Celebrates the state's distinctive cooking, a blend of Native American, Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo influences.

This strong, handsome, informative and attractive book gives penetrating views of the richness of the traditions, the current state of the art and the beauty of the products. Arresting photos from historic sources as well as images of current baskets are well chosen and forceful.

Abstract: "Native American women from the American Southwest have always used basket weaving to maintain relationships with nature, their spirituality, tribal histories, sovereignty, and their ancestors. However, since the late nineteenth century, with the emergence of a tremendous tourist industry in the American West, non-Indians have perceived Native American basketry as a commoditized practice with no connection to tribal traditions or spirituality. Non-Indians often viewed Native American women basket weavers as submissive individuals who became part of the market economy and abandoned their tribal traditions. In the early twentieth century, anthropologists and art historians believed in the narrative of the "Vanishing Indian", which led museum officials to collect baskets as the last remnants of a "once proud people". Officials maintained these ideas until the 1990's. During the last decade of the twentieth century, Native Americans scholars pushed back against these dominant narratives by acknowledging the harsh realities of settler colonialism. Even more extraordinary, researchers placed Native American women at the center of their arguments to affirm their adherence to cultural traditions and their continual commitment to tribal continuity. Despite these accomplishments, however, scholars have not applied this research to American Indian women basket weavers. Because of this absence in the historiography, numerous non-Natives continue to believe indigenous basketry of the American West is an art form that lacks traditional methods, continuity, techniques, and cultural connections to communities. To combat these preconceptions, the following dissertation will examine the lives and works of four Native American basket weavers from California and Nevada, Basketry has always been a way to honor traditional values and assert a woman's individual sovereignty, as a tribal member and artist. This is because since ancestral times American Indian basketry has played a significant role in indigenous communities in California and Eastern Nevada. More importantly, this dissertation will focus on exploring the tremendous amount of power these women exerted when establishing boundaries over who they would teach their art form. Overall, the four indigenous women in this dissertation all show that basket weaving manifests unique pieces of art and have always been an important part of their identities and communities."--Pages iv-v.

Weavers of Tradition and Beauty presents new information on contemporary Native American basketry of the Great Basin, largely from the viewpoint of the weavers themselves. Baskets - and the people who weave them - have always been revered and honored by Native Americans. Fulkerson and Curtis depict, in vivid text and both full color and black-and-white photographs, how their art prevails - even over adverse environmental, social, and economic conditions.

The Native American inhabitants of North America’s Great Basin have a long, eventful history and rich cultures. Great Basin Indians: An Encyclopedic History covers all aspects of their world. The book is organized in an encyclopedic format to allow full discussion of many diverse topics, including geography, religion, significant individuals, the impact of Euro-American settlement, wars, tribes and intertribal relations, reservations, federal policies regarding Native Americans, scholarly theories regarding their prehistory, and others. Author Michael Hittman employs a vast range of archival and secondary sources as well as interviews, and he addresses the fruits of such recent methodologies as DNA analysis and gender studies that offer new insights into the lives and history of these enduring inhabitants of one of North America’s most challenging environments. Great Basin Indians is an essential resource for any reader interested in the Native peoples of the American West and in western history in general.

Over 750 color photographs illustrate this long-awaited guide for collectors of vintage Native American basketry. Decades of basketry research inform the text, guiding basket lovers to a better understanding of these woven treasures. Clear images and concise descriptions, presented in an extended gallery showcasing hundreds of baskets, delineate specific tribal styles within Native North America's nine basketry regions: Southwest, Great Basin, California, Plateau, Northwest Coast, Arctic and Subarctic, Plains, Southeast, and Northeast. Unique to this book is an in-depth comparison of imported baskets being passed off as American Indian work. The cultural and historical background as well as the influence of the "Indian basket craze" are also examined. Valuable guidance on buying, selling, and caring for baskets includes a frank discussion of legal issues impacting basket collectors. Rounding out this essential reference are comprehensive regional bibliographies, Internet resource listings, and a directory of American museums exhibiting Native American baskets.

Situated on the western edge of the Great Basin between the Sierra Nevada and White-Inyo mountain ranges, Owens Valley has been home for thousands of years to the Owens Valley Paiute and their southern neighbors, the Panamint Shoshone. The willow baskets both groups created are noteworthy for their complex construction and durability, and their materials and designs reflected available resources as well as the seminomadic existence that characterized life in the Great Basin for generations. Since the mid-nineteenth-century arrival of non-Indians into the Valley, the baskets have changed. Weaving a Legacy places those changes in the context of the region's dramatic social history. In addition, the volume closely examines basketry techniques and technology, historic weavers and their lineages, contemporary weavers, and basket collectors. The text is extensively illustrated with black-and-white photographs of people, landscapes, and baskets. Among the legacies of these baskets are the stories they evoke, many of which the authors recount in this beautiful work.