform Westerners of our continued existence. Qwo-Li Driskill is a Cherokee scholar at Oregon State University, like myself. S/he asks the field of Queer Studies (and, therein, Western academia in general) to remember that their understanding is not the status quo:
Native and queer studies, when conceptualized as intertwined walls of a doublewoven basket, enable us to see the numerous splints —including Native politics, postmodern scholarship, grassroots activisms, queer and trans resistance movements, queer studies, and tribally specific contexts —from which these critiques are (and can be) woven. Such a weaving, then, moves beyond a concept of intersectional politics. Though intersections do take place in doubleweaving, the weaving process also creates something else: a story much more complex and durable than its original and isolated splints, a story both unique and rooted in an ancient and enduring form. The dissent lines of Native studies and queer studies can be used as splints to weave what I am calling Two-Spirit critiques. It is from this stance that I wish to look a bit at "the new queer studies" in order to put these analyses in dialogue with Native studies and build stronger alliances between our disciplines. (Qwo-Li Driskill 2010, 73)
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CHEROKEE BASKET MAKING AS FOLKLORE
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From a Western folklore perspective, Cherokee basket weaving can be thought of as belonging to overlapping folklore groups. Using the definition of "folk group" as paraphrased by Sims and Stephens (2011, 35), in which "any group of two or more people who share a common factor are "folk", one can begin to appreciate how uncountable folk groups (often at the family-level) practice basket weaving. This particular research on Cherokee basket weaving intentionally blurs the lines between these groups, while also calling attention to their differences in experience (and therefore product), in an effort to reflect current Cherokee society (and the folklore groups included therein). While the largest numbers of individual Cherokee people are scattered all over the country, most people identify somewhat strongly to one particular group of Cherokee (most commonly, either the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, or the Eastern Band of Cherokee). Despite this, the strongest marker of identity for most Cherokees remains that we are a common people, and share a common heritage and the responsibility to steward such.
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Folklore can be considered to have meaning "esoterically" (inside of the community) or "exoterically" (outside of the community), and usually has influence in both domains (Sims and Stephens 2011). Cherokee basket weaving is no exception to this. Exoterically, Cherokee baskets (and thus those who weave them) are known worldwide for the skillful craft and product. It is of particular importance to Indigenous peoples that they assert their beings, culture and methodologies into the world because of ongoing settler-colonialism, which seeks to erase them (Tuck and Yang 2012). Therefore, we might consider that basket weaving's exoteric value is also value creating esoterically. Further, as the discussion at the bottom of this page (see, "Completing My First Basket") will demonstrate, esoteric value is deep whenever Cherokee people are creating texts (the term for anything folklore produces) together (Sims and Stephens 2011).
When we further consider the texts of Cherokee basket weaving from a folklore perspective, with particular regard to genre, one can begin to appreciate how deep the esoteric value of basket weaving runs for the Cherokee people and, in particular, for Cherokee women. Broadly, there are three folklore genres: verbal- anything that involves words, material- anything that can be touched, and customary- anything that is "patterned, repeated behavior in which a person’s participation indicates involved membership" (Sims and Stephens 2011, 16). Cherokee basket weaving is an example of folklore which produces lore of all three categories, simultaneously. Making Cherokee baskets denotes membership to the tribe, and an adherence to our ways of thinking and being. During basket weaving, women produce more than baskets, they also share verbal lore pertaining to, and exceeding the topic of, baskets. Through their basket making, which requires large amounts of time be spent sitting, they also verbally pass on Cherokee history and culture to their daughters (and in modern day, to others who are interested in perpetuating Cherokee culture). All of this means that the Cherokee women who still practice and teach basket making, and their students, are participating in and producing customary lore.
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COMPLETING MY FIRST BASKET​
If you've made it this far, you've just walked the path of my first basket weaving attempt right alongside me. I was not taught as a young girl to (physically) weave baskets, and yet, this project has aimed to weave a metaphoric basket, and to therefore demonstrate the interconnected nature of Indigenous gender roles, the environment, colonialism and to make a statement of Indigenous Scholarship. I could not have known when I noticed the stain of the black walnut on my fingers that the following 12 months would find me connecting more to my Cherokee culture than I have ever before done so on my own. Through the process of considering what I could weave of my own life into this research, it has become clearer to me how many of my own thought patterns, and how much of my life in general, is mediated by my Cherokee heritage.
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Two years ago, my Grandfather asked me to help him clean out his back room. 10 years prior, my Grandmother (Carol) passed, due to a heart attack. Through our cleaning, we uncovered several things she had held onto for many years, including two books on Tsalagi language. Inspired, last fall, I began studying the Tsalagi language, through live online language courses offered by the Cherokee Nation and conducted by a Cherokee elder, Ed Fields. Through study of the language, I am gaining a deeper understanding of our precolonial culture, and how we have adjusted and continue to overcome and defy settler-colonialism. In one memorable class meeting, a fellow student and Ed were making smalltalk, and one of them used an old Oklahoma saying that included the word 'butter'. Butter was clearly not a part of the traditional Cherokee diet, any more than the saying was one that would have existed in Tsalagi a hundred years ago. However, the student asked Ed if we could translate the saying to Tsalagi. Ed responded, "Hmmmm. Yeah, we can do that. But we need to make it first, because in Cherokee, we don't want to add English. We want to add Cherokee to English instead." What commenced was a group of Cherokee people creating a Cherokee interpretation of an English saying. We made it our own, and it became ours.
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This moment could be seen as a moment in which a text was first created, and yet the lore it held was older than the moment in which it took place. Rather, the basis for renaming English words is the value both the word, and the Cherokee who speaks it, takes on by incorporating “making” the word Cherokee. Now, a Cherokee (particularly the Cherokees in this specific group- although the use of such a word could become a formal as well, should it spread) can “own” this particular description, instead of “borrowing it”. The idea of adopting (not borrowing) that which is useful and not harmful is a larger part of both Cherokee folklore and culture; it is considered smart, so long as the delicate balance of the use/harm is maintained.
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This particular example demonstrates the exoteric and esoteric value of Cherokee folklore in the modern world (Sims and Stephens 2011). Concerning esoteric influence, there is intrinsic value in continuing to maintain and forge shared meaning and creation for any people group, which is especially true when maintaining the culture and awareness of Indigenous Persons in a Western-ruled world. The Cherokee Language Course cohort specifically comes together in order to do such. Exoterically, the act of using such a word (and the phrase it was attached to) free of inserting English into Cherokee Dialogue says a lot in the presence of other folklore groups. It says that we are here, and we will continue to operate alongside you in the modern world.
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Although my Grandmother did not teach me to weave baskets in the physical sense, she did teach me to be Cherokee, and at that, a Cherokee woman. She also grew "Indian" corn, which she sold for some time at farmers markets around Oregon. Still hanging in my Grandfather's garage are several ears of this corn, probably grown 20 years ago, or more. I like to think of my grandmother as an extension of Selu- providing for me now, even in her departure. This year, I too will grow corn, ordered through the Cherokee Nation seed bank and I will continue in the path of Selu: stewarding the land and Cherokee culture, and providing for my community and family. And, thus, I will continue to weave the basket that is my story, in academia, at home and into the modern world.
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CHEROKEE BASKETS TODAY​
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Today, since the insurgence of modern technology, and Western home-styles and production equipment, even traditional Cherokee women do not necessarily need to make Cherokee baskets to use practically. However, the practice is continued by many today. This signifies that Cherokee women are very much purposefully continuing to assert their traditional gender ways, and in particular are carefully continuing to steward their culture. Today Cherokee baskets, although still capable of practical use, are generally made and sold as art.
As things go with folklore, and culture in general, their are differences in modern-day Cherokee basketweaving that takes place in Oklahoma, amongst members of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, and that which takes place in old Cherokee lands, where the Eastern band of Cherokee still reside. Baskets made in Oklahoma (as shown in the video above) often use different materials. However, a previous section on this page demonstrates, there is new cultivation of traditional materials happening in Oklahoma, in order to provide more original materials to citizens for basket making and other arts or practical endeavors. Every Cherokee basket hold Cherokee culture in its woven body. As the previous section examines, Cherokee basket weaving has never simply been a means of producing physical baskets for practical use. Rather, Cherokee basket weaving exemplifies and perpetuates the power of Cherokee women, and their equal place in society.
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Above: Bessie Russel, an Oklahoma Cherokee basket weaver, talks about basket making today in Oklahoma, and how it is still traditional in nature. (OsiyoTV 2016)
Above: A portion of the informational PDF provided on White Eagle Corn heritage, provided to Cherokee Nation members in 2019 by the Cherokee Nation Seedbank. One of three seeds I choose from the heritage seedbank to grow in my garden this year. (Cherokee Nation Seedbank 2019)
Above: The Cherokee Word of the Week, "donadagohvi". In Cherokee, we do not say "goodbye", but rather, "Until we meet again." (Visit Cherokee Nation 2017)