S3E3: Sheila Ransom (Akwasasne Mohawk Nation)

What if your craft could become your sanctuary and medicine? Join us as we sit down with 2024 Jennifer Easton Community Spirit Award Honoree, Sheila Ransom, a master basket maker from the St. Regis Mohawk tribe, who shares her incredible 30-year journey into the heart of this ancient art. Sheila didn't start her craft until later in life, under the mentorship of her godmother and other master artisans, but her connection to basket-making has since become a profound source of healing and inspiration. Sheila's vivid storytelling reveals how the natural world and everyday objects can ignite creativity and lead to stunning, unique designs. 

Chapters

• 0:02 Passing on Ancestral Basket Making
• 8:45 Preserving Ancestral Basket Making

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

What inspires my work is things around me, the birds, nature. Everything I look at has a design. I could be looking at something in my house and it just hits me like that's a design for a basket. And I do that. I just create them. Most of the time I don't know what I'm going to do and as I start weaving, the basket comes out. The design will come out.

Speaker 2: 0:43

First Peoples Fund presents the Collective Spirit Podcast. The Collective Spirit moves each of us to stand up and make a difference, to pass on ancestral knowledge and simply extend a hand of generosity. The Collective Spirit Podcast features Native artists and culture bearers who discuss the power of Indigenous art and culture.

Speaker 1: 1:09

My name is Sheila Ransom White. My married name is White. My Mohawk name is Gunaessa. I'm a Wolf Clan member of the St Regis Mohawk tribe and I reside in Aquasustin, new York. I make baskets. I'm a basket maker. I have been a basket maker for 30 years. I have learned basket making from my godmother, who was also my first cousin. She was a master basket maker. My grandmothers were basket makers maker. My grandmothers were basket makers, my great aunt. So I come from a long line of basket makers.

Speaker 1: 1:50

I started late in life. I should have done this when I was young, like my ancestors were children, but they learned and I didn't start until I think I was maybe 40. And my godmother got me into it. I was just going through some medical issues and she thought basket making would help me to get through everything. She always said it was good medicine and it was. And once I started I took the first two weeks of learning how to clean my splint and it was very difficult and she told me most people will quit during that first two weeks. And then I started to weave, which was also very difficult, and she would walk around the room and look at us during class and she would watch us as we worked and she leaned over to me in Mohawk and she would watch us as we worked and she leaned over to me in Mohawk and she said you're going to be a basket maker. And I couldn't understand how she knew that. And she then told me others that were with me she said they're not going to be a basket maker. I never knew how she knew. Now me as a basket maker and teaching class, I understand, because I can tell when people are going to be a basket maker. It's something that always stays with me. I've had some very scary health issues and I found what got me through them was my basket making. And when she told me it was good medicine, it is good medicine, it's my medicine I went to her. She taught me classes. Then I would go home with her, I would stay out all night with her, we would do classes just her and I. Then I would go home, sleep and I'd go to work and I'd come back to her house. It was just something that became part of me. Then there was another master basket maker. He was a utility basket maker. His name was Henry Arquette. I took classes with him as well and it was just amazing, the things he taught me, other techniques that I use today in my fancy basket.

Speaker 1: 4:18

I have two granddaughters. One granddaughter grew up with me and when she was a little girl she would come down and sit in her little chair next to me. She would still be wearing diapers and she would get a plastic knife and she would mimic me as I'm cleaning splints. Everything I did she would copy me as she got older. When she was about eight years old, nine years old, she started doing baskets with me and then she'd stop because of school. She's into her athletes and one time I took her to class with me. I was teaching a children's class and a lot of the kids were her age, so she knew a lot of the kids. But there were so many of the kids I had to kind of break up the class and I would have her keep them busy and I would take the other class and try to teach them. And then the executive director at the museum came to me and she goes look, and I looked over and my granddaughter was teaching her group of the class how to do that basket and we were astonished and the executive director said that's how much she has been watching you, she learned from you and I was just astonished. And to this day she can walk in and say I want to do a basket and she can do a basket. She's in university now. She's very busy traveling, she's into other things, but she still has that and she is going to be a basket maker someday.

Speaker 1: 6:02

What inspires my work is things around me, the birds, nature. Everything I look at has a design. I could be looking at something in my house and it just hits me like that's a design for a basket. And I do that. I just create them and most of the time I don't know what I'm going to do and as I start weaving, the basket comes out. The design will come out. Wow, it was just incredible to receive the award. It was humbling. It's helped me to purchase a shed so I can house my work and all my materials, my tools. I can hold classes. It's enabled me to attend shows. It's enabled me to purchase a. My doctor appointments that I have to now travel five hours away each way and I've been doing it each month for treatment since March.

Speaker 1: 7:16

My nominator and I are going to be visiting three museums in the future, like maybe by the end of summer, definitely in October, we're going to the Smithsonian to look at baskets in their archives and we're also going to a museum in Ottawa, canada, to look at their baskets. I want to look at all these baskets and look at the styles that are no longer used today and I want to be able to take pictures, bring those styles home and recreate them again and introduce them back into the community. And I think that's really important because a lot of times we see pictures of baskets and nobody has ever seen the styles that we used to use, learning basket making. Especially my family members, my grandchildren, my granddaughters, even my grandsons are interested and trying to do it. Now my youngest grandson is 13.

Speaker 1: 8:33

He's been working on a basket and I keep telling him how important it is to preserve this and to protect it and to pass it on. I don't want it to die with me. We have a lot of basket makers coming up in the community, but I want my family to realize how important it is. I have baskets from my grandmother that were returned to me from a doctor in Vermont and those baskets were made in the 1940s, maybe 1930s, and I always used to wonder what baskets she made. What did it look like? To get those baskets back to me was so it did something to my heart to know that I was holding a basket that her hands held, and when I look at it, I make baskets like she does, and I want my grandchildren to feel the same way and to understand that, and to understand the love of this and how important it is.

Speaker 2: 9:55

The Collective Spirit Podcast is produced by First Peoples Fund. The Collective Spirit podcast is produced by First Peoples Fund, whose mission is to honor and support Indigenous artists and culture bearers through grant-making initiatives, culturally rooted programming, and training and mentorship. Learn more at firstpeoplesfundorg.