Beargrass
(Xerophyllum tenax (Pursh) Nutt, Melanthiaceae)
"This prairie area was extremely important to the
well-being of...Skokomish people. This particular
area in fact was the domain of my own family...
I've been told by elders who have already passed
away...the practice of caring for this land was
something that we maintained for several thousand
years... it was manicured like a park. And it was that
way until the late 1800s. People stopped doing that
around that time when they were forcibly moved to
the reservation..."CHiXapkaid (November 4, 2004)
"[they] were part of our commitment to our ancestors
to maintain grazing grounds...[I]t wasn't only for
human usage that the prairies were burned and
maintained, it provided a very expansive grazing area
for the elk and deer. And as the burning...ceased,
the forest gradually choked up the areas that were
prairie land and greatly reduced the foraging land
that we aborigine provided for the grazing animals."
Subiyay (November 4, 2004)
.bmp "basket")
Graphics and quotes from "Weaving Traditional Ecological Knowledge into the Restoration of Basketry Plants" by Daniela Shebitz
http://www.fiu.edu/~jea/shebitz.pdf
