What You See When You See A Person Wearing A Cap

Lisa Morehead-Hillman (Karuk, Yurok) had a big turnout for a recent basketweaving presentation.  She acknowledged every person who showed up.  “You are a weaver.  When you can say that about yourself, something shifts in you.  You become more confident.  And you say ‘Okay, let me just try that.’”

Not so many years back, Lisa was sitting at her desk at the tribe’s Department of Natural Resources when one of her co-workers came in, holding up a tiny curly root, as if he’d found something that belonged to her.

He said, “You’re a weaver, right?”

She began with a few baskets—always a beginner—until a leap came: “I felt myself to be a weaver. I called myself a weaver.”

“I felt myself to be a weaver. I called myself a weaver.”

Surprises followed. Wanting a cap, she asked her teacher who could make one. The reply: “You need to weave your own.” Encouraged, she tried. An elder told her, “You’re going to be a cap weaver.” Others’ faith carried her forward: “Because they believed in me, I became this cap weaver.”

She sees weaving as a gift from her people, with the responsibility to teach and support others. “I’d never be this advanced without the support of those who have passed,” she says.

So when reluctant to leave her weaving to teach, she reminds herself: “It has to be with people.” She shares every trick she knows, teaching weekly, sometimes traveling 75 miles.

Weaving stretches across rivers and seasons. Soon, she’ll gather with others to collect blackfern, maidenhair fern, and beargrass—best found in areas burned two years prior. Cultural burns now provide greater access to these materials, strengthening weaving and community.

Lisa is restoring one of her gathering places, making it a refuge for people and a thriving home for plants. With shade and a creek for children, it ties basket-weaving to river health—especially the Klamath, now undammed after generations of Hillman advocacy.

“How do we improve this area for our plant relations?” she asks. Each visit, she leaves the place improved; each year, the plants return stronger, “because they know they’re going to be used.”

“How do we improve this area for our plant relations?....because they know they’re going to be used.”

Her work never ends—next comes alder bark for dyeing last year’s woodwardia. Each basket holds stories: the year’s growth, animals that passed, who gathered and wove it, and for whom. “We talk about baskets having their own spirits.”

That is why, she says “when we do NAGPRA consultations or visits, it’s always really difficult for tribal people, to go and visit your relations that are all packed away, usually in the archives somewhere in boxes or in drawers, up on shelves.”  After a day of that, she says, no matter how exciting the city you’re in, everybody usually just goes back to their hotel room and—she laughs—“cries.”

“when we do NAGPRA consultations or visits, it’s always really difficult for tribal people, to go and visit your relations that are all packed away, usually in the archives somewhere in boxes or in drawers, up on shelves.”

“I understand even more now.”  When Lisa weaves a cap—especially a ceremonial cap—she is weaving it for somebody or some project.  In the museum, it’s taken away from that somebody, and the story is lost.  “It’s just embedded in the spirit of the basket itself… Wow, museum folks!  You don’t need to keep that much stuff.  Just give it back to us.”

Lisa has six apprentices, all established weavers, from the three major tribes in northern California that share the same patterns and materials, two Karuk, two Yurok, two Hupa.  With a two-year commitment to working with Lisa, and to teach and/or take on their own apprentices, they work intensively on one basket type at a time. 

Teachers often ask Lisa to share her skills, and though it can be overwhelming, she insists learning must be face-to-face, “in our Native hands.” With children, she highlights the skills woven into the practice—math, design, ecology, and culture.

For today’s generations, caps themselves are the best teachers. “I had to learn from the caps, from other baskets—‘How did they solve that?’” she says. She and her student are fortunate to study from a strong collection, “because they’re not teaching anyone in the museums.”

‘How did they solve that?...because they’re not teaching anyone in the museums.”

Calling herself a weaver extends beyond personal identity. “The fact that I’m doing this—not, ‘too bad, we used to weave caps and now buy them on eBay’—helps others self-identify.”

This resurgence, she says, heals the community: “We are still here. We still carry this beautiful art forward.” She has nearly thirty caps “dancing on the river,” beacons of hope that embody pride, language, ceremony, and environmental renewal.

For Lisa, weaving itself feels like an award: “I can breathe, and I can do what I need to do.”

She adds, “There is magic in our ways of knowing.”

“There is magic in our ways of knowing.”