Basket Weaving in the Tohono Oodham Tribe :: Essays Papers

Basket Weaving in the Tohono Oodham Tribe The Tohono Oodham tribe has been twine baskets for at least 2000 years. Although the reason for weaving has changed by dint of the years the Tohono Oodham are still using the same weaving styles as their ancestors. Basket weaving for the Tohono Oodham has gone from an anyday essential to a prestigious art form. Basket weaving for the Tohono Oodham represents an active way of preserving their culture, valuing traditions, and creating bonding ties within the tribe consequently weaving has transcended into an economic resource. Basket weaving has played a large part in the culture of the Tohono Oodham tribe. Baskets were used mainly for practical purposes in the past. They were real important in the every day life of the tribe. It was the womens job in the tribe to weave the baskets. The baskets were used to haul grain and food. Many baskets were woven so tight that they were used to confound water and liquor. Baskets wer e also very important in ceremonies, such as the Rainmaking Ceremony. In ceremonial practices, scared objects were often placed into baskets. The ceremonial baskets were made especially for different ceremonies and were never used for every day purposes. Sacred objects were sometimes single voodooismes and sometimes collections of objects brought together though the years and kept in a ceremonial basket (Underhill 24). The proper way to keep fetishes was in an oblong basket of twilled yucca (Underhill 24). This oblong basket was called a waca, not to be upset(a) with the ordinary coiled basket, which was called a hoa. It was very important to the tribe not to keep scared objects in regular baskets. People who owned a fetish kept their basket packed with eagle down, deertails and periodically fed the scared object with cane cigarettes and even food (Underhill 24-25). They could not move the baskets with out a ritual, which was part of the ceremony for food or purificati on. If anyone who was not authorized to move the basket touched it, the tribe believed a flood would come. The ceremonial baskets are very important to the Tohono Oodham tribe for a lot of their religious ceremonies.