North by Northeast: Wabanaki, Akwesasne Mohawk, and Tuscarora Traditional Arts [Paperback]

Kathleen Mundell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 31, 2008

For generations, Native American traditional artists in the Northeast have passed on their culture through beadwork, basketry, canoe making, wood carving, and quilting. Through the work and words of over thirty-five traditional artists living and working primarily in Maine and New York, North by Northeast explores these artists' connection to place, tradition, and cultural identity. A tribute to the resourcefulness and creativity of contemporary practicing artists from the Wabanaki, Akwesasne Mohawk, and Tuscarora tribes, the book is beautifully illustrated with the work of photographers Cedric Chatterley, Peggy McKenna, Jere DeWaters, and Peter Dembski.

Folklorist Kathleen Mundell has been working with Native American traditional artists for over fifteen years. Her collaboration with Maine's Native American basketmakers resulted in a multi-tribal effort to preserve the ash basketry tradition and in the creation of the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance. North by Northeast will also include contributions by Salli Benedict (Mohawk), Sue Ellen Herne (Mohawk), Theresa Secord (Penobscot), and Lynne Williamson (Mohawk heritage).

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Kathleen Mundell writes 'North by Northeast:Wabanaki,Akwesasne Mohawk, and Tuscarora Traditional Arts' in a collaborative spirit, letting the artists speak directly about their art and culture. Although the book focuses largely on baskets, it also covers beadwork, canoe making, wood carving and quilting. What's difficult to escape is the sense of longstanding tradition that binds the artists and their communities, giving the book a compelling cultural text." -- American Style, February 2009

"...unique book...augmented by nearly two hundred beautiful color photographs, this book showcases the cultural history, symbolism, community connection, materials and methods for intricate forms of basket making and exquisite beadwork. Mundell includes interviews and contribution by Native American artists..." --Kennebec Journal, January 11, 2009

"Mundell has been gathering material for this book for 15 years. Native American traditional artists-over 35 of them living primarily in Maine and New York-explore here the connection to place, tradition, cultural identity. Mundell features profiles of the artists themselves with their own words and illustrations of their individual work....the artwork-exquisitely photographed here-especially the basketmaking-is breathtaking in its intricacy of design and utility, particular shapes and artistic renderings often handed down through generations in families....Mundell's collaboration with the basketmakers has resulted in a multi-tribal effort to preserve the ash-basketry tradition and the creation of the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance. This book is part of a traveling exhibition of the basketmaking and beadmaking arts touring the northeast beginning in earlier 2008. --Working Waterfront, February-March 2009

"...provides detailed descriptions of the tools, techniques, and materials that go into the basketry and beadwork....The color and black-and-white photography in the book is exceptional....broad in its scope, encompassing history, culture, anthropology, politics, and religion....a benchmark in the ongoing effort to sustain a complex and vibrant culture in the face of contemporary forces working against it." --Wolf Moon Journal, Summer 2009

About the Author

Director of Cultural Resources, a nonprofit working with communities on sustaining their local culture, Kathleen Mundell has had a long involvement with the arts, folklore, ethnographic marketing, cultural preservation, and exhibit work. She has a BA in Literature from SUNY, Collage at Purchas, NY, and a Master's in Folklore from Indiana University at Bloomington.

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Tilbury House Publishers (August 31, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0884483053
• ISBN-13: 978-0884483052
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 7.4 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,499,219 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Living Native Traditions Brilliantly Illustrated and Described, December 15, 2008

By 

Maine man (Maine, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: North by Northeast: Wabanaki, Akwesasne Mohawk, and Tuscarora Traditional Arts (Paperback)

What a jewel this book is! Kathleen Mundell, a folklorist with more than 20 years' experience working with the tribes of the Northeast, has produced a sensitively written and beautifully illustrated an in-depth study of the tribes' craft traditions, covering basketry and bead work in depth while also touching on war clubs and canoes, and more. Mundell interweaves the practitioner's own words, written and spoken, with her own text, describing the traditions, materials and challenges involved in the making of the objects and the continuation of the tradition. Beautifully illustrated with many exquisite color photographs, this is a coffee-table book, important cultural history, and call-to-action all in one package, at an affordable price. Not to be missed.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential Introduction to a Basket-Making Tradition., October 28, 2008

By 

Ben Franklin Bookshop "Michael Houghton" (Nyack, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: North by Northeast: Wabanaki, Akwesasne Mohawk, and Tuscarora Traditional Arts (Paperback)

NORTH BY NORTHEAST is more than just the catalog of an exhibition of modern Native American baskets and related arts. (The exhibit will travel on a limited tour through the Northeast, beginning in 2008.) If you were fortunate enough to see the show, you probably have already purchased a copy, as the book is stunning. Author and editor, folklorist Kathleen Mundell has here produced an incisive and deeply appreciative look at three northeast Native American basketmaking communities -- one in rural Maine, the other two in far-upstate New York.
The book provides a welcome and in-depth introduction to traditional basketmaking practiced in these communities. Readers will quickly realize that this is not a how-to-do-it book --the basketwork shown is extremely complicated and was learned one-on-one, with elders passing basketmaking traditions and techniques to younger tribal members, usually within a family, and often over a shared lifetime.

The book's extraordinary illustrations deserve special mention. Several contributing photographers, working seemingly with a single vision, provide an immediate, even tactile, close-up look at the baskets in the show, and make apparent the inspiration native basketmakers find in Nature. The "globe thistle pattern" baskets, for example, seem as complicated --and as beautiful-- as the thistles that inspire them. The Work Basket category includes many types which survive today, even if no longer used as originally intended. Corn-Washing Baskets, Potato Baskets, Fish Scale Baskets and many others traditional forms, as well as many modern inovations continue to be produced, apparently because of the pleasure derived in the making, as well, of course, for income derived from their sale. Other basket forms such as Strawberry baskets, Corn baskets, and vases woven over glass jars were developed for the tourist and market trade, and continue to be made as well, in a tradition which is itself now more than a century old.

Ms Mundell is a careful observer and seems to have asked just the right questions to bring out the native artists' feelings for their craft, as well as their unique points of view regarding the basketmaking tradition within their communities, their personal histories and development as artisans, and includes extensive statements by many of the basketmakers themselves.

Since basket materials such as sweetgrass and ash splints are such a basic part of the object, N By NW also includes discussion of basket makers' concerns over vanishing and endangered supplies and the artists' conservation efforts. Besides the basketmaking tradition, North By Northeast looks at related crafts such as beadwork and birch bark construction.

Working within tradition, but moving towards the future, as one of the basket makers says, keeps the artists in touch with the PAST through basketmaking tradition and techniques, the PRESANT in the practice of the craft, gathering and preparing the materials, and selling in a changing market, and in the FUTURE in teaching the tradition to students of basketmaking and through efforts to protect of the basic materials of basketmaking. We give the book our highest recommendation.

Michael Houghton
BEN FRANKLIN BOOKSHOP,
Nyack, New York.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Showcases the works and commentaries of thirty-five traditional Native American artists, October 9, 2008

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: North by Northeast: Wabanaki, Akwesasne Mohawk, and Tuscarora Traditional Arts (Paperback)

There is a concerted and laudable movement to preserve and showcase Native American traditional culture as expressed through beadwork, basketry, canoe making, wood carving, and quilting. "North By Northeast: Wabanaki, Akwesasne Mohawk, and Tuscarora Traditional Arts" by folklorist and ethnographer Kathleen Mundell showcases the works and commentaries of thirty-five traditional Native American artists living and working primarily in Maine and New York. Beautifully illustrated throughout, the text is as informed and informative as it is insightful and inspiring. Written as an accompaniment to an exhibition that will travel to the Akwesasne Museum and Cultural Center in Hogansburg, NY (May-September 2008), the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor, Maine (October-May 2009), and the Pequot Museum and Research Center in Mashantucket, Connecticut (May-September 2009), "North By Northeast" is enthusiastically recommended for personal, academic, and community library Native American Studies reference collections and supplemental reading lists.