I Want to Hold You Longer
Sarah Sense (Chitimacha / Choctaw)
The small, double woven, lidded basket with alligator entrail patterns gently sits in my hand as I think of its maker, my Great Aunt Faye. A woman who I never knew personally, but who had a special friendship with my mom. She found refuge in her handwritten letters and safety in their relationship. This particular Chitimacha basket lived at my Grandma Chillie’s house before dividing up her basket collection and giving this one to my uncle Paul. I hold the basket in my hands and think of Aunt Faye. I think of my mom, and of my grandma. The hands that wove the basket seem to be touching mine and the basket is more than intertwined rivercane neatly woven into four baskets becoming one entity; the basket is alive, it holds memory, existing in the past and present. I hold it longer and feel the words, “I want to hold you longer.” I start to miss my grandma and say again, “I want to hold you longer,” as I imagine hugging her, as if she’s there in the room with me, or holding my hand, the way she also held this basket. I think of holding Aunt Faye, as if I am traveling through time to be with her or bringing her here in this space with me. We are holding hands. I let the basket go and place it on the table.
Recently, when visiting the Montclair Art Museum archives in New Jersey with curator Laura Allen, I viewed eight Chitimacha baskets from the turn of the twentieth century. Six of them nest inside one another, each having their own pattern. I held the baskets with my hands, and again felt the emotion of holding the hand of the weaver. I saw the joy of weaving in the patterning but also felt the desperation of weaving; a task to complete a commission for a monetary exchange with the Tabasco heirs, the McIlhenny family who resided on Avery Island in the late 19th century, early 20th century . The purpose of the baskets can’t be ignored once the knowledge is present. I hold the baskets with gratitude for the weavers, honoring their craft, their ability to make traditional baskets while losing land and family to violence and assimilation. Weaving through this period of disruption, allowed the artists to hold onto culture so that basket weaving traditions can persist today.
I think of their stories and how they were weaving to earn money to save land and family while simultaneously ensuring Chitimacha weaving as a part of their Indigenous future – our present – our future. Their responsibility to weave for trade and for
money becomes a responsibility of those who practice Chitimacha weaving today. As the baskets sit lightly and loosely in my hands, the words come to mind again, “I want to hold you longer.” I imagine holding my great-great-grandmother, Delphine Stouff’s hand, a weaver from this time. I imagine sitting with her and watching her hands weave the baskets, in part for joy and in part for necessity. I hold the basket and give gratitude while feeling the present moment, a space that embodies the past and the future,
Six months later I visited the Brooklyn Museum with curator, Dare Turner, to view two Chitimacha baskets and a Choctaw basket. Also from the turn of the twentieth century.
We look at the baskets, talk about them and I hold them. “I want to hold you longer.” The voice feels powerful and strong, as if the baskets are alive. The communication changes from me holding the basket and wanting to be together longer to a symbiotic feeling that the basket wants to be home.
These new photo-weavings are both landscapes and documents. The documents included are American State Papers from the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts. British, French and American colonial maps are from the British Library. The bright blue allotment maps are from the Choctaw Cultural Center. Chitimacha weavers in Louisiana were making baskets and reaching buyers, with help from sisters in the Tabasco-producing McIlhenny family, in hope of securing desperately needed protection against violence and dispossession. The same government from whom they sought such protection, however, was at that very moment breaking down Choctaw tribal land sovereignty in Oklahoma.
Hinush, or Trail, is a body of work originally commissioned by the Choctaw Nation and includes a series of landscape photographs from ancestral homelands woven through colonial maps of the Mississippi River, Gulf of Mexico, Northern California gold rush, and Choctaw allotment land. The blue allotment maps of Oklahoma’s McCurtain County (courtesy of the Choctaw Cultural Center) vividly depict consequences of the Curtis Act, a law passed by Congress in 1898. Although the Choctaws and other nations, when removed from their eastern homelands under the Indian Removal Act, had been promised future protection of their land and sovereignty within Indian Territory, the Curtis Act subjected them to aggressive detribalization and dispossession. After removal from ancestral land, known as the Trail of Tears, Choctaws suffered a long walk to “Indian Territory” or what is now called Oklahoma. Woven together are maps from Oil News (1920, from my research at the British Library, London, England) through Broken Bow landscapes, where our family was relocated. Choctaw basket patterns of sun and stars from my grandma Chillie’s basket collection are woven through these maps, joining the land with the colonial maps as an act of reclamation. Colonial forms of exploring, discovering, and mapping are constructed to manage land and people. The colonial mapping and government allotment structures represent established spaces. Weaving Chitimacha and Choctaw patterns through the maps reclaims space. California Coastal Redwoods and Live Oak Trees from Avery Island, Louisiana, are laid over maps and for the Studies, the maps are laid over the trees. Louisiana maps merge with Oklahoma maps as the two weaving styles collide with contemporary landscape photography closing a gap of time. This process of weaving together past, present, and future broadens the visual experience to something that is felt and not seen.
Laid over the photographs in the studies, and laid over the large weavings are patterns referencing specific baskets in three separate archives: Brooklyn Museum, Montclair Art Museum and Worcester Art Museum. These institutions share a similar history of collecting Native objects, including Chitimacha and Choctaw baskets. The photo-weavings in I Want to Hold You Longer honor the weavers and their baskets. I am leaning on historians to share perspectives of what the baskets may have been made for and for whom. While we can’t know exactly who made which basket and at what time, we can acknowledge that there is a history of weaving for the purpose of collecting and weaving for the purpose of survival. The weaver and the collector have two separate roles and intentions. Baskets on display in an institution usually offer little information about either. I hope these photo-weavings raise awareness to purpose and intention of weaving in Louisiana and Oklahoma. Traditional Chitimacha and Choctaw weaver’s work is endless and continuous. These pieces honor the weavers while also giving gratitude to the weavers before us and after us. By re-weaving baskets from the McIlhenny collection that were distributed into various institutions, I seek to move through generational healing as a reverse to generational trauma, treating time as a cyclical movement rather than a fixed point in the present. Holding a basket, wanting to hold it longer, is also giving freedom and space to something that may be trapped. The weaving practice is a meditation of release and freedom, transitioning trauma to healing.
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I Want to Hold You Longer
Sarah Sense (Chitimacha / Choctaw)
The small, double woven, lidded basket with alligator entrail patterns gently sits in my hand as I think of its maker, my Great Aunt Faye. A woman who I never knew personally, but who had a special friendship with my mom. She found refuge in her handwritten letters and safety in their relationship. This particular Chitimacha basket lived at my Grandma Chillie’s house before dividing up her basket collection and giving this one to my uncle Paul. I hold the basket in my hands and think of Aunt Faye. I think of my mom, and of my grandma. The hands that wove the basket seem to be touching mine and the basket is more than intertwined rivercane neatly woven into four baskets becoming one entity; the basket is alive, it holds memory, existing in the past and present. I hold it longer and feel the words, “I want to hold you longer.” I start to miss my grandma and say again, “I want to hold you longer,” as I imagine hugging her, as if she’s there in the room with me, or holding my hand, the way she also held this basket. I think of holding Aunt Faye, as if I am traveling through time to be with her or bringing her here in this space with me. We are holding hands. I let the basket go and place it on the table.
Recently, when visiting the Montclair Art Museum archives in New Jersey with curator Laura Allen, I viewed eight Chitimacha baskets from the turn of the twentieth century. Six of them nest inside one another, each having their own pattern. I held the baskets with my hands, and again felt the emotion of holding the hand of the weaver. I saw the joy of weaving in the patterning but also felt the desperation of weaving; a task to complete a commission for a monetary exchange with the Tabasco heirs, the McIlhenny family who resided on Avery Island in the late 19th century, early 20th century . The purpose of the baskets can’t be ignored once the knowledge is present. I hold the baskets with gratitude for the weavers, honoring their craft, their ability to make traditional baskets while losing land and family to violence and assimilation. Weaving through this period of disruption, allowed the artists to hold onto culture so that basket weaving traditions can persist today.
I think of their stories and how they were weaving to earn money to save land and family while simultaneously ensuring Chitimacha weaving as a part of their Indigenous future – our present – our future. Their responsibility to weave for trade and for
money becomes a responsibility of those who practice Chitimacha weaving today. As the baskets sit lightly and loosely in my hands, the words come to mind again, “I want to hold you longer.” I imagine holding my great-great-grandmother, Delphine Stouff’s hand, a weaver from this time. I imagine sitting with her and watching her hands weave the baskets, in part for joy and in part for necessity. I hold the basket and give gratitude while feeling the present moment, a space that embodies the past and the future,
Six months later I visited the Brooklyn Museum with curator, Dare Turner, to view two Chitimacha baskets and a Choctaw basket. Also from the turn of the twentieth century.
We look at the baskets, talk about them and I hold them. “I want to hold you longer.” The voice feels powerful and strong, as if the baskets are alive. The communication changes from me holding the basket and wanting to be together longer to a symbiotic feeling that the basket wants to be home.
These new photo-weavings are both landscapes and documents. The documents included are American State Papers from the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts. British, French and American colonial maps are from the British Library. The bright blue allotment maps are from the Choctaw Cultural Center. Chitimacha weavers in Louisiana were making baskets and reaching buyers, with help from sisters in the Tabasco-producing McIlhenny family, in hope of securing desperately needed protection against violence and dispossession. The same government from whom they sought such protection, however, was at that very moment breaking down Choctaw tribal land sovereignty in Oklahoma.
Hinush, or Trail, is a body of work originally commissioned by the Choctaw Nation and includes a series of landscape photographs from ancestral homelands woven through colonial maps of the Mississippi River, Gulf of Mexico, Northern California gold rush, and Choctaw allotment land. The blue allotment maps of Oklahoma’s McCurtain County (courtesy of the Choctaw Cultural Center) vividly depict consequences of the Curtis Act, a law passed by Congress in 1898. Although the Choctaws and other nations, when removed from their eastern homelands under the Indian Removal Act, had been promised future protection of their land and sovereignty within Indian Territory, the Curtis Act subjected them to aggressive detribalization and dispossession. After removal from ancestral land, known as the Trail of Tears, Choctaws suffered a long walk to “Indian Territory” or what is now called Oklahoma. Woven together are maps from Oil News (1920, from my research at the British Library, London, England) through Broken Bow landscapes, where our family was relocated. Choctaw basket patterns of sun and stars from my grandma Chillie’s basket collection are woven through these maps, joining the land with the colonial maps as an act of reclamation. Colonial forms of exploring, discovering, and mapping are constructed to manage land and people. The colonial mapping and government allotment structures represent established spaces. Weaving Chitimacha and Choctaw patterns through the maps reclaims space. California Coastal Redwoods and Live Oak Trees from Avery Island, Louisiana, are laid over maps and for the Studies, the maps are laid over the trees. Louisiana maps merge with Oklahoma maps as the two weaving styles collide with contemporary landscape photography closing a gap of time. This process of weaving together past, present, and future broadens the visual experience to something that is felt and not seen.
Laid over the photographs in the studies, and laid over the large weavings are patterns referencing specific baskets in three separate archives: Brooklyn Museum, Montclair Art Museum and Worcester Art Museum. These institutions share a similar history of collecting Native objects, including Chitimacha and Choctaw baskets. The photo-weavings in I Want to Hold You Longer honor the weavers and their baskets. I am leaning on historians to share perspectives of what the baskets may have been made for and for whom. While we can’t know exactly who made which basket and at what time, we can acknowledge that there is a history of weaving for the purpose of collecting and weaving for the purpose of survival. The weaver and the collector have two separate roles and intentions. Baskets on display in an institution usually offer little information about either. I hope these photo-weavings raise awareness to purpose and intention of weaving in Louisiana and Oklahoma. Traditional Chitimacha and Choctaw weaver’s work is endless and continuous. These pieces honor the weavers while also giving gratitude to the weavers before us and after us. By re-weaving baskets from the McIlhenny collection that were distributed into various institutions, I seek to move through generational healing as a reverse to generational trauma, treating time as a cyclical movement rather than a fixed point in the present. Holding a basket, wanting to hold it longer, is also giving freedom and space to something that may be trapped. The weaving practice is a meditation of release and freedom, transitioning trauma to healing.
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