Hudson Museum Basketmakers Exhibit is Window to Maine Native Culture
Contact: George Manlove at (207) 581-3756
ORONO — Jennifer Neptune has been weaving Maine Indian baskets for nearly 12 years and began learning Maine’s oldest indigenous art form from mentor Theresa Secord.
Neptune, a member of the Penobscot Nation, is now teaching her stepson the craft.
Neptune, 34, is the the manager of the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance office and Wabanaki Arts Center gallery in Old Town; Secord is the director of the alliance. Through the exhibit at the University of Maine’s Hudson Museum which displays their craft, the historical tradition of passing the craft down from generation to generation is highlighted. The exhibit opened Feb. 24 and ends July 20.
The special exhibit — “Basketmakers of the Dawn: Carrying on the Tradition” — showcases different baskets, the ways they are made, the people who make them and the “perpetuation and evolution of the tradition,” according to Hudson Museum Director Gretchen Faulkner.
“The exhibit focuses on four families who are passing basketmaking along,” Faulkner says. “This is a tradition for Maine Indian people that has evolved over time. We’re looking at that evolution.”
Featured in the exhibit are the Shay family of the Penobscots, Sylvia Gabriel and the Frey family of Passamaquoddies, the Sanipass family, which includes three generations of Micmac basketmakers, and the Neptune family of Passamaquoddy artists.
It also includes historic basketmaking tools, such as molds and gauges, and samples of the brown ash that are pounded until the layers separate into thin strips, or splints, used to weave baskets.
Hands-on activities allowing students to learn basic weaving techniques and other interactive components of the exhibit focus on the different decorative treatments used to make the baskets on display. Documentary videos, such as the “Gabriel Family of Basketmakers,” “Our Lives in Our Hands” and “Penobscot Basket Maker” are available for gallery use.
The exhibit represents a window into Maine’s tribal culture, according to Neptune and Faulkner.
Maine Indian basketmaking was the chief source of the tribes’ income from the 18th Century through the early 20th Century, Neptune says. They crafted basic utilitarian baskets for personal use and fancier, colorful baskets for gifts and a reliable tourist trade along the Maine coast.
“Indians traveled extensively to sell their baskets,” Neptune says, “to Boston, New York, Philadelphia, all over. They took trains and boats to sell their baskets in the late 1700s and throughout the 1800s.”
It was an important form of economic survival for the tribes, she says. “They would make baskets all winter and went to the coast in the summer to make their money. That’s when the fancy baskets just took off, the colors, the fancy, fancy weaves.”
The basket market, however, sagged during the Great Depression and World War II, and many Native American basketmakers took jobs in mills and factories for more dependable wages, Neptune says. “People just had to find other jobs.”
The coalescing in 1993 of basketmakers from Maine’s four principle tribes originally united under the Wabanaki Confederacy (Penobscots, Passamaquoddy, Micmac and Maliseet), with the formation of the non-profit Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance in 1993, stimulated a renaissance.
Young people began basket-weaving, and today the now-celebrated craft continues in schools, museums and at special events like the Native American Festival at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, the Common Ground Fair in Unity, the National Folk Festival in Bangor and the Maine Indian Basketmakers Sales and Demonstration at UMaine’s Hudson Museum in Orono each December.
The Maine Arts Commission and the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance has awarded 85 Maine Indian basketry apprenticeships since 1990 to support the perpetuation of basketmaking.
Faulkner and Neptune say people come from all over the country to visit the shows and fairs and to buy hand-made baskets for their own collections, for home use or for hunting and fishing.
The basket collections now on display at the Hudson Museum include pack baskets, laundry baskets, potato baskets, knitting baskets and what have become antiquated baskets designed for storing handkerchiefs, detachable men’s shirt collars and tatting baskets and sandwich trays, according to Faulkner.
Some are made with a supple but sturdy splint, says Neptune, and some finer works are shaved paper thin to create curly decorative treatments.
The university has supported the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance since its inception and has on campus the Wabanaki Center, which provides academic and career counseling for Native American students. UMaine also has the largest population of Native American students pursuing higher education and has the largest number of Native American alumni in Maine.
The exhibit also is part of the State of Fiber 2004 a year-long state-wide celebration that includes fiber arts exhibitions and educational programs and special events.
The Hudson Museum is open Tuesday through Fridays, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. It is closed Sundays, Mondays and holidays. The museum can be reached by telephone at (207) 581-1901. Its website is at www.maine.edu/hudsonmuseum. Information about the craft also is available at .www.umaine.edu/hudsonmuseum/tree. Related digital images are available upon request.