Chilkat Valley News - Serving Haines and Klukwan, Alaska since 1966

A renowned epidemiologist who became a textile artist and has written three books on the art will visit Haines Sunday, part of a trip that will return 11 spruce-root baskets to the Chilkat Valley.

David Fraser is famous for determining the cause of Legionnaire’s Disease, a type of pneumonia that killed 29 people at an American Legion convention in Philadelphia in 1976. His second career has been in art, creating woven pieces in abstract shapes.

Fraser will be returning baskets once owned by the late Mildred Sparks, a prominent Tlingit elder who taught spruce-root weaving in Haines in the 1960s. Sparks, who was born in 1900 and died in 1984, is an important link to the past, said Lee Heinmiller, president of Alaska Indian Arts.

“Mildred is of that generation born in the early 1900s, the people who trained her were probably pre-contact people. They surely were born before 1880,” the date of white settlement in Haines, Heinmiller said.

Spruce-root basket-weaving is often overshadowed by totem carving and blanket-weaving as art forms of the northern Tlingit, Heinmiller said. But traditional basket-making requires considerable skills and is closer to being “a lost art,” he said.

Tightly-woven “baskets” shaped like discs once adorned the tops of Tlingit clan hats. Those aren’t made anymore, Heinmiller said. Nor are “steamer baskets,” a large cooking basket used to poach fish when filled with water and hot rocks. “Those are really rare,” he said. “I’ve only ever seen one of those.”

Spruce roots also made ideal hats for the maritime climate. When dry, the hats breathe through gaps in the weave, but once wet the weave tightens, making the hats rainproof, he said.

In an interview this week, Fraser said discussions he has had with Sparks’ daughter, Irene Sparks Rowan of Anchorage, lead him to believe some of the baskets were created by Maggie Klaydoo, Mildred Sparks’ mother, a Chilkat weaver.

“It’s really very special stuff. The Chilkats made a lot of fancy baskets, but what we love about the Sparks baskets is they’re work baskets. They were used for collecting berries, or for squeezing oil out of fish. They were used for utilitarian purposes, but they’re beautifully done,” Fraser said.

Fraser became interested in basketry in the 1970s. He was working on a project about weft twining when he bought the Sparks baskets at auction in 1985. He made a trip to the Chilkat Valley 15 years ago and learned about Mildred Sparks and the origin of the baskets.

Sparks was a culture bearer who in 1970 won the Governor’s Award for Contributions to Reviving and Maintaining Indian Arts and Customs. She was later awarded an honorary degree in the humanities by the University of Alaska. In 1968, she was named Alaska’s Mother of the Year and was photographed wearing a Chilkat tunic that’s now in a Seattle art museum.

“We knew that Mildred Sparks had a connection to the Sheldon Museum and that other family things are there. We knew the Tlingit have a real interest in their culture. We thought them better to be reunited,” Fraser said of his donation.

His presentation, “Surface Patterning of Twined Baskets and Textiles” will include photos of weavings from the Chilkat Valley, and places like Borneo and northeast India. “Twining is so widely distributed around the world, and Tlingit are top of the line in their work in twining,” Fraser said.

Irene Sparks Rowan said this week that she has only one of her mother’s baskets. Others that she had perished in a Bethel housefire decades ago, she said.

Sparks Rowan said she is glad the baskets are coming back to the Sheldon Museum, where some of her mother’s other objects – including a pattern board and loom – are part of the collection.

“My mother was ahead of her time. She raised us to respect and honor Tlingit culture when it was not popular. She was a brave lady. I appreciate her for that,” Sparks Rowan said.

Sparks Rowan said her grandmother Maggie Klaydoo taught Mildred traditional skills. “Maggie was a proficient Chilkat weaver who (made) a number of blankets. I’d like to see them come back as well.”

Sunday’s event begins 1 p.m. at the museum with a potluck and display of the returned baskets, and a performance by the Chilkat Dancers.

Fraser will speak at 3 p.m.