Celebrating Native American Heritage Month by Revisiting Award-Winning Penobscot Basketmaker Theresa Secord

We are celebrating Native American Heritage Month and the NEA National Heritage Award by revisiting Theresa Secord—a 2106 awardee and Penobscot basketmaker.   Although Secord’s great-grandmother was renowned for her baskets woven from the bark black ash tree and sweet grass, Theresa herself didn’t learn to weave until she was an adult.  In the podcast she discusses returning to the reservation after getting a master’s degree in geology and becoming interested in the traditional cultural art forms of the Wabanaki and learning basketry from an elder Penobscot basketmaker.  Becoming an accomplished and award-winning artist, Secord talks about her growing awareness that basket-making was close to becoming a dying art form and her determination not to watch this fade into history;  she discusses co-founding the Maine Indian Basketmaker’s Alliance—an organization she led for 21 years, and her continuing commitment to conservation to preserve the ash tree against the destruction of the invasive emerald ash borer beetle.

 Join us online on November 17 when we premier the documentary called “Roots of American Culture”  a celebration of the  artistry of  the 2022 National Heritage Fellows. Check out our website arts.gov for more details.

We’d love to know your thoughts--email us at  artworkspod@arts.gov.