Nlaka’pamux Basket-making

Nlaka’pamux women have long been highly skilled basket-makers. They harvest western redcedar root, make it pliable for weaving or coiling into a variety of baskets, and use strips of wild red cherry bark and split stalks of grasses as decorative overlay in creating geometric designs. Basket-making is central to Nlaka’pamux cultural identity, signifying the role of women as culture bearers. Their ethnobotanical and technical knowledge has been transferred through female lines for generations, as has the making of baskets using traditional motifs. Basket-making is a tangible expression of Nlaka’pamux culture, and embodies historical memory.

The Nlaka’pamux (pronounced En-la-kap-mah), formerly known as the Thompson Indians, reside in British Columbia’s Interior Plateau, between the Coast Mountains to the west and the Rocky Mountains to the east. They are one of the Interior Salish-speaking peoples in Canada.

Before European arrival in the Plateau, which began in the first decade of the 1800s, Nlaka’pamux baskets were an important commodity of the active trade networks that linked Interior Salish peoples with one another as well as with the peoples of the coast and the plains. Baskets were integral to all aspects of life, from storing and transporting goods to cradling babies. During a period of tremendous culture loss and change between 1850 and 1930, the production and active marketing of baskets by Nlaka’pamux women provided an economic foothold for families and their communities, enabling women to support their families as colonialism disrupted Indigenous economies. Beginning in the 1850s, three outside trends stimulated demand for the basket makers’ products. The greatest of these was a mania for collecting Indigenous basketry among middle class and wealthy urbanites in North America that continued until the 1930s. Another source of demand came from museums in the 1890s that were accumulating Indigenous material culture for ethnographic purposes. A widespread retail demand from urban households and agricultural industries also spurred Nlaka’pamux basket-making.

Until the 1930s, Nlaka’pamux women produced vast quantities of basketwares following techniques, forms, and decorative styles that predated European arrival. Collectors recognized that Nlaka’pamux baskets were unique among Indigenous basketry in Canada. The tradition of basket-making survived because basket makers also adapted their craft to new forms. Non-traditional items such as basketry tea trays and letter holders were in great demand and produced in large numbers. Basket-making declined between the Great Depression and the end of the Second World War. By the 1950s, knowledge of basket-making among the Nlaka’pamux was on the verge of being lost altogether. However, an appreciation for Indigenous crafted arts returned at this time, and by the 1970s newly crafted Nlaka’pamux baskets were recognized as art of the very highest calibre. Today, there is a growing interest in basket-making among the Nlaka’pamux and other Salish weavers, ensuring the continued practice of this remarkable art form.

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