Baskets woven by Wabanaki artists over the past century, their function and the techniques used to make them will be documented for future generations to learn thanks to a new project at two Maine museums.
Over the next two years, the University of Maine’s Hudson Museum and the Penobscot Nation Museum will use a $100,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to create a digital lexicon, or a vocabulary archive, describing Wabanaki basketry. It will feature photographs of pieces from the Maliseet, Mi’kmaq, Passamaquoddy and Penobscot tribes and their descriptions, written by four artists with a legacy of basket-making in their families.
Museums have not historically documented basketry collections with the input of the people who made them, said Gretchen Faulkner, director of the Hudson Museum in Orono, but this project gives Wabanaki artists a voice. Museum leaders view the project as a necessary step toward honoring tribal traditions. They hope it inspires museums across the country with collections of Wabanaki baskets and those made by other Native Americans to do the same.
Beyond that, the project is about reclaiming Wabanaki history and preserving the mastery of elder tribal members while they are still around, said Jennifer Neptune, who is a basket maker and director of the Penobscot Nation Museum.
“Museums hold collections important to our communities, but they aren’t always easy to access,” she said. “Distrust goes both ways. But we have experts, stories and the traditional knowledge that goes with these objects. The museums have a lot of the objects. Bringing them together makes both stronger.”
Neptune, of the Penobscot Nation, and three other basketmakers — Richard Silliboy, vice chief of the Mi’kmaq Nation, and Frances Soctomah and Peter Neptune of the Passamaquoddy tribe — will lend their expertise to the project. They will review thousands of baskets and write descriptions for them, touching on the various weaves and ornamentation that makes them unique.
It’s crucial that accurate and consistent language is used, rather than the words of a museum registrar without a background in Wabanaki basketry, Faulkner said. Once the lexicon is complete, it will be accessible to the public on the museum’s website.
This project builds on 30 years of collaboration between the two museums, Faulkner said. It also ties in with a formal agreement between UMaine and the Penobscot Nation, which calls for the care and management of Penobscot collections and cultural items held at the Hudson Museum.
“This is about creating a model for collaboration and curation that we can extend to other traditions,” Faulkner said, noting that while the museums have other Wabanaki collections, its basketry ones are the most extensive.
The Penobscot Nation Museum on Indian Island, which opened in 1978, also has many pieces, though it has been closed to the public since the COVID-19 pandemic and is mostly used for storage, Neptune said. It will move to a new location, which is being built and will house the Penobscot Nation’s tribal administration, tribal court and museum, she said.
The museum, which will have an expanded exhibit space, more storage and an office for Neptune, will likely reopen to the public in the spring of 2025. Finally, there will be room to breathe and feature changing or rotating exhibits, she said.
“It will allow Jen to borrow and receive things from other institutions,” Faulkner said. “Things that can come back to their community, things that have been gone for 100-plus years.”
The Hudson Museum’s Wabanaki collection includes a Penobscot splitter from 1900, gauges used to split strips of basket material and a crooked knife for making basket handles and sturdy wooden rims, along with other tools.
Also on display are a Wabanaki fan from 1900, a Penobscot acorn tatting basket from 1940 and a Passamaquoddy pack purse from 2017, made by basketmaker Gabriel Frey and jeweler Nisa Smiley.
Wabanaki baskets are typically made from brown ash and sweetgrass, Neptune said, noting that ash baskets are also made in other parts of the country where the trees grow. It’s more common to see birchbark, cedar and other materials in contemporary baskets, Faulkner said.
At the museum on Wednesday, Neptune pointed to a Penobscot candy basket from 1940, with a 10-cent price tag still attached. The tiny baskets were typically colorful and made with scraps from larger baskets, then sold to children, she said.
“Kids who were learning would also make little baskets like this and sell them for candy money,” she said.
The story is an example of what will be preserved through the Wabanaki lexicon.
Today’s artists and basketmakers want to keep the memories of their ancestors alive, Neptune said, and this project is one way to do that.
“When I’m gone, someone might now know what a sugar bowl basket or a tatting basket is,” she said. “This needs to be documented so that 30, 50, 75 years from now, a Penobscot person will know. Our knowledge will be here so they can connect to their ancestors and this beautiful work.”
