Black Ash Basketry

I want to learn how to make baskets. A number of years back it took all of a single google search to know purchasing supplies would not be my path. Ha! So I knew I would need to grow or harvest and process my own supplies. Periodically I have searched for more information. My curiosity once again has sent me down YouTube for many months. I found this documentary today about a Great Lakes tribe and their method of making Black Ash basketry. The Anishinabek people. From felling a tree all the way to finished product. Amazing!

There's a section in Braiding Sweetgrass about ash basketry. The book is full of really lovely accounts of things like that. It's not going to help much in learning the skill, but it helps set the cultural context.

Is black ash tree susceptible to emerald ash borer too? The entire population of ash trees in my area are killed by EAB in the past few years. There was a big tree by my property and I saw it dying gradually. There are seedlings near the mother tree but I doubt they are going to survive very long with the EAB lurking around.

May Lotito wrote:Is black ash tree susceptible to emerald ash borer too?

Apparently so. They've been monitoring for it. At the time of this film, the elders are choosing to let  nature take its course. No pesticides will be used. In the span of 3 years a stand went from no damage to a number of dead standing trees. including one biopsied tree that tested clear, now standing dead.

Black ash pack baskets.

Here in Maine that tree is known as the brown ash, but it is the same tree (Fraxinus nigra). Baskets made from it are a big part of Penobscot culture, a native group here. And sadly, the emerald ash borer is likely to take all the ash trees. I have been making brown ash pack baskets for 20 years. They are a lot of work, but very durable. The challenge is finding a tree with optimally-sized growth rings. Then harvesting and pounding. I've tracked it, and I think 80-85% of making the basket is in harvesting and processing the tree into splints. The basket part is pretty straightforward. When someone here makes a pack basket out of reed or prepared splints, it takes half a day. When using ash and starting from a standing tree, it is 5-7 days.

I have a basket maker friend in Michigan who told me there, the trees are already gone from the borer. Sad.