Coast Salish coiled basketry has been a much-neglected area of research. Previous
investigations into this topic have been primarily concerned with geo-cultural
distributions, and discussions pertaining to stylistic attributes. In recent years several
scholars have turned their attention to the topic of Salish weavings, but they have focused
their efforts quite narrowly on textiles made from wool and other similar fibres to the
exclusion of weaving techniques such as basketry which utilise local roots and barks.
This thesis will focus exclusively on one type of Salish basketry - coiled basketry.
In this thesis I explore different ways of identifying, or "knowing", Coast Salish
coiled cedar root basketry. I specifically focus on Sto:lo basketry and identify three ways
in which Sto:lo basket makers "know" these objects. First I discuss the Halkomelem
terminology and what insights it provides to indigenous classification systems. Secondly,
I situate coiled basketry in a broader Coast Salish weaving complex in order to discuss
how basketry is influenced by other textile arts. This also enables me to explore how
Sto:lo weavers identify a well-made object. In the final section I discuss ownership of
designs by individuals and their families.
This research draws primarily from interviews conducted with Sto:lo basket
makers between May and September 2000 in their communities and at the Museum of
Anthropology at UBC. It is supplemented by interviews with basket makers from other
Salish communities and by the ethnographic literature on this topic.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/11536 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Fortney, Sharon M. |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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