Ed Carriere

I am a Suquamish Tribe Elder and Master Basketmaker and have been weaving baskets for about 70 years. I learned the art from my great-grandmother, Julia Jacob of the Suquamish Tribe, who raised me from infancy. When my Great Grandmother's hands weakened with age, she told me I would have to make the baskets. I was 14 years old.

As my skill improved, I found it to be a very pleasurable and challenging experience. Grandma passed away in 1960, and basketmaking fell by the wayside as I graduated from high school, entered the Marine Corps and then the working world. Some years later in 1969 I started to revive the old art; I almost waited too long. It took me four years to regain the knowledge and skills it takes to weave a nice looking, dependable clam basket that I know Grandma would be proud of.

I have learned to make a wide variety of baskets including coil baskets, the open weave burden basket, straight and crossed warp clam gathering baskets, clothing, and hats. My basketry materials are the bark, limbs, and roots of the western red cedar, beargrass, sweetgrass, wild cherry bark, cattail and horse tail root.

I have know archaeologist Dr. Dale Croes since 2004, when he had me visit his wet sites, and when he called me in late 2014 to suggest we work together in analyzing and replication the 2000 year old archaeological wet site baskets from the Biderbost site near Seattle, I could not wait to begin. These baskets represent 100 generations of my relatives, "grandparents," back.

We recently compiled our resulting stories together into a new book announced here, Re-Awakening Ancient Salish Sea Basketry, and call our approach Generationally-Linked Archaeology. I hope you like our story, a 50 year synergy of cultural training and scientific archaeological research on basketry from the Northwest Coast of North America. Thank you

Among Ed's many awards are:

1983 Man of the Year Award by Indianola

1986 Honorarium by Seattle Central Community College

1988 "Honored Artist" by Native American Art Fair, Suquamish

1998 Governor's heritage Award of Washington State

2015 Washington State Historical Society Peace and Friendship Award with Dr. Dale Croes