By Teri Albert, Columnist

Art World: Local tribal artists make traditional Native American baskets

Native American basketry represents a rich and unique traditional art. For centuries, tribal women integrated naturalistic and geometric designs into basket forms ranging from utilitarian to ceremonial.

The Coos Bay region supports a wealth of natural materials, and local weavers Sara Helms and Charlie Marie Moxley — members of the Confederated Tribes of the Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians — are impressively skilled at gathering and processing the components needed for their baskets.

And each, despite the evidence of her art, is quick to declare her status as novice.

“I am still a student, a learner,” said Helms. “I am not an expert. I take classes from women who have degrees ... Margaret Mathewson, Ph.D, travels all over teaching, and she would not consider herself a master weaver.”

It’s much the same story from Charlie Moxley. One of her baskets was considered fine enough to earn placement in an exhibition at the University of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History. In her words, however, “I am a beginner.”

Moxley is fifth generation Coos Indian. Helms is of Miluk Coos ancestry. Each credits family for inspiration and acquired skills. Charlie Moxley admits she has always been “artsty-craftsy.” Then, she relates, in the autumn of the year 2000 her cousin insisted that she attend a basketry class.

“In terms of teaching, we’re far behind,” said Moxley. “We kind of like to keep it in the family, because we’re just learning it again.”

According to the Tribe’s education director, Christine Hovind, the basketry designs originally came from the grandmothers. “The work was exclusive to families and unique to the coastal peoples. Basketry is the finest of our work — everyday items that are taken to a high art. These days we tend to hold it a little closer to the chest,” says Hovind.

Sara Helms recalls a childhood lived in the woods off the Siletz River. “My Dad raised me — we had no electricity — he showed me love of nature. Took me to all the powwows and celebrations. I started weaving baskets 10 years ago. I was pregnant, and Amanda Siestreem said, ‘Let’s gather some roots!’ She spoke with a lot of Tribal Elders, and her excitement caught me.

“I’ve heard people say that ours is a tribe with no culture. I think basketry will be good for the tribe. It is a big part of our culture,” Helms emphatically declared. She offers weaving classes from her home in North Bend. In her classroom/studio, sunlight pours through a window. Shelves of tools and baskets, weavings and grasses surround a large worktable. I ask about a child-size grass skirt, and Helms responds with a story about how her father taught her how to peel the bark of cedar trees. “We do it in a way that doesn’t hurt the tree. It heals itself — we don’t ever hurt the tree.” She made the skirt for one of her daughters.

Behind a curtain, a dark closet is a treasure trove of grasses and sticks. Helms digs spruce roots, harvests hazel sticks, and gathers bright, chartreuse wolf moss which she uses to dye porcupine quills. She shows me black sea grass and describes the way maidenhair fern grows in the shape of a hand, half black and half red.

Helms and Moxley share a love of Oregon’s coastal, wild iris: purple-blue wisps on tall, pliable stems.

Charlie Moxley gathers her willow roots and sticks in the spring. “They’re the ones you dig — they’re feathery,” she said. Patience is one of the tools she employs. “Cedar bark alone has to sit for over a year before you can work with it.”

She uses Woodwardia fern dyed with alder bark to create the color orange, and she shows me some bear grass — white, and shiny. She is wearing a striking, pendant necklace strung with glass and wooden beads, anchored with a tiny, delicate, lattice-topped basket.

“Before I bound it together with leather, I placed a bit of aromatic angelica root inside,” she said, explaining that the herb wards off evil. She gathered the angelica from Gregory Point, traditional site of the Miluk village, Baldich.

“How perfect,” she said of the angelica, “that an angel watches.”

Teri Albert reviews art and artists for The World.  She can be reached at malbert3@verizon.net.

Comment Policy

The World welcomes your comments about stories, and we encourage a robust dialogue on this site. All comments must meet reasonable standards of decency and civility.

Please follow these basic rules:

• No defamatory comments about individuals or businesses.
• No deliberately false information.
• No obscenity or racially offensive language.
• No harassment, verbal abuse, threats or personal attacks.
• No information that invades another person's privacy.
• No business solicitations or charitable solicitations.

Comments that violate these standards will not be posted. Users with repeated violations may be banned from future posting.

Comments will be approved throughout the day during business hours. After hours and weekend comments may not appear until the following business day. It may take a couple of hours before comments are approved.

The World generally does not edit comments, but we reserve the right to edit any comment that does not meet our standards.