Baskets made by the people of the mid-Columbia River are among the finest examples of Indian textile art in North America, and they are included in the collections of most major museums. The traditional designs and techniques of construction reveal a great artistic heritage that links modern basketmakers to their ancestors. Yet baskets are also everyday objects of a utilitarian nature that reveal much about mid-Columbia culture---a flat twined bag has greatest value when it is plump with dried roots, a coiled basket when full of huckleberries.

In Columbia River Basketry, Mary...

Coming to Stay is the memoir of Mary Dodds Schlick, who in 1950 moved from the Midwest to the Colville Indian Reservation in north central Washington with her husband Bud, a forester for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. For over fifty years, she has maintained a close connection with the Native people of the Columbia River Plateau as a neighbor, journalist, teacher, and master basket maker on the Colville, Warm Springs, and Yakama reservations. These stories take place against a backdrop of change - from the uncertainty caused by federal efforts to terminate reservations in the 1950s...