ORONO, Maine — Barry Dana is the former Chief of the Penobscot Nation. Besides being a Birch Bark basket maker, his main goal is to preserve the Wabanaki culture.
"Not for the sake of putting it in a museum but for the sake of reviving the people that go with that culture," says Dana.
One of the ways he does that is by teaching the younger generations about Wabanaki culture in schools.
"No one was doing it in the community, so you had these elders with that knowledge but it wasn't being passed down," says Dana.
Dana says his main focus these days is being a voice for his community.
"I think the tribes today, because of maybe social media, are finally getting caught up with what it's like to be today's american. We are raised to think you don't give up on your culture," says Dana.
Jeremy Frey has been weaving baskets for 19 years and his ancestors from the Passamaquoddy tribe have done it for generations.
"It's a piece of living history that goes back thousands of years, and it's all from the southern Maine woods," said Frey.
Frey can take from weeks to six months to complete a piece. His pieces sell anywhere between a few hundred dollars to more than $5,000.
Everything he uses for his basket making is natural materials that he harvests.
"There are multiple people connected to that one piece because you have harvesters, then processors, and then the weavers, and the people that make the forms, and the people that make the tools for the weavers. It's a whole community of people involved in that one piece of wood," says Frey.
A challenge for Frey and many other Native American tribes in Maine is the Emerald Ash Borer, an invasive insect that lives in Ash trees and can kill the tree within years.
Ash trees are the most traditional material used to create their pieces.
"It will devastate all the trees. There won't be any harvest material left in a few years. I've spent almost twenty years perfecting what I do and I'll have to completely change it," says Frey.
The word 'Wabanaki' means people of the dawn, and it is the term used to represent all of the Native American tribes in Maine: Maliseet, Micmac, Penobscot, and Passamaquoddy.
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