I do not use a pattern to design these sacred baskets. My grandmother and my mother taught me the skills to construct them, how to doubleweave a flexible basket-within-a-basket with a single common rim, for example, but the actual design comes from listening to the cane itself. It speaks to me as it moves through my hands. It tells me what it wants to be, how it wants to be shaped, what is will be used for.

It is not the first time this has happened. Stands of cane all around us have been destroyed. The white settlers do not understand Cherokee ways, and they think women's work is unimportant. I overheard one say not long ago to another white man that Cherokee "squaws" are "beasts of burden" because we do the farming work. I could tell by his tone of voice he was ridiculing us. The white settlers don't...
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