Celeste Whitewolf (Tigard) is a fiber artist and an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of Umatilla. She credits her Karuk grandmother for her talent for basket weaving. Using natural materials that she collects, Whitewolf makes baskets for traditional uses, like picking huckleberries, as well as for handbags.
Bio
Celeste Whitewolf was born and raised on the Warm Springs Reservation where she first learned sewing and embroidery from her aunt. Following a career as an attorney, surviving cancer, and founding a national Native cancer survivors’ advocacy organization, Whitewolf reconnected with her family’s weaving traditions with the help of Greg Archuleta, a Native scholar and artist at the Grande Ronde Tribal Office. Whitewolf is a member of the Northwest Native American Basket Weavers Association and attends their bi-annual gatherings as well as the Karuk Spring Basket Weavers Gathering. She continues to learn from elder weavers at the events. When friends and family visit, weaving has become a shared social activity. Whitewolf is also a talented quilter, embroiderer, moccasin and cradleboard maker. Formerly the caretaker for her family’s fishing scaffold on the Columbia River, she has since passed this on to her nephews and niece. Whitewolf makes baskets for traditional uses, like picking huckleberries, as well as for handbags. To craft her baskets, Whitewolf weaves with a variety of natural materials including red cedar bark, pine needles, sweet grass, bear grass, tule, dogbane, cornhusk, and spruce root. When seasonally appropriate, Whitewolf gathers her materials and processes them into fibers. She particularly enjoys refining her technique for patterned weaving and creating designs for the different styles of baskets that reflect her multicultural heritage.
