Three generations of an Akwesasne Mohawk basket-making family, (from left to right) Rebecca, Luz, and Florence Benedict, offer a collaboratively made Striped Gourd Basket from Florence’s Globe Basket series. Photo by Salli Benedict, 2006. Understanding a Mohawk Globe Basket in Its Makers’ World By Dr. Betty J. Duggan
In 2006, the <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong> <strong>State</strong> <strong>Museum</strong> commissioned a basket from a Mohawk family from Akwesasne. A year later, soon after I joined the <strong>Museum</strong>, the Anthropology Department was abuzz one day with the basket’s arrival, and I was introduced to a gracefully wrought Benedict “Globe Basket,” in all the newness of its natural colors of black ash and sweetgrass, and the latter’s distinctive fragrance. Once examined, named, catalogued, measured, and technically described for entry in the <strong>Museum</strong>’s electronic database, this gem became a part of the <strong>Museum</strong>’s Ethnology Collection/ Governor’s Collection of Contemporary Native American Art, to await future study and exhibitions. As an ethnographer, an anthropologist who studies contemporary cultures from cultural insiders’ and scholarly viewpoints, usually including original field research, I was eager to conduct my first fieldwork with the Benedict family. From my initial in-depth ethnographic interview with them in March 2008, through subsequent follow-up inquiries over the next year, I would explore with the Benedicts the making—contexts, meanings, and particular story— of this basket, its relation to earlier, stylistically very different Mohawk baskets, and their own lives as its makers. Meeting the Benedicts Just entering the Akwesasne Mohawk community and then reaching the home of the Ernest Benedict family, on Cornwall Island (Kawehnoke), Ontario, in the middle of the St. Lawrence River, is a lesson in Mohawk, U.S., and international history, politics, and culture. Akwesasne (“land where the partridge drums”) is the Mohawk name for the now-drowned rapids at this place in the mighty St. Lawrence when it still ran free, reverberating with a sound reminiscent of the partridge’s drumming call. It is a Mohawk community that pre-dates both the United <strong>State</strong>s and Canada, first split by those two powers in 1783 at the point where the provinces of Ontario and Quebec and St. Lawrence and Franklin counties now converge. Yet, culturally and in daily life for the Mohawk people, Akwesasne remains seemless as Native Nation and social community. The Benedict family, though its members might modestly beg to differ, saying they simply live by Mohawk ways, holds a critical place in modern Mohawk history, politics, and cultural revitalization (see page 15, For Further Reading). Florence Katsitsienhawi Benedict (trans., “she carries flowers”), born in 1931, who like the central globe in the Globe Basket, is the heart of this traditional matrilineal Mohawk family. She is a lifelong community worker, as well as a stellar and widely recognized basket maker, and granddaughter of a Wolf Clan Mother. At 78, she continues as a basketry instructor and supervises interns in the Akwesasne <strong>Museum</strong>’s crafts revitalization programs. Ernest Kaientaronkwen Benedict (“he gathers the small sticks of wood as in the ceremonial game”), born in 1918, is the eminent Mohawk intellectual, activist, early leader in Native-controlled education reform, professor, spiritual leader, and condoled Mohawk Life Chief (Rotinonkwiseres). He is founder of the North American Indian Traveling College (now Native North American Traveling College and Ronathahonni Cultural Center) and the noted Indian Country activist news journal, Akwesasne Notes. During one visit by Pope John Paul II to Canada, he was chosen to present the sacred eagle The Benedict family followed traditional Mohawk kinship and collective work patterns when they joined together to produce the Globe Basket commissioned by the <strong>State</strong> <strong>Museum</strong>. Left to right: Rebecca, Salli, Ernie, Florence, and Luz. Photo by Dr. Betty J. Duggan, 2008. Curator of Ethnography and Ethnology Dr. Betty J. Duggan joined the <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong> <strong>State</strong> <strong>Museum</strong> in 2007. She is the first to hold this recently created position. Dr. Duggan received a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Tennessee and a graduate certificate in museum studies from Harvard University. Her research, and more than 60 professional publications, focus on North American Indians, material culture, folklife, applied ethnography, anthropology in museums, and cultural tourism. She was Hrdy Visiting Research Curator at Harvard’s Peabody <strong>Museum</strong> of Archaeology and Ethnology during 1999–2000 and a visiting professor and research associate for Wake Forest University from 2003 to 2005. From 1983 to 2004, she directed and/or curated more than two dozen grant-, university-, and tribal-funded collaborativeresearch exhibitions and community projects in Tennessee, North Carolina, Mississippi, and Georgia. She is a guest editor for Practicing Anthropology in 2010. At the <strong>State</strong> <strong>Museum</strong>, she negotiated a new Native American Advisory Committee (NAAC), with formal representatives from ten Native Nations, with whom she now partners to plan and research new historic through contemporary exhibits for the renewed Native Peoples Gallery (slated for 2012). Summer 2009 n 13
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