"Black ash and basket makers are partners in a symbiosis between harvesters and harvested: ash relies on people as the people rely on ash. Their fates are linked." p. 149
Black ash baby basket with sweetgrass turtle, made by Odawa-Ojibwe artist Kelly Church of Michigan
Uyvsdi, CC BY 3.0
Black ash tree
Katja Schulz from Washington, D. C., USA, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Objibwe Weaver April Stone pounding a black ash log into splints to use for basket weaving. Taken at North House Folk School in 2019.
Terasaface, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Tree Cross section
Emerald Ash Borer
U.S. Department of Agriculture, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Keywords
Adamant: unshakable or insistent especially in maintaining a position or opinion. (MW)
Bole: trunk. (MW)
Component: a constituent part: ingredient. (MW)
Floodplain: an area of flat land next to a river that regularly floods when there is too much water in the river. (OL)
Four directions: honors the East, West, and North areas. Each Indigenous nation will have teachings regarding the gifts each direction brings. The number four is also significant; for example, four seasons, four elements on earth, four races of humans. (YA)
Girth: a measure around a body. (MW)
Gouge: a groove or cavity scooped out. (MW
Ineffable: incapable of being expressed in words. (MW)
Sapling: a young tree. (MW)
Strata: a sheetlike mass of sedimentary rock or earth of one kind lying between beds of other kinds (MW)
Vireo: any of about 50 species (family Vireonidae) of New World songbirds with a stout, slightly notched, hook-tipped bill that has fine bristles at the base. (Britannice Concise Encyclopedia)
Whetstone: a stone for whetting [sharpening] edge tools (MW)