By Pat Murkland
December is a time to gather around the hearth, whether it’s near a fire or the warmth emanating from your own heart. It’s a time to share. The other day as December’s sunshine flowed through the skylights of Dorothy Ramon Learning Center’s Gathering Hall, we shared a lovely cultural afternoon with about 20 members of the Cherokee Community of the Inland Empire. They were learning traditional Cherokee weaving.
Cherokee flat-reed weaving (Pat Murkland Photo)
Our new Cherokee friends had come to our Banning center from Riverside, Los Angeles, and other points in Southern California for a flat-reed weaving workshop led by renowned Cherokee weavers Betty Frogg and her sister Barbara Adair, who had traveled here from the Cherokee homelands of Oklahoma.
Meeting National Treasures
People throughout the United States celebrate historic landmarks in the National Register of Historic Places. The Cherokee Nation celebrates about 100 people. Betty Frogg and Barbara Adair are each officially a Cherokee National Treasure.
“The Cherokee National Treasure distinction is an honor given by the tribe to individuals who are keeping the art, language and culture alive, helping to preserve and advance our lifeways,” Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. said in 2022 when Barbara Adair joined her sister as a National Treasure.
“I see Cherokee National Treasures as being the keepers of those special values and traditions we hold so sacred as Cherokees,” he said.
We were so honored when our Inland Southern California Cherokee community organization asked Dorothy Ramon Learning Center to host this workshop with two Cherokee National Treasures. We became more thrilled when they invited us to invite someone to join them.
Traditional Cahuilla weaver Rose Ann Hamilton of Cahuilla Reservation answered the call. She’s our National Treasure, sharing and teaching the ancestors’ beautiful Cahuilla basket-weaving traditions as they have been passed down through uncounted generations.
She spoke in Cahuilla to welcome all the weavers to our local Native American homelands. We learned the Cherokee, “Osiyo, o-gi-na-li. Hello, my friend.”
Traditional basket weaver Rose Ann Hamilton of Cahuilla Reservation, our workshop guest, later won the drawing for a beautiful handmade Cherokee basket! Wow! (Pat Murkland photo)
Weaving in Cherokee
And the Cherokee National Treasures began their workshop on traditional flat-reed weaving by pulling out — a giant roll of duct tape? Wait, what?
Betty Frogg pulls out the duct tape (Pat Murkland photo)
Betty Frogg explained as she deftly ripped off pieces of duct tape for each participant that if the ancestors had duct tape, they definitely would have used it to help make flat-reed mats. Being Cherokee means making the best use out of the materials and tools you have on hand, she said. (Southern California Indigenous people say: same.)
Duct tape it was. That indeed was quickly efficient in taping down all the ends of the stiff and curved reeds and getting them to line up in a cooperative row. Now everyone could begin weaving into them.
Starting the weaving (Pat Murkland photo).
While the Cahuilla often use juncus, deer grass, and sumac to weave baskets, the Cherokee weavers said they frequently use buckbrush and river cane. In both cultures, the gathering process and relationship with gathering materials are integral to this sacred and special art. Natural materials provide beautiful dyes.
While writing down weaving patterns is absolutely taboo for the Cahuilla, in the Cherokee culture, it’s OK. Betty Frogg had worked out a chart to help participants learn the pattern of the day. In looking at all the counting needed to make the pattern work in each row, we were reminded just how many math calculations go into the art of basketry.
It made us deeply appreciate how left-brained and right-brained our own traditional Southern California weavers are to use intuition, memory, and math together as they create patterns in their coiled baskets. Rose Ann Hamilton says that some patterns are learned, passed down through word of mouth for generations, and other patterns the weavers create themselves.
From these two bundles, the weavers achieve this design, shown as “fish scales” here. (Pat Murkland photo)
Piece by piece, the Cherokee flat-reed weaving pattern emerged. It’s two-in-one: held horizontally, it’s mountain tops. But vertically, it’s fish scales, which Betty Frogg said she really likes. She and her sister pleasantly encouraged and helped individual weavers through the different steps, right through the last step of sewing sinew around the edges to secure the woven mat in place.
Barbara Adair shows how to sew the sinew in place to secure the woven mat. (Pat Murkland photo)
We enjoyed lunch together, which included an amazing elk chili. Wa-do, in Cherokee: Thank you. We talked about a possible future intertribal gathering in which our new friends could share some of their cultural Cherokee foods (that elk chili was GOOD) and also taste our local California cuisine, such as delicious foods made with chia seeds, yucca flowers, or acorns. Let’s talk about doing this sometime in 2024!
Thank you (Wa-do)
We thank the Cherokee Community of the Inland Empire (CCIE) for sharing two Cherokee National Treasures with us, and look forward to future gatherings (Pat Murkland photo).
Mountain view (Pat Murkland photo)
Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, our 501c3 nonprofit led by Elder Ernest Siva (Cahuilla-Serrano), has had a wonderful 2023 saving and sharing Southern California’s Native American cultures, languages, history, and traditional arts with you.
NEXT: The Learning Center’s next event in partnership with the Morongo Empowerment Program will be from 1 to 2 pm on Jan. 3, 2024, part of our continuing exploration of The Mindful Family Guidebook with author Renda Dionne Madrigal.
MORE INFO HERE.
A big thank you from leaders Ernest Siva, June Siva, and Editor Pat Murkland to our faithful readers for reading, sharing, and subscribing to our online free newsletter, News from Dorothy Ramon Learning Center. See you again soon!