"Linda Langley and Denise Bates's "Louisiana Coushatta Basket Makers" is the first book-length work to explore the basket-makers of Louisiana's Coushatta Tribe. The authors centralize Coushatta history around the experiences and contributions of the tribe's basket weavers by utilizing a combination of oral histories, tribal records, archival materials, and archeological evidence to explore the production, multiple uses, the sharing of ideas, and changes in basketry across several centuries. Since first establishing ...
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"Linda Langley and Denise Bates's "Louisiana Coushatta Basket Makers" is the first book-length work to explore the basket-makers of Louisiana's Coushatta Tribe. The authors centralize Coushatta history around the experiences and contributions of the tribe's basket weavers by utilizing a combination of oral histories, tribal records, archival materials, and archeological evidence to explore the production, multiple uses, the sharing of ideas, and changes in basketry across several centuries. Since first establishing themselves at their present location near the town of Elton, Louisiana, in the 1880s, the Coushatta (Koasati) tribe developed a basket industry that not only assisted in bolstering the local tribal economy but became the basis for generating tourism and political mobilization. The baskets represented a material culture that distinguished the Coushattas as Indigenous people within an ethnically and racially diverse region. They were also used as strategic gifts by tribal leaders serving as diplomats as they built political and economic allegiances throughout the 20th century, thus securing the Coushattas' future development. Behind all these efforts were the basket makers themselves. Although a few Coushatta men assisted in the production of baskets, it was mostly the community's women who carried on the tradition and put in the long hours that it took to gather and process the materials and then skillfully stitch them together to produce treasures of all shapes and sizes. It is a process situated within a broader framework of Coushatta traditional teachings and educational practices that have persisted to the present. In addition to telling the story of Coushatta basket makers, this book also contributes to providing a better understanding of Koasati culture and values. The weavers' own "language of baskets" shapes this narrative, depicting how the tribe survived repeated hardships as weavers responded to market demands for their work on their own terms. The work of Coushatta basket makers represents the perseverance of traditional knowledge in the form of unique and carefully crafted fine art that only continues to grow in its level of appreciation through each generation"--
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