Suquamish master artist brings works back to life | Kitsap Weekly

SUQUAMISH — It’s part of Ed Carriere’s DNA to be patient.

His Suquamish ancestors have been here since the beginning, so a year, 100 years, 1,000 years are mere fragments of time.

Like his ancestors, Carriere knows that at some point, everything comes full circle. Examples: The Suquamish people lost land during the allotment period, but a majority of the Port Madison Indian Reservation is now back in Tribal ownership. Carriere served on the Suquamish Tribal Council in the 1950s, when the lease agreement was signed making the Suquamish Shores neighborhood possible. That lease is now ending, and soon the homes will be gone and the land will be as it was before.

So, it seems fitting, perhaps, that this patient man has been the one to reawaken the ancestors’ works.

Carriere, a master artist, has replicated woven cedar-root pack baskets based on fragments found at sites exposed by river bank erosion. He studied the weave of the fragments to re-create the baskets; he was somewhat surprised to find that the beauty and functionality of the ancient baskets were similar to those created centuries later, a testament to the endurance of cultural knowledge passed down generation by generation.

The fragments had been preserved in an airless, waterlogged state for about 2,000 years on the banks of the Snoqualmie River near Duvall. They were found in the early 1960s after a flood event and are in the collection of the Burke Museum.

In 2014-15, Carriere worked with Dr. Dale Croes, an archeologist who was taught basketweaving by Makah elders for his dissertation on the Ozette village site, to replicate the ancestors’ works — a blend of archaeological science and 100 generations of cultural knowledge.

They studied more than 50 basketry examples at the Burke Museum, and Croes’ assistant, Kathleen Hawes, conducted cellular ID of the basketry materials with a microscope.

“The collection was intriguing to say the least,” Carriere wrote in the Suquamish Newsletter in April 2015. “However, most of the basketry was in fragments. We had to examine each one to recon-struct how they might have looked when complete.”

Hawes deter-mined all the basket materials were split western red cedar roots. “They also had twill 3-3 weave bottoms,” Carriere recalled. “Today, most baskets are twill 2-2 [and] the handles were often on the sides of the carrying baskets on a reinforcement row of two strand wrapped elements.”

At the recommendation of the Burke, Carriere worked on replicating a fine-weave, open-twined basket; Croes worked on replicating a courser-gauge, checker-plaited utility basket. The completed baskets are now in the Burke Museum’s ethnology collection.

Since that replication, Carriere received a Burke Museum grant to teach students about Suquamish basketry and the gathering of natural materials. Workshop participants joined Carriere at the Burke in July 2015 and were able to study parts of the 2,000-year-old burden basket from the Duvall site, as well as the Carriere’s replica of that same basket. He and Croes co-authored a paper for the Society for American Archaeology 2016 Conference, and they will make a presentation on their work at 5 p.m. Oct. 13 at Western Washington University.

The replicated baskets also help provide a more complete picture of life at the Duvall site. According to The Archaeological Conservancy, excavations at the site in the 1970s revealed it was a village location, with evidence of “a large structure, workshop areas, and fish weirs.” Among the objects excavated: a house post, associated side posts, tools, basketry, mats, cordage net sinkers, and wooden implements. The site was donated to The Archaeological Conservancy in 2009 by Dr. Astrida Blukis Onat, who conducted archeology there.

Inherited from his great-grandmother
The past is not far from Carriere.

His great-grandmother, Julia, was the daughter of Wa’hal’chu and Wesidult; Wa’hal’chu was a leader, or chief, of the Suquamish. The couple raised Julia at Old Man House, reportedly the largest winter longhouse on the Salish Sea. Kitsap lived there; so did Si’ahl, or Seattle, and Seattle’s father.

Carriere was raised by his great-grandmother, so people and events considered “historical” and “long ago” to most people are, to him, just two touches ago.

Carriere was born and raised in Indianola, on land that once belonged to Wa’hal’chu and Wesidult. He learned to make clam baskets from his great-grandmother, and he started making baskets when he was 12. He became an expert weaver of several styles of baskets, including twined cedar bark and cattail baskets, and coiled cedar root baskets.

Several of his baskets are in the Burke Museum collection. Go to the lobby of the Suquamish Clearwater Casino Hotel; the canoe with handwoven cedar fiber reef net, suspended above the lobby, are his work.

“It’s been my goal to weave like my ancestors did,” he said, and the Duvall basket replications were not his first; he also replicated a basket that belonged to his great-great-grandfather, Wa’hal’chu.

Like the works of his ancestors, each object he creates has meaning, as well as purpose. He explains the pattern in one intricately woven basket. “It tells the story of things I’ve done in my life,” he said. It took him more than 1.000 hours. A chain stitch represents holding people together; a pattern represents a gill net, glass beads represent the water line. A canoe, salmon and mountains are represented.

Outside, on a spot overlooking Port Madison Bay, house posts tell the story of his family. On one post is a likeness of Wa’hal’chu with crab, wolf and raven; on another, Wesidult, the great-great-grandmother, with blue heron and frog; on another, Julia, with salmon and duck; and on another, Carriere himself, with geoduck.

The posts were carved by Jewell James, the noted Lummi Nation carver.

Here, the past is present, and time is of little consequence.

“You have to have a lot of patience,” Carriere told Kitsap Weekly during a February 2015 interview. “Time means nothing. Forget about time.”

Ed Carriere carries a clam basket that he made based on the patterns in the photograph of the 2,000-year-old basket fragment, at left. Sophie Bonomi / Herald