Make Your Own White Pine Bark Mokoks (Native American-style basket)
Please join Indigenous Artisan, Jennifer Lee, Saturday, Feb. 11 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. to make White Pine Bark Mokoks, a traditional Northeast Woodland Native American-style basket. Basket sizes may slightly vary, but each approximately will be 6” long by 4” tall, and able to hold about a quart of berries. Participants who finish constructing their baskets earlier on are welcome to create bark appliqué and/or create lids. Light snacks will be available but please bring a lunch as this is a long program.
Cost: $40. This includes instruction and all materials. Class size is limited to 20 people, so we highly recommend an early sign-up.
About the Artisan:
Jennifer Lee has been enjoying making bark baskets for 38 years. Her interest began with the study of her Native American Ancestors of the Northeast Woodlands. She is a Plainfield resident who learned about basket-making while researching Native Americans and her own genealogy in the early 1980s. After combing through her grandmother’s wooden box of notes about her genealogy, she began calling town halls, inquiring about birth, marriage and death certificates, and visiting libraries. She traced her lineage to the Pequot and Narragansett in the Northeast, though does not meet the enrollment criteria for the Narragansett or Pequot nation.
In a 2018 article in the Berkshire Eagle, Jennifer said, “Bark is for the Northeast woodlands what bison is for the Plains tribes. Bark is what covered our wigwams and made our canoes. All our harvesting containers, storage containers, even sacred writings are written on bark and were hidden in caves, so those memory scrolls were bark. Baby carriers were bark. That’s the original paper bag, harvesting container and storage container.”
She teaches basket classes and educational programs extensively. The bark roots and branches are wild harvested by her family in the Northern Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts. She’s received awards at the Mohegan Wigwam Festival, Saratoga Native American Festival, Kearsage Indian Museum, Deerfield Craft Show, and North Carolina Basket makers Association.
She spends her time with her grandkids, gardening, berry picking, maintaining the houses she’s built, making baskets, teaching basketry, and attending as many powwows as possible. She is grateful to the Creator for being able to follow her heart.