Features
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MELISSA
GUIDE
TO
DARDEN
IS ONE OF SIX REMAINING
HOMESTEADING
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NEW ARTS
CHITIMACHA
CENTER
IN
A N A LO G A R TS
BASKET WEAVERS
PONCHATOULA
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21ST CENTURY
W
ENDURING ARTS
Woven into Being
BETWEEN MELISSA DARDEN’S HANDS, A THOUSAND-YEAR-OLD CHITIMACHA TRADITION CONTINUES ON Story by Catherine Comeaux • Photos by Olivia Perillo
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or thousands of years, the Chitimacha people have inhabited the Atchafalaya Basin and its surrounding lands between Lafayette and New Orleans. Today, the tribe continues to occupy a segment of this same land on a bend in the Bayou Teche near Charenton, where the Tribal Council’s first female Chairperson Melissa Darden oversees issues like improving access to technology in a postCOVID world, local job growth, and various tribal enterprises—all with a mind focused on ensuring a prosperous future 30
for the tribe and steadied by a tactile connection to the past through her mastery of traditional Chitimacha river cane basket weaving. As a girl, Darden tagged along with her sister to a basket weaving class being taught by their grandmother Lydia Darden and fellow tribe member Ada Thomas. Too young to be an official student, she would play at putting the cane together. The classes did not continue for long; the involved process of learning to weave traditional Chitimacha baskets,
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the women discovered, proved not well suited for the limited classroom format. The time it takes to learn the skills involved in each step must, by their nature, be spread out in varied increments throughout a month, a season, a lifetime. Gathering materials begins with a trip to the canebrakes to harvest the piya, the Chitimacha word for the cane used in weaving. Arundinaria gigantea, a native bamboo that grows in patches called canebrakes, has been used by the Chitimacha for millennia. Agriculture has
decreased its abundance, but the tribe’s Cultural Department has re-established canebrakes on the reservation to ensure its availability for weaving. Once harvested, the cane is split, peeled, dried, and then some is dyed in the three traditional colors of red, black, and yellow. The rest retains its natural light brown color when dried. Once the cane is dyed, it is split and peeled again before it is ready to be woven into either a single weave or double weave basket. A learner must possess the drive to pursue one who knows, watch them,
