ORONO, Maine — Maine’s indigenous artist community drew a hearty crowd to the Hudson Museum at the University of Maine on Saturday, as the Wabanaki Winter Market returned for its 29th year.
Creatives from the four tribes in the state displayed their work and celebrated the recent success of native art in Maine.
“Wabanaki art is thriving,” Jennifer Neptune, one of the event’s organizers, said on Saturday. “This is the first year we’ve had to move artists onto another floor.”
While booths throughout the museum featured a broad selection of Wabanaki art forms, finely woven baskets were everywhere.
What began as a tool to carry food and goods over long distances through Maine’s woods and waterways, outside interest in the 19th century spurred a boom in Wabanaki basket art.
“The really fine ones, really fancy ones started to become popular in the late eighteen hundreds when tourists started to come to Maine,” Neptune said.
Since then, indigenous-made baskets have served a dual role as a source of income and a base with which artists can experiment while keeping traditions alive.
“We have basket makers who tell their entire life story in just one piece,” Byron Sockalexis, who comes from a family of artists on Indian Island, said.
To many on Saturday, the event—equal parts business and celebration—carried an added meaning as a chance to reflect on the history of the art being sold.
“It's so important that we continue this.,” Sikwani Dana, an educator, added. “There are so many parts of our culture and language [that] have been lost.”
As Sockalexis puts it, “People can hear us, people can hear us all the time. But are people actually noticing us?”