Closed Captions Audio Described

Bridget Whipple, cultural anthropologist for the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs, discusses traditional weaving and basketry practices of her people living along the Columbia River. She demonstrates tulies, willows, cedar bark, and corn husk materials, explaining their uses in housing, ceremonies, trade, and daily life. Whipple shares stories about naming ceremonies, the cultural significance of salmon, and how these crafts connect to Warm Springs and Wasco heritage.

Transcript

0:10 well good morning everyone all right about half the classes are awake here but good morning everyone morning all right now we got an excited Bunch wonderful and welcome to the ten many voices ten voices is part of the core of Discovery 2 TR traveling Lewis and Clark exhibit it's a national
0:34 traveling exhibit been on the road since January 2003 and continue to travel through October of 2006 what we do here in the T of many voices is we bring in a wide variety of presenters to share with us different aspects of that Lewis and Clark expedition we also like to hear from the
0:57 descendants of all those American Indian nations and we're living here long before the arrival of ly Clark and this morning we're pleased to have with us Bridget Whipple she's the cultural Anthropologist for the confederated tribes of the Warm Springs reservation and she's going to talk about weeding and basketry traditions so
1:21 let's give Bridget a warm welcome to the T wel can you hear me okay um like you said my name is Bridget W and I'm from Warm Springs and um welcome you know to the Columbia River I'm sure you all live here but welcome um to to our land when
1:46 it was you know before the treaties but what I'm going to speak about this morning are some of the um the weaving stuff that we do and what I brought today are um these are Tuli rushes and Tuli rushes have have a long history with our tribes we um use them for housing um there's a frame outside on that side of the Discovery Center that
2:09 has a um like a A-Frame and what they used to do is um weave the tulies and make these mats that was part of the housing we didn't live in TS you know like you see on the the movies um those were the Plains Indians and you know we're from the colia river river so we use two Le them to pass some around so
2:29 you guys can touch them but tulies um had many many other um uses um I mean this is part of the seeds that when you get a Tulie they're about this tall you about three of them put together they're about you know about 8 9 ft
2:53 tall and then we cut them down into the sizes that we need and you know we dry them but some of the uses that we have for these are um when babies are born babies will get a baby name before they're a year old and they'll like lay them on the mat and the mat might be about as big as this table and sometimes the mother will be holding the child or
3:17 they'll just lay the baby on there then they'll get an Indian name a baby name and then as they get older they'll have another mat and they'll get a child name and then when they go through they write a passage as an adult and then they give an adult name and then again they'll have a mat um when people get married they the couple that's getting married they'll stand on a mat it'll be
3:41 a wedding mat and then when people pass away they get wrapped in the that so there's a lot of um uses for it um um it's used as decoration I've made some at my house that I use today as place mats um there's just a lot of different things that they're used for sometimes
4:05 people use them as decoration like I've seen crowns made out of them in this shape um made out of the tulies and then they cut them and you know they're used for decoration as well I've seen them made into bags like this but they made out of tulies and then they're um measured like this then you have a Tulie bag and they're real um sturdy they last
4:30 last a long time and um just kind of a neat neat um plant and it grows in like marshy areas you probably see them along the comia river and you know they they're just neat when they're fresh and green you can pull them out of the water and there's a little bulb on the end that you can eat it's really really
4:52 sweet um another one that I have is um Willow I pic cut these yesterday um we were building a sweat house and Willows used for a number of things also um like I said the sweat lodges we make them takes 12 about this size 12 of them to make one sweat lodge for for a
5:17 family so we constructed a new one yesterday cuz we always make a new one before it snows and when we were younger if we got into trouble our grandma used to tend us down to the creek and tell us to pick out a willow for our and then when we got back that was what we got worked
5:40 with so pick the fat ones if you ever get outet they don't hurt as much as the little ones and this is also Willow um we stripped this earlier it's not really the right time to get the willow right now for weaving um I we just you could get the willow pretty much anytime for
6:02 the sweat lodges but for the weaving you have to get it around early fall like August September and um I can send some of this around here
6:17 let that's a fresh one and I can send some of this this is that type of of Willow split um three directions that's a traditional way is
6:42 to split our Willow in three ways after you take the skin off of it but to make a basket are you guys going into the museum no oh well if you get a chance when you go into the museum you'll see the Huckleberry back baskets that's what this stuff is made out of where they call them the cck aat
7:05 baskets and this is for the outer the inner I don't have any with me it's called bear grass that's used as the the inside the [Music] poing but the Willows really um really a
7:28 neat fiber to work with cuz you could gather and I gathered this earlier and I have some more rounds like this and we'll save them up for 2 or 3 years and um to make one basket and we only work on them during the winter months not any other time of the year and one of the other things I have is this is called a corn husk
7:53 bag and my grandmother gave me this one um it's another Twining method it's used the husk to the corn with cordage and you wrap it and then twine it together it's a really long process um I don't really know the history behind it I just when I was about seven or eight my grandmother gave me showed me a bag and this was the bag she showed
8:16 me this bag and she showed me $7 and she's like which one do you want and then I was like looking at the money and my mom's pitching me take the bag take the bag you know and so I took the bag and my grandma puts the money in the bag we could tap this down but it's kind of has a neat story cuz every year on our birthday we get to choose something from
8:39 her and I have almost all of her corn husk bags now every year I got the same kind of bags um but those types of bags were used um as a trade item on the Columbia River they were used um in marriage ceremonies they make come very large as well and if um a wedding was um
9:01 a good thing between the two families um they would fill them with roots and or dry fish or you know something that showed that the young lady getting married knew how to do that so and this is um this has a twined edge this is called a shakai or a um Indian
9:24 suitcase um it's I just like it so this on is a side piece like I'm wearing right here but um this was a really good trade item on the Columbia River and it has a twined edge and with buck skin and we
9:42 can pass this around and this one is a cedar bark basket it's not twined it's folded it's taken from cedar bark tree and the history behind this
10:04 basket was for portable storage that was needed quickly like if we were in the mountains picking huckleberries we could pull a piece of bark off of a tree and make a basket like in half an hour and um if we sealed it with pitch it could make it waterproof so but a lot of times it was used to um just store
10:26 excess berries to haul them home or um if you find her medicines or teas that you want to well you stuff them in there and um just store them but the there's another story behind this um our elders used to talk about is this woman her name was papia and if you didn't listen and if
10:50 you didn't um mind your parents or whoever was taking care of you or if you didn't mind your teacher she'd come at you in the middle of the night and she have on her back like this and she'd stuff you in it and take you away you know and it and our elders used to say don't look out at night because she going to be peeking in at you and if she has her basket on your back on her
11:15 back she's looking to take you away because you're not being a good child so next time you look out your window and it's dark on Halloween but we could pass this around do I have any
11:35 [Music]
11:57 questions yeah it's made out of the cedar bark tree just one piece of wood one piece of bark what you geten away in the
12:19 basket youever away the basket I never got taken away in the basket no look out was basket we used to when we were little kids you know our grandma would tell us the story and then we'd like run out and peek out the windows and sometimes we'd have somebody scare
12:43 us [Music] but the and
13:01 [Music] do they just to the block off the off the tree and then they tie it up so it'll stick together yeah it's one piece of bark and
13:23 then you fold it up and it's just one piece did any of your friends get taken away from that no but we have a video um from about 1950 and they had showed how a baby was taken away or a child was taken away but it was like a play you know
13:45 just to show the kids to be good you ever any of the [Music]
14:09 basket do you know anyone who's been taken away a basket what kind of tree was it to put the um basket together a cedar bar three to her name was
14:33 T she was the basket woman can you say [Music] that who made the basket I did I made
14:55 it do you have schools what you have Indian Schools Indian schulls no school yeah we have Indian schools where I live we have our own school with kids like you guys how do you speak in
15:20 Indian if I told you good morning I'd say it that means good morning in my li can you say it no [Music] took we get to get the basket over yeah
15:43 it'll make it over there keep the everything moving guys everybody get a chance to see [Music] it do we have some more questions for bridg you did any rituals I had the first friiz cat on the other side did you do
16:06 any rituals we do yeah when some of the things I talked about like with the Tuli mats with the baby that's a ritual when they get their baby name that's one of them yeah the land that we're standing on um a little bit closer to the river
16:30 was a an Indian village here that people theas people lived at and um it was called NE flu and it mean Rippling water on the Rocks which meant it was real shallow but it was a fishing area so all along the Columbia River where we're at was there was Villages and fishing and
16:52 Gathering and um everything was here how do they decide the baby names and can you share yours or is that something that's like um well a baby name is given for a certain purpose like when the if the
17:16 baby was born in the spring like I have two daughters um my oldest daughter her name is Rose Bud and she was named after a lady um from Montana that showed me how to be work so and her name was Rose but her um Indian name is is Chapa which means Where the Wild Roses Grow and then our younger daughter um my
17:40 husband Sue from South Dakota and his family um wanted to give her a name so she has two names um my aunt named her um lookl Kash me which means um shiny sunflower and then um my husband's family we named her H sh which means three stars woman which
18:05 is their family name so when you say her whole name you know kind of a long name for a fouryear old and then as they grow older they'll get another name my name um adult name is Yo which is my grandma's grandmother's name so the adult names
18:27 are usually handed down you know how to say hello in your language no do you do it depending on the time of the day so like I said it's morning
18:50 so means good morning please say good night [Music] language how do you say good night in your language [Music]
19:09 um um where did you get the string on the bag I'm not b
19:31 the cornhouse bag the string the the handle it's a deer skin bu skin how do you say oh goodbye in your [Music] language goodbye how do you say goodbye in your
19:55 language it means see see you later do you know what look
20:18 like right here I don't have I have ten of shoes on Grand I you say buffalo
20:42 langu who wants know how to say buffalo didn't have Buffalo my friend do you have any Indian
21:06 shoes yeah here look at Len can you talk about the importance of salmon for a little bit yeah sure um salm to our
21:30 people related to the water water means everything to our people it's what gives life um when you talk about the Columbia River we call her inana which means the big big water or the Big River and it's where we got everything um we got the
21:52 fish from her we we got the clean ourselves from her we drank from the river um it meant everything when we did our sweat bath we took the water into the sweat with us but the fish coming out of the river meant that we were going to live we were going to survive um sometimes like the um cedar bark basket
22:16 you could line that cedar bark basket with the pitch but you could use the salmon skin as well which would make it really waterproof um or you could even eat the salmon skin if you we got it hot on the rocks in the fire and it was kind of like chips almost um so but the salmon in our culture was was like everything it meant everything to
22:41 us it was a trade item um they wind tried it they when salt when the Traders came like Louis and Clark they brought salt and sugar um we learned how to Salt s and in barrels that they brought and um so salmon was you know our life blood as well as with the water but when people when our people
23:05 live here all the time um like I was saying right below us is a was the old village and um you know our people that lived there you know had the salmon and they dried it and traded it with the other Indians and they traded things you know like stuff made with the willow or stuff made with the chulis as well because some
23:29 people were known for fixing salmon some people were known for their bead work some people were known for their weaving and it was your specialty that made you give you trade items to trade with other people so um on my mother's side of my family we're weav you know all you know all the history that we have all the way back it shows that our people leave you
23:54 know we did the corn husks and we did the tulies and and all of that but on my dad side my dad's from the river too um my mother's Wasco my dad's Warm Springs and my on my father's side they were fish people in the fishing and Gathering so we had to learn how to dig the roots and pick the berries and um do all of the
24:17 beeder stuff so my children get to learn both you know they're really rich in that Heritage and they're learning how to do everything you know they go out with us and clean fish when it's fishing time and then we'll get to weave in the winter and we'll go dig and pick and we're part of the ceremonial digging for the the louses and um it's just it's a rich rich
24:42 culture you know and we keep it intact just by practicing it what do you eat there besides fish what do you eat besides
25:06 fish we eat beer meat we eat elk meat um we eat the berries like the huffle berries and the wild strawberries and um popcorn berries choke cherries um all the different kind of roots
25:31 do you eat rice do you eat rice not really only want to go to Chinese restaurant I would like to ask do you teach your children in the school your Creed language the language yeah yeah my my grandmother who showed
25:55 us how to weave she doesn't talk English to my children only POS the language you made
26:19 pizza you know how to c fish do you know how to clean fish yeah do you eat any other kind of fish
26:42 we do we eat trout we eat um S I only like s in the trout go to
27:06 want know if you go to Warm Springs water slide my kids do right tra time for one or two more questions guys move be back here do you have any Indian
27:27 money do you have Indian money do I have Indian money yeah my trade goods are my Indian money the [Music] school what were the schools made what
27:48 kind of school schools out of like out of these out of the Tuli the Tuli re man let's Thank You Bridget sharing
28:10 with us let's please give her a round of [Applause]
28:27 applause
28:57 e

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Bridget Whipple on Warm Springs weaving and basketry traditions

Bridget Whipple

Warm Springs, Wasco

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Bridget Whipple on Warm Springs weaving and basketry traditions

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