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Contact: David West (west@nsula.edu
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News Bureau
Northwestern State University
Natchitoches, LA 71497
(318) 357-6466
4/26/2002
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NATCHITOCHES- The Regional Folklife Program and the Williamson Museum at Northwestern State University will hold a conference on Southeastern Indian basketry May 17-18. The conference will be in the Friedman Student Union on NSU's Natchitoches campus. Registration for the conference is $10.
Conference sessions will be from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. each day. A basketry and crafts demonstration/marketplace will be held in the Student Union lobby. Admission to the marketplace is free and open to the public.
"We have invited basketmakers from throughout the Southeast to give them an opportunity to interact with each other and with program and museum specialists," said regional folklorist Dr. Dayna Lee, who is organizing the conference along with NSU Professor of Anthropology Dr. Hiram F. Gregory. "We want to identify the weavers' concerns, identify programs that may offer assistance to them, and talk about similarities and differences in techniques, materials and designs."
The tentative schedule for the conference includes sessions on environmental issues, partnerships, museum collections, the art of basketry and the economics of the art. Participants will also have the opportunity to visit Williamson Museum on the Northwestern campus which has one of the region's most extensive basket collections. The museum has approximately 30,000 catalogued lots and is one of the most important collections in the southeastern U.S.
There will also be sessions on apprenticeships, fellowships and other grants along with presentations by anthropologists, public folklorists, museologists and basketmakers who have worked to preserve or present traditional Southeastern basketry.
Lee said one interesting part of basketry is how different groups use the same materials to create unique works.
"People will use the same material such as split cane and the designs and weaves will be different. The patterns and dyes are distinguishable from group to group," she said. "Basketry produced by Choctaw weavers is different than that produced by the Chitamacha, even though the baskets use the same material."
According to Lee, baskets have evolved into works of art, but they historically had practical uses.
"They were first used for storage or transporting things, dividing internal space within houses and in ceremonial activities, then used as exchange items," said Lee. "Later, baskets took on commercial aspects and were used to bring money into traditional communities during hard economic times."
The conference is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and the U.S. Forest Service. Additional information can be obtained at www.nsula.edu/regionalfolklife/RegionalNews/news.htm, by calling (318) 357-4328 or e-mail reg_folklife@nsula.edu.