Research
Throughout my work as a weaver, I have become deeply interested in people-plant relationships, especially the interdependence that basket weaving illustrates between people and the land they are situated within. I am particularly curious about what we can learn from understanding the wider bonds of belonging and kinship relations that weaving demonstrates about human coexistence within the ecosystems they weave with.
I am also particularly interested in how the practice of basketry, like many aspects of culture, is part of ongoing adaptation and change, as well as being influenced and eroded by its relationship to many socio-political and environmental factors. Although basketry is one of the most ancient examples of human resource-use within subsistence relationships, it is in no way static or stable. Throughout history, basketry and the livelihoods of many people who weave, has been influenced by the globalised world and their convergence with various colonial actors in different regions where strong basket weaving traditions remain.
Basketry is inherently interwoven with land and access to the plants and forests that weavers use as resources to weave their baskets. Throughout the world, many indigenous groups and nature-based peoples who have woven baskets on their ancestral lands for generations, have been and continue to be impacted by land-rights issues and obtaining title to their homelands. In many cases, these people find it increasingly challenging to obtain access to their traditional plants to weave with due to land-theft, privatisation of land and logging that clear-cuts huge swathes of forest each day, decimating all, including specific trees and palms that are used by these people for basketry. When this land is cleared the loggers do not choose between the timber they are targeting and other native species amongst them, therefore all is destroyed. Similarly, when land is decimated by cattle ranchers or sold to private companies, the long inhabitation and use of forests by indigenous people and their cultural crafts is ignored. For thousands of years indigenous tenure of land to harvest native plants for basket weaving has been passed down between families and tended to and many individuals hold tenure to particular trees within their communities.
Many plants used for weaving also hold ritual significance and are tied closely to the cosmology of many people. The factors mentioned above do not only diminish and deteriorate access to materials, displacing people from their lands and resources but they also erode kinship bonds and neglect the wider bonds of belonging that people have with their ancestral land. Colonial modernisation projects that focus on “conservation and development” continuously fail to recognise these sacred bonds, thus eroding the livelihoods, identity and dignity of peoples connection to land.
I am currently living and working with a small community of Emberá people in the lowlands tropical forests of eastern Panama, where I am honoured to weave baskets with the women most days as well as researching how their cultural lifeways are impacted by environmental governance in the region. The Emberá are some of the most skilled basket weavers in the world, weaving intricate coiled baskets and masks from the forests where they live from Chunga (Black Palm) and Nahuala, commonly known as the Panama Hat Plant. The Chunga Palm, like many other parts of their cultural traditions, is under threat due to illegal as well as state-licensed logging in the region destroying large areas of the forest. The interweaving of the lives of the Emberá and their lifeway as artisans, like many parts of their lives, is often overlooked and ignored as their resource-rich lands are destroyed or stolen from them. In many cases, weavers now have to travel many hours to find harvestable plants.
