Interview with Mary Eckstein

NEA: I want to congratulate you on your award. Tell me how you felt when you heard the news.

MS. CHURCHILL: At first I was in shock and acted really calm. But when I hung up I went, "Yippee!"

NEA: Why you were attracted to weaving and how did you first learn?

MS. CHURCHILL: I learned from my mother [Haida weaver Selina Peratrovich]. My mother's grandmother and mother were very good weavers. Mother lived with her grandmother who didn't want her to get married too early and so wouldn't teach her anything. She thought if she kept her ignorant she wouldn't be marriageable!

I took a class from my mother when I was in school. I was in a class with people who could understand English but couldn't speak it well. We were failing miserably. They thought we should do something familiar so they brought my mother in to teach a basketry class. Towards the end of class the homeroom teacher came in and told us we could submit our baskets to a show in Victoria. There would be a $5 prize for the best basket. Everybody was finishing their baskets and I asked my mother if I could do mine over because I hadn't listened to her. The others' baskets were cylindrical but mine was convex or concave, I don't remember exactly. She told me it was too late. When the homeroom teacher was putting the baskets in the box my mother told her not to put mine in, but he said they all had to go.

I won first prize, because it was different from everyone else's, I suppose. When the prize money came there was a blue ribbon, too. After my mother pinned the blue ribbon on me, I sat down because I thought she was going to "Ta-da!" and give me the $5. I was so excited -- $5 was a lot of money in the 1930s. But she called up one of my best friends instead and gave her the $5. I got so mad I took down the blue ribbon, stomped on it and yelled, "I'll never weave again!"

Later on, I did correspondence and mailing for her. I had mailed one of her hats to a collector in Portland -- this was in 1972 -- and he was so thrilled with the expertise of the weaving he sent us a basket made by Ida Bantzell, a famous Chilkat weaver. He wrote that he was concerned that when Ida died the art of Chilkat weaving would die forever. My husband heard me reading the letter to my mother, and later that evening he said to me, "I think that's going to happen with your mother. She's teaching at community college, but no Native people are there." Tradition dictates that you're supposed to teach only your immediate family, but she kept on teaching others because she thought it was so important.

I was a bookkeeper at Ketchikan General Hospital at the time. I went to the administrator there and told her that my husband wanted me to take this class because he thought the art of basketry was going to die. She thought it was important, too, so she let me take the class even though I was doing the budgeting right at that time of the year.

When I walked into the classroom my mother looked up and said, "What are you doing here?" I didn't know what to do -- while I was not always an obedient child, I never, ever, answered her back. So I just stood there. Then the head of the art department walked in and put his arms around her and asked, "What's wrong?" And she said, "I want her to go home." And he said, "We need her registration." So I got to stay in the class.

She much stricter with me than she was with my oldest daughter, April, because by then April was weaving and my mother was selling her baskets and giving them to relatives. But she was taking my baskets and burning them. Because I was working at a job, I really wasn't that diligent -- I guess I enjoyed the weaving but wasn't really trying to learn how to prepare the materials. I think she felt that I should be preparing materials.

NEA: Were there other weavers who influenced you?

MS. CHURCHILL: In my mother's class there was a wonderful Tsimshian weaver named Flora Mater. She was really fast. I asked her why she was in the class and she told me she couldn't get materials, that she was in the class to get the basketry materials.

In our tradition, we have to hold our baskets upside down because we weave counterclockwise. But Flora held hers upright. When I got out of the classroom, out of earshot of my mother, I told Flora that I really wanted to learn her way of weaving so I could see what I was doing. She said, "All you have to do is help get me material and I'll teach you how." So we'd go up into the woods and she'd pick the tree and gather and prepare the material. I'd watch how she prepared the material and she started teaching me the Tsimshian style of weaving.

When I was working for the hospital they didn't have any social service programs. The nuns expected those of us in administration to do volunteer work. I used to spend time with the older patients. There was an old Haida woman in our hospital named Lydia Charles and I learned one ending from her that my mother didn't know.

Later on, I began visiting the Pioneer Home in Sitka. I kept some spruce roots in my pocket when I visited. I visited one old woman named Annie Jacobs who had had a stroke and was just laying there, really despondent. I tried to talk her into taking a spruce root and she said, "No, no, I can't see very well." Before I left, I said, "Annie, I'm going to leave these spruce roots under your pillow and you'll dream of those days when you used to go after spruce roots because was so much fun." Two or three days later I came back and the nurse told me to go see Annie right away. I went down and she was sitting up and clearly very happy. She had woven the base of a basket. "Could you give me some more spruce roots?" she asked me. From then on I learned more Tlingit weaving from Annie Jacobs than from anyone else, and it was in part in part because she had had a stroke. When you learn the traditional way, you sit and watch and then experiment, and by experimenting you learn. Most weavers go so fast it's difficult to learn. But because of her stroke she went slowly and I was able to watch her and pick it up.

NEA: You've mentioned your daughter. What does it mean to you that your daughters and even your grandchildren are carrying on the weaving tradition?

MS. CHURCHILL: When I look at them I think of my mother. It was so important to her that the art of basketry go on and to have her children continue it. April was the first person that my mother really worked with. Then she worked with my niece Isabel. April had a basket at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Isabel was inducted into the Royal Academy of Art in Canada last year -- my mother would have been so proud of that. It really amazes me they have taking such an interest because, I was 42 before I started. They were very young when they started.

NEA: And did they learn in the traditional way you mentioned earlier?

MS. CHURCHILL: Yes. In fact one time when April was visiting my mother, she said, "Grandmother, I would like to learn to weave" and Mother said, "No, no, my dear. You'll neglect your housework and your children if you start weaving so, no, you shouldn't do that." So April would just drop in and sit Mother and watch her weave. The one day she came in with a basket and put it in front of my mother who asked, "Who made that nice basket?" And April said, "I did, grandmother." From then on Mother started teaching her.

NEA: What advice do you have for young basket makers?

MS. CHURCHILL: It takes years before one can do a basket like the ones I see in the museums. It's just like ballet. My daughter took ballet. She wasn't allowed to get into toe shoes for years. She had to learn all the steps and all the moves before she could get into toe shoes. It's the same thing with basketry. Before you can do an artistic piece there are years when you're just learning to prepare your materials. Preparing your material is actually the most important part of it. When the university asked me to teach an evening class because there were so many people wanting to learn to do basketry, my mother told me, "You're not ready." For the next two years all I did was material preparation.

NEA: What do you see as the challenges to continuing the tradition?

MS. CHURCHILL: One thing that's really sad. I've been teaching at the university since 1974 and of all the people that I've taught there maybe less than ten are really dedicated to the weaving. You have to be really dedicated because you won't earn a lot of money. The joy you're going to get is from the art.