Activity: What Can a Basket Tell Us

 1. Begin by looking at a set of baskets. (For examples from the Fielding Collection you can read this Object Story or visit The Huntington’s Collection site here.) Start by looking at each object and discuss its shape, color, materials, and decorations. Try to answer the following questions:

• What are you looking at?
• What do you think it means?
• What makes you think that?
• What more are you wondering about this image?

Continue by generating a list of questions about who might have made these objects. Consider whether it was made by a group or an individual and what kind of experience or knowledge the maker might need to make this object.

2. Spend time looking at how they were made. What can we see in each of these images that might help us know how they were made?

• Baskets from all cultures can be made in three different ways: 1) coiling—where there is a continuous spiral foundation sewn together; 2)plaiting—a traditional weaving style with a warp and weft and interwoven fibers in an ‘over /under’ pattern; and 3)twining—where two or more fibers are interwoven.
• People who make and study baskets pay attention to ornamentation and decoration; the size and form of the basket; and the materials used to make the basket.

3. Discuss the ornamentation on the baskets. Share images of different ornamentation including the dome, dot, and flower shapes. Then discuss what these symbols and decorations might mean to the people who made the baskets and how the ornamentation may have changed to meet different preferences.

4. Make a list of any key events and information that show how basketmaking in the Northeast changed over time with Indigenous basket-makers. This might include being forcibly removed from native lands, having to make baskets to earn a living, changing their practices to make baskets that appealed to the European settlers, and making designs more quickly.

5. Have students reflect and then write about what they see using the following prompts:

• Based on the background information, I understand these baskets differently because…
• Just looking at these baskets might not give me the whole picture of Indigenous people because…
• Other documents and artifacts to consider in the larger story of Indigenous people during this time might be…