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A DuLarge Native American won a national award for rediscovering and sharing cultural techniques.
Janie Verret Luster rediscovered the lost art of Palmetto Half Hitch Coil Basket making unique to the Houma people in 1992 and has spent each year since then spreading that knowledge to others. She also carries on traditional jewelry crafting from alligator garfish scales and shares that technique as well.
For keeping these skills alive, the First Peoples Fund has awarded Luster the Jennifer Easton Community Spirit Award. The First Peoples Fund is a nonprofit focused on preserving culture and funding people to teach cultural skills.
For Luster, keeping this knowledge alive and active is essential. The Houma natives' choice to use palmettos in their basket weaving is a tangible link between her people and their land, she said.
“It's part of who we've always been. It's part of our identity, and there is a beauty in the tradition," Luster said. "Native people, where you grow up and where you are located has a lot of influences on what you do."
The Jennifer Easton Community Spirit Award is named for the First Peoples Fund's founding donor. Each year it awards people with indigenous backgrounds who use their talent and/or knowledge for the betterment of their communities. They receive the award and a cash grant. This year six people received $50,000 each.
Baskets
Luster teaches two to three basket weaving classes a year with each class lasting four hours to a full day. She said she wasn’t always good at the craft. She first was exposed to the technique in October 1992 at the Golden Meadow Tribal Office by the late Richard Conn, former chief curator of the Native Arts in the Denver Museum of Art.
"I tried my hand at it, but it didn't catch on, but yet I knew the importance," she said.
She tried calling some people for help.
"Everyone had given up saying it was too hard... and at that point I knew why it was so hard, because you didn't have anyone to ask, 'I'm at this point, where do I go from here?,'" she said.
Hurricane Andrew struck shortly after the class, claiming the life of her father. While the family was north of the bayou waiting out the storm, Luster practiced the craft.
"I tried harder, and did some praying. It took sitting down with a palmetto and really getting to know it," she said with a laugh. "My first bases looked like flying saucers, and they actually flew across the room."
By November, about two to three weeks after Andrew struck, Luster was called to teach the skill to others.
According to Luster, the palmettos are incredibly important to the Houma people. They were used for shelter and woven into purses, sandals, baskets, and even important for medicinal purposes. She said that the Half Hitch Coil Basket technique that she rediscovered was replaced by a technique that later used a sewing needle to bind the basket together, and now that style is fading away.
To contact Luster about basket weaving lessons, email her at: Jluster49@att.net.
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Gar
Garfish were an important resource to many indigenous people along the Gulf of Mexico, for both food and their scales. Known as ganoid scales, the scales are hard and made of enamel — the same material as human teeth. The scales were used for arrowheads and other tools. Luster’s mother, Mary Verret, crafted them into flowers, and she passed on the skill to her daughters and others.
She uses a hot glue gun and dyes to transform the pointy scales into decorative pins, earrings, necklaces and wall hangings.
The meat of the fish was traditionally smoked into a food called “tasso.” She explained that iron kettles were used to boil the Gulf's water to extract salt, and her mother would use this on the gar and smoke the salted flesh on a clothes line over a drum. Luster has been featured alongside Chef John Folse teaching the method and recipe.
Folse’s recipe is available at http://www.jfolse.com/stirrin/recipes/recipes2014/SIU_080214%20garfish%20tasso.html.
The award
The First Peoples Fund has awarded more than 438 artists from 146 tribes across 30 states and two Canadian provinces. Luster said she intends to use the grant money to help her in teaching others. She said the travel is getting more difficult as she ages, and she would like to open more workshops closer to home where others can come to her.
Here are the other five recipients:
- Silver Galleto (Cloverdale Rancheria of Pomo Indians) of Windsor, CA
- Terrill Goseyun (San Carlos Apache) of Bylas, AZ
- Julia Marden (Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head - Aquinnah) of South Ryegate, VT
- Sonya Moody-Jurado (Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians) of Salem, OR
- Lisa Morehead-Hillman (Karuk, Yurok) of Orleans, CA
These and past recipients can be viewed on the First Peoples Fund website.
