LaVerne Glaze, Basketweaver and Elder

Karuk/Yurok Orleans, California

LaVerne Glaze is one of CIBA’s founding members. Since the early 1970s, LaVerne has been weaving and teaching, while at the same time working to educate local government agencies on plant management to improve the quality of the natural materials essential to basketweaving. Eliminating the use of pesticides in the forest and knowing when and how to prune and burn are crucial to harvesting materials that are good for making baskets. She has built a solid reputation for never giving up in her efforts to ensure that weavers have the access to the plant materials found on US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands. Her steady dedication to the success of the ?Passport in Time? (PIT) basketweavers camp, ?Following the Smoke? has resulted in this annual event becoming an annual tradition that has changed lives for the better and built inter-cultural bonds as strong as the native plants she uses to weave her baskets. LaVerne continues to press the Forest Service each year to do the burning that is necessary to promote and enhance basket plants.

I was born and raised in Orleans, California, on April 18, 1932. I attended grammar school there and spent my freshman and sophomore years at Sherman Indian School and my last two years in Hoopa, graduating in 1950.

I have three children: Renée Stauffer, Clifford McLaughlin and Deanna Marshall, nine grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren and almost all except for the very young are basketweavers. My children and their families live in Orleans. We are all a very close knit family.

I have been teaching basketweaving, pottery, and regalia making with Karuk language for the past twenty years at the Orleans Elementary School. We go on field trips to gather basket materials and the children learn how to prepare and dye them for weaving. I have two classes a week at the school and an adult class at the Panaminik Senior Center on Sundays. This class has weavers from the ages of seven to ninety five years. We have men and women and children weavers attending each week. We make it a social time with visiting and, of course, eating. We have fun together.

I work with the USFS, BLM, Karuk Tribe and Caltrans each year for a week of weaving and gathering materials, we call the camp “Following the Smoke,“ as our weavers follow the forest fires to find desirable basket materials after the event. We prepare units for cultural burning of hazel and beargrass by the Forest Service. We have held this camp for ten years and in 2004 we received the Chairman‘s Award for Federal Achievement in Historic Preservation and, another award that year was the California Governor‘s Historic Preservation Award. In 2006, ”Smoke“ received an award, the White House Conservation Partnership on the collaborative stewardship that “Following the Smoke” represents.

Last year the upper grade girls did a history project on CIBA and went to state with it, they were asked questions by the judges on all the ins and outs of weaving and the girls were confident answering the questions because they knew what they were talking about, which made my day. It is rewarding to know that these young people are learning and will be continue to become fine Basketweavers.

Some of my students are beginning to present and teach themselves; one has made a DVD in Karuk language on how to start a basket.

LaVerne Glaze does not sell any of her baskets. She is available for speaking engagements, demonstrations, and basket identification (Karuk, Yurok, and Hupa). Contact LaVerne at P.O Box 295, Orleans, CA 95556, phone (530) 627-3112.

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