Sealaska Heritage Institute to digitally preserve spruce-root basket weaving

Sealaska Heritage Institute is going digital to preserve an Alaska Native art form: spruce-root basket weaving. With some outside help, the organization will produce how-to videos that show the entire Tlingit basket making process.

“It was just something that really connected with me I guess. I enjoy being outside, and I enjoy digging in the dirt,” says Hans Chester, a spruce-root weaver in Juneau.

He says the art form is painstaking. The weavers dig up thin roots which they split again and again to make delicate threads, only a few millimeters thick.

“It really does take a long time, it takes a good six to eight hours to split the roots for every hour that you’re out digging. So if you go out and dig for two hours you have another day of work ahead of you,” he says.

And that’s not even getting to the weaving, actually building the piece and incorporating the designs. Chester acknowledges that this art form takes a lot of commitment, and that’s partly why few folks do it.

“I ask myself that a lot of time, as I’m splitting roots. ‘What did I get myself into? I don’t know if I’m going to be able to get through this and get them all split?’ It just really challenged my own thinking,” Chester says.

But Chester’s not whining, he clearly is enamored with the art form and all the challenges it presents.

“There’s just a lot of discovery I think that comes with weaving and not just within the art itself but within your personal life and your own goals,” he says.

He was an apprentice to master Haida weaver Delores Churchill, a huge name in Southeast for her woven baskets, hats and robes. Chester’s now her assistant in some of the spruce-root workshops.

“I’m a big thinker and I have all these aspirations of making different baskets,” he says. “Using different designs that Delores says ‘I don’t see these anymore. I just see them on the old baskets in the museums.’ It inspires me to try and bring some of those things back.”

Chester says what the master weavers know now is only a fraction of what their ancestors knew. And once the weavers we have now pass on, how much of what they know will survive?

That’s why Sealaska Heritage Institute is documenting the spruce-root workshops. National geographic is helping fund this project. Linblad, an expedition company that also promotes artisan development across the globe, is producing the videos.

In the past, Linblad came to Haida Gwaii to facilitate raven’s tail weaving workshops.

These how-to videos will be posted online for weavers of all skill levels, like Chester, to learn the craft.

“The baskets that were made really allowed us to be who we are today,” he says.  “If we didn’t have those water pales that were woven tight enough to carry water, what would we have? How would we have survived? There’s an obligation on our part to maintain and to teach it to others because of that reason.”