Weaving My Story
A digital basket
Above: The Black Walnut tree. (Image curtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
Native American folklore has been delineated countless times through a Western perspective, exemplifying how the stories of those thought to be extinct are rewritten and the cultures from which they derive (very much still alive) are further pushed toward widespread disregard by the gaze of those in power to those whom they marginalize. However, in modern day, more Indigenous Persons are becoming scholars in the Western sense, and therefore there is an emergence of literature from their perspective hitting academic journals today. Largely, in, Like "Reeds Through the Ribs of a Basket": Native Women Weaving Stories (1997), by Kimberly M. Blaeser, basket weaving is equated to Native American perseverance, continued self-determination, and longstanding traditions of passing on knowledge through craft and story, which is never devoid of spirituality and survival. Using Blaeser’s (1997) work, I have crafted 5 questions to further understand how Cherokee basket weaving exemplifies Cherokee culture, past, present and ever surviving.
SUMMARIZING BLAESER (1997)
Blaeser begins her article by situating herself, and her colleagues, as Indigenous Persons working in and contributing to the world of Western academia, if only to challenge it’s strictly Western approach. She further explains how current theories can be reignited, and certainly at times rewritten, with the emergence of Indigenous scholars who are positioned to receive the same critical review as their Western peers and, importantly, she explains that Indigenous storytelling, itself a form of valid literature, cannot always take a standard Western form (555-556).
“And here we are, we laugh.
A bunch of Indians in an academic parade,
marching along with our Ph.D.s, degrees held like banners of our own indoctrination.” (Blaeser 1997, 555)
From here, Blaeser moves on to on to a review of several Indigenous pieces of literature by women who have woven their lives, culture and writing through the reeds of a basket.
Above: An example of Cherokee women who are weaving their stories: Reading a passage from Selu: Seeking the Corn Mother's Wisdom. (Awiakta 2011)
THE BLACK WALNUT
Last Winter, I moved into a new house just on other side of the south Portland, Oregon border with my children and partner. The yard was smaller and less private than the one at our last house sat on, and yet, there was a majestic tree in the back. Already it was developing what looked like nuts. A closer look at the ground in the Spring showed the shriveled remains of walnut shells. I couldn't help but smile at the thought of harvesting walnuts soon. First, I'd have to learn how.
Hanging up my clothes to dry one day in mid-Summer, I noticed the walnuts had begun to fall to the ground. Excitedly, I called my children to the back yard, and we made quick work of placing all of the fallen walnuts on a mesh herb drying rack suspended from the clothesline. A week later, they looked shriveled, like the ones I'd first seen. They seemed hard and almost store-worthy. However, when we broke through the outside, we found a second layer of shell, half rotted and the nut in a similar condition. Clearly, we were missing something. I surmised that we would need to take off the outer hull, and try to dry the inner shell instead.
The next batch we gleamed from the ground, we processed this way. The resulting nuts were delicious, and certainly not rotted. But, our hands had turned black.
Above: Hands stained dark from the pigment of a Black Walnut husk.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER AS YOU PROCEED
This piece of literature is near and dear to me personally, as an Indigenous person registered to the Cherokee Nation. My own work and focus as an anthropologist dictates that I integrate Indigenous voice(s), methodologies, and relevance into all of my projects. Through Blaeser’s (1997) work, I have identified the following areas (posited here in the form of questions, each giving way to the next) to expand upon in this website research presentation:
1. How is basket weaving and Indigenous values at large similar?
2. How does basket weaving exemplify Cherokee ideals? and vis a versa?
3. What does basket weaving tell us about gender and Cherokee Society? and vis a versa?
4. How have the last two points changed over the course of time, and especially as
the Cherokee peoples have been affected by colonization?
5. How does this piece of research exemplify Indigenous culture, Cherokee culture, gender norms and modernity?