Hopi Baskets for Everyday Use

In our modern society where technological advances are made by leaps and bounds, where the news is dominated with discussion on solar energy development, men landing on the moon, and fantastic bonuses paid to super athletes in every sport, fundamentals are sometimes overlooked. We commonly think to ourselves that manufactured goods are the best and cheapest. But on the other hand nothing replaces the personal satisfaction that comes from doing it yourself with materials furnished "at no charge" by the world's largest producer Mother Nature. While the tides of educational advancement have been excellent in some areas, still others have been left high-anddry. Basket weaving was one of these and to Mrs. Fermina Banyacya, who was born and raised on the Hopi Reservation and is a member of the Bear Clan, something needed to be done about that. "There is a need in all of our homes because we are forever working with corn and you have to have a basket to shell your corn into and in our lives it's just a must! We can hardly afford to buy a basket and if we can make it . . . well then we won't have to pay for it."

Teaching under the adult education program through Northland Pioneer College, Fermina alternates classes in basketry with classes in Hopi embroidery. "After taking this up in high school I did maybe two or three things for my Dad, little embroidery things, but I never felt there was a need for it till now. Now things are so high, but women folk don't do it because they don't know how they've never been taught. Now that they (the schools) lean more towards academic subjects they don't go into vocation. But when I was in high school we had this and food preparation and home economics for 4 years."

And so, armed with an Arizona Community College Special Teaching Certificate and a lifetime of experience, Fermina and twenty to twenty-five other Hopi women will meet in the workshop of the Oraibi Day School two evenings a week for six or seven weeks. Each will collect their own material. Tamarisk or Willow with which to make hoops, Yucca leaves from the surrounding land with which to weave, and an ice pick to use as a weaving tool. They will make sifters, piki trays and vessel type baskets. The designs will be basic diamond shaped, "the easiest one," as Fermina describes it. With help in class and some work at home, each of the women should complete four to six baskets by the end of the session. And yet, the end is somehow just the beginning, for the Yucca fiber which is left over from the sifter baskets is the kind used in making the beautiful Hopi coil plaques and still other fiber strings are used to tie corn husk wrapping around bite-size portions of delicious corn "somiviki" at ceremonial time. The many uses of the versatile Yucca have been known to the Hopi for hundreds upon hundreds of years and they don't waste any part of it.