Ohlone Basket Weaver - Linda Yamane

Shoo-doo-doo, hoo-ee-hoo-ee, shoo-doo-doo, hoo-ee-hoo-ee-da-mee-see, hoo-ee-hoo-ee-da-shoo-doo-doo, shoo-doo-doo. My name's Linda Yamane, and I am Rimsian Ohlone from Monterey, Carmel Valley in Central California. Over the past 25 years have become basket weaver and worked hard to bring back our basket traditions. When I was younger, in my 20s, I used to weave, but I thought none of our baskets are left in the world. But I still was making baskets, but with other materials. 25 years ago, I discovered that there are still a few of our baskets, but only maybe 25 or 30 in the world. Many of those are not in this country. Then I had to write to museums and try to get information and start accumulating photographs. I don't know, you just have to start someplace. I'm kind of analytical, and I love to solve history puzzles. And so I love to find information and then make it alive. So it's a big task, but I really love the challenge, and I love making things. And I love just the experience of bringing our cultural things alive. But I'm a little bit concerned, where are the young people to learn? So here's a nice one. All right, I'll show you how we split it. I started out with a knife, so I split it in half. I am just so lucky that, yes, I live in a place that still has many natural places. It's still hard to find places, because in a park, normally you're not supposed to take plants, touch plants, cut plants. But in reality, humans and plants need to work together. I mean, we need the plants, but also the plants need us. And we can help them, and they can help us. We don't have to hurt each other. So right now, I'm taking my willow sticks, and I'm having to scrape them down, because, as we all know, stem always tapers from broad to very tiny. I just happen to use one of the holes of this abalone shell I have is just the right size, and so I use it as my size gauge. Then I just kind of give it a little light sanding, just because I like things to be nice. I started out doing this because I have a passion for making things, and I have had a passion for wanting to know what our baskets look like, and since there are very few in the world, my foundation are these three rods, three sticks, really, of willow. So three willow rods, two are side by side, and the third one is sitting on the top in the groove, and I'm wrapping around all three. I'll show you here. I'm going to be punching a hole just to pick up that one on the top. Sometimes it takes me a bit. I really have to find the right place where my tool exits so that I don't break the stitch. Basketry is very important to us because not only is it utilitarian, but there's an aesthetic as well. So a basket represents so many things, and it really grounds us because if you're a basket weaver, that you learn about the plants. You become friends with the plants. You learn the cycles. You learn not with words, but you learn through experience. Every time we do these things that our ancestors did, we feel more deeply and deeply connected with our past because the saddest thing is to think about the time after the Spanish came and to think about them feeling so devalued, so unappreciated, and to think of all of the hardships, but that feeling of rejection as a human being and being considered less than human, that's the thing I think that tears at my heart a lot. So it's my little way of helping to kind of balance the sadness and the injustice of history and have them at least be appreciated today. That's my motivation.