Basket Weaving: Old Tradition to New Art Form
Basket weaving is a form of artwork that is common among the Native Americans in the Southwestern United States. At the same time, it may possibly be the oldest textile art known to mankind. Therefore, the baskets we see today are a development of an art handed down through the generations. Throughout time, one thing has remained constant: women have traditionally been the basket weavers in Native American tribes. Women basket weavers, therefore, have developed their skill over the thousands of years from making useful household products during prehistoric times, to the present, where their work is sold on a commercial market to Native American collectors.
Women of the tribe were the weavers from the start for practical reasons. Traditionally, the tribal women were in charge of domestic affairs. They therefore became in charge of basket making because it was their form of storage for household goods. This invention was their solution to the need to have unbreakable containers for their constantly moving lifestyle. The tribes roamed and needed containers that would be easy to carry, useful in storage, and that would not break. Basket weaving became the perfect solution. Baskets do not break, as pottery can, so they are easy to travel with. It was not until tribes began to remain stable that pottery came about since there was not the need for unbreakable containers and dishes (Underhill 20). The variety of shape and size meant that baskets could be used for almost any household task. For instance, baskets can be made three feet tall to hold grains, or they can be made only inches tall to store personal belongings. Some other utilitarian uses are trays, s...
... middle of paper ...
...in Weaving." The Arizona Daily Star 23 March 1998: Metro/Region 1B.
Hopi Basketry. http://www.nau.edu/~hcpo-p/arts/basl.htm (20 March 1999).
Newman, Sandra Corrie. Indian Basket Weaving. Flagstaff: Northland Press, 1974.
Prindle, Tara. "Native American Coil Basketry." Native Tech: Native American Technology and Art. http://www.nativeweb.org/NativeTech/coil/coil.html (20 March 1999).
Robinson, Bert. The Basket Weavers of Arizona. Alburquerque: The University of New Mexico Press, 1954.
Teague, Lynn. Personal Correspondence. 23 April 1999.
Terrell, John Upton, and Terrell, Donna M. Indian Women of the Western Morning. New York: The Dial Press, 1974.
Turnbaugh, Sarah Peabody, and Turnbaugh, William A. Indian Baskets. Pennsylvania: Schiffer Publishing Ltd, 1986.
Underhill, Ruth. Pueblo Crafts. New York: AMS Press, 1979.
As a young woman, Maria was known as the most skilled potter of her pueblo tribe. For this reason, an archaeologi...
Owen, Narcissa, and Karen L. Kilcup. A Cherokee woman's America memoirs of Narcissa Owen, 1831-1907. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005.
In the text, one learns of how bags, or toe-sacks as I have always heard, were turned into bed linens, bath linens, undergarments, cookware, and dresses. The fact that women were smart enough to re-use feed bags for necessary household and personal care says a lot about the southern farm-women’s mind. They are already supporting peddlers, making their own money to become economically stable, and now they are making their own beautiful linens. One story of this wonderful invention comes from north Georgia’s Harriet Echols who says “I’d try to go buy feed so I could match the bags with what I had at home… I’d take a bag of every color that I had.” Later in the nineteenth century, cotton bags became a more popular source of bags. Cotton bag clothes were given to those who were not economically stable yet to help in times of need. The Georgia Emergency Relief Administration was one of the most successful relief projects and were “classes for young girls who longed for pretty things but could not afford to buy them and could not make them.” Southern farm women gained much attention for the way that they thought of things; for thinking up the idea of sewing feed sacks to make high-demand linens. Here we are in late 2016, still using the ideology based off of sewing feed sacks. Not only was this idea very unique, but it was also beneficial. This was another clever way in which women found to excel in the economy. If they were only sewing for themselves or their family, they did not lose money because they were using recycled products and in the grand scheme of things were making clothes basically at no cost. If they were selling their linens to others who maybe had no interest or time in sewing, they were using recycled sacks and could have sold their linens so they were actually gaining profit. By these women re-using feed sacks,
Basket weaving has played a large part in the culture of the Tohono O’odham tribe. Baskets were used mainly for practical purposes in the past. They were very important in the every day life of the tribe. It was the women's job in the tribe to weave the baskets. The baskets were used to haul grain and food. Many baskets were woven so tight that they were used to hold water and liquor. Baskets were also very important in ceremonies, such as the Rainmaking Ceremony.
Stratton, R.B. Captivity of the Oatman Girls: Being an Interesting Narrative of Life Among the Apache and Mohave Indians. San Francisco: Whitton, Towne and Co., 1857.
The short story, The Laundry Basket, by Lee Maracle touches on many important themes and issues throughout text. In this short text Maracle manages to cover issues ranging from the daily struggles of an indigenous woman, to the power imbalance present between the white man and the indigenous people. The most pressing issue acknowledged in this excerpt, however, is the battle of a mother and wife against the idea of what she should be doing with her time versus what she wants to be doing and her aspirations.
Rowlandson, Mary. A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson.In Women’s Indian Captivity Narratives. Ed. Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola. New York: Penguin Books, 1998.
Stensland, Anna Lee. “Indian Boyhood by Charles A. Eastman’” The English Journal 66, no. 3 (1977): 59.
Lakota Woman Essay In Lakota Woman, Mary Crow Dog argues that in the 1970’s, the American Indian Movement used protests and militancy to improve their visibility in mainstream Anglo American society in an effort to secure sovereignty for all "full blood" American Indians in spite of generational gender, power, and financial conflicts on the reservations. When reading this book, one can see that this is indeed the case. The struggles these people underwent in their daily lives on the reservation eventually became too much, and the American Indian Movement was born. AIM, as we will see through several examples, made their case known to the people of the United States, and militancy ultimately became necessary in order to do so.
As stated before, Aboriginal women played an essential role not only as bed partners, but in the fur trade industry as well. Without the help of their intelligent skills and diligent hard work ,the fur trade would not be such a success. The fur traders of this time married Aboriginal women. These women put in tons, and tons of work at the posts. They often went with their husbands on fur-trading trips and acted as guides. They were far from lazy individuals. They worked with their husbands and men in general to maneuver the canoes and they also helped to carry the heavy loads a...
For more than two thousand years, the human race has struggled to effectively establish the basis of morality. Society has made little progress distinguishing between morally right and wrong. Even the most intellectual minds fail to distinguish the underlying principles of morality. A consensus on morality is far from being reached. The struggle to create a basis has created a vigorous warfare, bursting with disagreement and disputation. Despite the lack of understanding, John Stuart Mill confidently believes that truths can still have meaning even if society struggles to understand its principles. Mill does an outstanding job at depicting morality and for that the entire essay is a masterpiece. His claims throughout the essay could not be any closer to the truth.
For Mill, the freedom that enables each individual to explore his or her own particular way of life is essential for a generous and diverse development of humanity. The only source of potential within society to further continue human development is the spontaneity or creativity that lies within each individual. Mill has a utilitarian view on freedom. He was especially keen on individual liberty because it allowed the greatest measure of happiness. His concern is not to declare liberty as a natural right but to rather set out the appropriate constraints within ‘Civil or Social liberty’. Civil liberty is defined as the limit society can exert its legitimate power over each individual and social liberty has much to do with a political principle
French, Katherine L., and Allyson M. Poska. Women and Gender in the Western past. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2007. Print.
...ave the freedm to make mistakes and have discussions and debates in a healthy setting where others can learn from each other, and be able to raise their voice without having to be worried by the idea of being bullied. He strongly believed in having the freedom to develop your own personality and having the strength to make choices. Mills is only able to see progress in society if we enter a world of culture, free conformity, and harm. We must be given the right to free expression, freedom and the right to liberty without the fear of threat or being silenced. It’s because of these justifications that mill believes that mankind would not be justified in silencing an individual just like that one inidivdual, if given the power to do so, would not be justified in silencing all of mankind. Through these actions, we as humans will create the ultimate gaood for mankind.
Mill believes individual should be given liberty to do what they want unless they harm others. According to Mill, liberty should not be enforced by law as any imposing would lead to breach of individual liberty. On the contrary, Devlin claimed that if society has the right to make judgments it can also use the law to enforce it. He said that society does have a right to use the law to preserve morality in order to safeguarding social morals. Further Devlin said that the law is not looking for true belief but what is commonly believed by individuals in a civil society as a whole. He said that the judgment of the “right minded person” will prevail and immorality would be something which the those people will consider immoral. For example, murder and theft are prohibited because t...