Master Ohlone basket weaver Linda Yamane taught herself the intricate and nearly extinct craft over 100 years after the last Rumsen basketmakers died.

One of her baskets required about 20,000 stitches, 1,200 handcrafted beads, and thousands of feathers. Her basket was completed in a ceremonial style that hadn’t been made in 250 years.

Linda Yamane weaving a twined work basket (photo by Neil Bennet)

Around the same time as beginning basketry, Yamane also discovered source materials for the Rumsen language, which she used to create a dictionary she now shares with individual community members, 85 years after the last fluent Rumsen speaker died.

Yamane wants to depict the ancestral villages of Achista, Tucutnut, Ishxenta, Echilat, and Shokronta.

“I want to reconstruct our five Rumsen villages and reconstruct them with our people as life was before the missions came,” Yamane said. 

From: HYPERALLERGIC