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RACO, Mich. - In 1936, at seven years of age, a young Lillian Wiser made the arduous journey from her home on Canada's Wikwemikong Indian Reserve to the United States. In search of a better life, Wiser, along with her parents and grandparents, settled in Strongs, Mich. As her father eked out a living for his family in the woods cutting and selling cordwood, Wiser learned the art of birch bark basket making and canoe making from her mother and grandmother, which they made to supplement her father's income.
Her family never stayed in one place for long, however, and Wiser found herself constantly on the move. The cordwood cutting business brought her family all over the Upper Peninsula, as they bounced from town to town, settling briefly in places such as Negaunee and Ishpeming. Regardless of where they were living, Wiser said their summers were always spent in Shelldrake, where her entire family would gather and sell blueberries, in addition to their birch bark crafts.
Many years later, Wiser married and moved to Raco, Mich., where she raised her 10 children (nine boys and one girl.) After most of her children had grown up and moved out of the house, Wiser moved once again. This time, she moved downstate to East Jordan, where she took a job in a car parts assembly plant. After retiring from the factory after 22 years, Wiser said her heart longed for the U.P. She packed up her belongings once again and returned to her home in Raco.
"I had to move back to God's country," Wiser said of Raco. "Raco is God's country. I've lived many places in my life, but this will always be my home."
Now back at her home in the U.P., after a 22-year hiatus spent downstate, Wiser said she struggled to make ends meet. Living off her meager monthly social security check, Wiser once again sought different ways to supplement her income. She began making rugs out of rags, which she said took many painstaking hours to complete, but could only sell them for a mere seven or eight dollars. Knowing there had to be an easier to make a living, Wiser, who was now 62 years old, said she sought out the help of her mother. Her request - some birch bark, porcupine quills, sweetgrass and a pattern to begin making baskets again.
After receiving the supplies from her mother, Wiser said she fumbled through her first couple of baskets, due to the fact that she had not made one since she was a little girl. With the art of basket making in her Anishnaabe blood, Wiser's hands easily relearned the craft that had helped her family get by all those years earlier as a young child.
On one sleepless and fateful night, Wiser decided to pick up some scrap pieces of birch bark she had lying around the house. Seemingly inspired by the vast blueberry fields that surrounded her home, Wiser said she cut a pattern into a piece of bark. It was unlike any pattern she had ever seen before. She cut more panels and began the tedious process of connecting her petal-shaped panels of birch bark with some carpet thread she had lying around the house, separating each individual panel with a strand of sweet grass. With a flat bottom and rounded shape, Wiser's basket narrowed and opened up at the top, with the tips of each panel curling outwards.
She attached a pinecone to the tip of each petal to complete her handiwork. When she was finished, Wiser reveled in her new creation. After one look at her basket, unlike any she had ever seen or made before, she said she immediately knew what she would call it - a blueberry basket! While it can be, and is used to collect the delicious blue fruit that has provided sustenance for her fellow Anishnaabek people for hundreds of years, Wiser said that is not where the name came from.
"It got its' name because it looks just like a blueberry," Wiser said about the similar shape and features of her birch bark basket and the berry. "It's shaped just like a ripe blueberry; the flaps on the top turn out just like it does on the top of a blueberry, too. Some people think I got the name for my basket because I used it to collect blueberries, but that's not how I came up with it."
It didn't take long for word of Wiser's unique and elegantly crafted baskets to spread. In fact, the word spread like wildfire. Pretty soon, Wiser was receiving so many orders she had to work long hours and seek out the help of her children just to try and keep up with the demand, as collectors from all over the country sought out her baskets.
"I'm pretty proud (of my baskets)," Wiser said. "I never dreamed that people would actually look for me to get a basket. It makes me feel good to know that people see what I do and are amazed by it. It makes me so proud."
Wiser's work was so well respected that she was commissioned by the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians to make a basket for the collection at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C. Sault Tribe's Cultural Repatriation Specialist Cecil Pavlat brought the basket with him to the opening ceremony on Sept. 21, 2004 and presented it to the NMAI as a cultural representation of the Anishnaabek people. In addition to being on display at the NMAI, Wiser's work can also be found in the Smithsonian, in homes as far away as China and Taiwan, and her personal favorite - in the home of country-western singer Porter Wagner, who purchased one of her baskets at Kewadin Casino's gift shop after a show.
According to Wiser, basket making is almost 100 percent profit. The only thing she purchases is the carpet thread she uses to bind the panels and sweetgrass together and the dyes she uses to color her porcupine quills. The rest of her supplies are gathered from Mother Nature. She collects the quills from porcupines in the spring when they are at their hardest. Quills gathered from any other time of the year are too soft and will not work properly, she said. The bark she gathers when "the popple trees are peeling," which she said usually takes place in June or July. The sweetgrass is gathered in July when it is high enough, but not yellow, she added. After everything is collected, the sweetgrass is stored in black cloth to prevent it from fading, the quills are separated from the hair, are cleaned and then dyed, and the birch bark is stacked and weighted down to prevent it from curling during the drying process.
Once all the supplies are in order, Wiser said it takes about one week to complete a basket. The majority of that week she spends on the intricate porcupine quill patterns that grace the surfaces of her signature baskets and the boxes she makes, because each quill is secured individually. Although a lot of hard work and a great deal of patience goes into the making of just one basket, Wiser said the fruits of her labor have paid off exponentially. According to Wiser, not only has she had a chance to share her culture with the rest of the world, but her baskets have also allowed her to make a good living. Her baskets have helped put food on her table, kept her truck running, and most importantly, kept her alive.
"If it wasn't for my work, I'd probably be dead," Wiser said. "It keeps me going everyday. Everyday, I'm learning more and more. And I'm still trying to find an easier way to make them, but I can tell you 'there isn't one.' I do know that if it wasn't for birch bark my truck wouldn't be running."
Wiser, who is now 76 years old, said she doesn't get out into the woods as much as she would like to anymore. Instead, she opts to sit in her truck knitting while her sons are out in the woods collecting her supplies. She said she has tried to pass on her craft to others in the past, and even taught an eight-week course at Bay Mills Community College, but said people in her class seemed put off by all the hard work. Instead, she has passed down the craft she learned from her mother all those years ago, who had learned it from her mother before her, to her sons, so it will not be lost when she passes on. In fact, Wiser said two of her sons, J.R. and Fred, in particular, have become exceptional basket makers. Regardless of whether or not any of her children choose to follow in her footsteps and make a living selling baskets, Wiser said by passing on her gift to her sons she can sleep peacefully at night knowing her craft will not be gone when her time comes.
"I taught my boys (how to make baskets) so they can carry on with it and, hopefully, make a good living when I'm gone," she said. "If it wasn't for them I wouldn't even be selling baskets. They're hard workers and I'm really proud of them. It's just too bad others don't want to do it. The world needs more people like me."
