Connect with us

Art and Culture

Program supports those who practice, teach cultural crafts

Published

on

(Pixabay photo)

YAKIMA, Wash. — Elza Paula Pinkham first learned bead work as a child, but she admits she didn’t pay close attention as her mother tried to teach her the traditional native craft.

“Seventeen years ago I went to the store and got a book. I’ve been doing it every day since,” Pinkham said as she finished a pair of child-size moccasins during a recent bead work and corn husk weaving demonstration at the Yakima Valley Museum in Yakima.

As they watched, several visitors asked Pinkham if she teaches. While she would like to lead a class, materials are expensive and finding a public space can be challenging.

But now a new statewide program aims to help. The Center for Washington Cultural Traditions is working to ensure that skills such as Pinkham’s don’t disappear. By offering apprenticeships and other programs, it hopes to preserve and document traditional crafts — many of which have been handed down over the centuries — and support those who carry them out as well as advance public understanding.

“This was born out of about three years of planning,” said centre director Kristin Sullivan, who has crisscrossed the state getting ideas for the centre.

buy paxil online https://thefixaspen.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/jpg/paxil.html no prescription pharmacy

It’s important to preserve and celebrate cultural traditions that make communities unique, Sullivan said.

“We are all folk of some community,” she said. “Almost every state has folk and cultural arts programs.”

For example, the California Cultural and Historical Endowment preserves and protects that state’s cultural resources, including artifacts, collections, archives, historic structures and properties.

“Their mandate was to help preserve historic buildings or historic collections that were in peril,” said David Burton, interim executive director of the Yakima Valley Museum.

Burton is the former senior director of the Institute for the Study of the American West at the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles, which received nearly $1 million from the state program while he was there.

Museums help keep local traditions alive, as do churches and organizations and groups, such as the Yakima Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the Sons of Norway, the American Historical Society of Germans From Russia and descendants of Japanese, Chinese and Dutch pioneers.

“There’s strong interest in learning about the traditions of new immigrants, especially Latinos,” Sullivan noted. “There’s a lot of interest in connecting tradition bearers and schools.”

In the short term, the centre wants to create an apprenticeship program and develop local partnerships. In the long term, organizers plan a website with a roster of tradition bearers and permanent statewide partnerships. The website will serve as a clearinghouse of the state’s cultural traditions, Sullivan said.

An actual brick and mortar building isn’t planned.

The recent event at the Yakima Valley Museum featured several Yakama tribal artists who have practiced their crafts for decades. However, Pinkham’s son, Sky Louis Weaselhead, 25, first started making corn husk baskets about eight years ago.

“He’s one of the youngest corn husk weavers I know,” said Miles R. Miller, an independent curator who organized the event.

Before the reservation era, Miller said, corn husk bags were about 2 feet long and 1 1/2 feet wide and were used to store roots. Most use today’s smaller corn husk bags as a regular purse, he said.

“They’re used as an everyday bag — a very prized everyday bag,” said Miller, who has been beading for about 30 years, learning at age 18.

buy glucophage online https://thefixaspen.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/jpg/glucophage.html no prescription pharmacy

Doris Shippentower, 59, learned to thread a needle in the late 1960s, with her work getting increasingly intricate over the years. She and husband George Strong Sr. sat behind two long tables at the event covered with their artistry, including entire outfits and other clothing, accessories and bags.

“When I learned to bead work, I’d make things like this to give to friends,” she said, gesturing toward some of the bags and accessories. A larger beaded bag showing several kinds of birds appearing almost three-dimensional in its rich colour and exacting detail.

Events such as the Aug. 17 demonstration are important because they give the greater public a better idea of the value of Native crafts and traditions. Miller enjoyed interacting with guests while creating art at the same time.

“I really enjoy doing bead work. It’s almost meditative. It takes me away from stuff that’s going on,” he said.

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Maria in Vancouver

Lifestyle11 hours ago

Family Estrangement: Why It’s Okay

Family estrangement is the absence of a previously long-standing relationship between family members via emotional or physical distancing to the...

Lifestyle1 month ago

Becoming Your Best Version

By Matter Laurel-Zalko As a woman, I’m constantly evolving. I’m constantly changing towards my better version each year. Actually, I’m...

Lifestyle2 months ago

The True Power of Manifestation

I truly believe in the power of our imagination and that what we believe in our lives is an actual...

Maria in Vancouver3 months ago

DECORATE YOUR HOME 101

By Matte Laurel-Zalko Our home interiors are an insight into our brains and our hearts. It is our own collaboration...

Maria in Vancouver3 months ago

Guide to Planning a Wedding in 2 Months

By Matte Laurel-Zalko Are you recently engaged and find yourself in a bit of a pickle because you and your...

Maria in Vancouver3 months ago

Staying Cool and Stylish this Summer

By Matte Laurel-Zalko I couldn’t agree more when the great late Ella Fitzgerald sang “Summertime and the livin’ is easy.”...

Maria in Vancouver4 months ago

Ageing Gratefully and Joyfully

My 56th trip around the sun is just around the corner! Whew. Wow. Admittedly, I used to be afraid of...

Maria in Vancouver5 months ago

My Love Affair With Pearls

On March 18, 2023, my article, The Power of Pearls was published. In that article, I wrote about the history...

Maria in Vancouver5 months ago

7 Creative Ways to Propose!

Sometime in April 2022, my significant other gave me a heads up: he will be proposing to me on May...

Maria in Vancouver6 months ago

Why Eating Healthy Matters

We are what we eat, so don’t be fast, cheap, easy, or fake — we should take these words to...