Native Plant Walk & Milkweed Fiber Spinning

Description

Join Native Nature Educator & Artist Elizabeth James-Perry on a plant walk on the trails at Appleton Farms, followed by a milkweed fiber processing demonstration. Participants will learn about culturally-important Indigenous woodland and coastal plants in the northeast. Autumn is a great time to use colorful leaves, bark, late-season fruits and scents to learn about coniferous and deciduous tree, plant and shrub species used to make traditional natural products Wampanoag basketry, foods, and natural dyestuff.

Milkweed plants were once a major sustainable source of fine soft fibers for Native woven clothing and also used for serviceable and attractive twined soft fiber baskets in a variety of sizes from small pouches to huge sacks. Milkweed plants are an important for pollinators especially Monarch butterflies. The artist will harvest dry, end-of-season common milkweed stalks in order to demonstrate traditional fiber processing and hand spinning two ply cordage.

About the Program Leader – Native Educator & Artist, Elizabeth James-Perry

Internationally known 2023 National Endowment of the Arts Heritage Fellow Elizabeth James-Perry is an enrolled Aquinnah Wampanoag who engages with Northeastern Woodlands arts and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) education and consultation, with a focus on sculptural wampum shell-carving, natural dyed textiles, and watercolor paintings including the Bear Map series. Her work explores the connections between the arts, sustainability, Native identity and sovereignty, maritime traditions and environmentally restorative Native gardening. Her garden project Raven Reshapes Boston was part of a year-long effort to bring diversity to the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, in tandem with Ekua Holmes’ Radiant Sunflowers garden and bright collaborative billboard designs.

Elizabeth worked to revitalize knowledge of Native plant dyes early in her career. Over the years she has developed a practice based in growing plants suitable for fiber arts, natural dyes, foods and medicines. She is devoted to keeping these practices alive, despite species loss, where some species are becoming increasingly rare on tribal reservation lands and in the region generally, due to development, invasive plants and climate change. Elizabeth will share Native land stewardship practices such as the mound gardens she has planted in the City of Boston, featuring the Three Sisters crops (corn, beans and squash), and sedges. A partnership with Book and Plow Farm at Amherst College for several years provided Elizabeth with the opportunity to mentor Native students and to grow forty different species from seed for pollinator and food gardens, and the artist is currently an Agripreneur at Round the Bend Farm in Dartmouth, Massachusetts.

James-Perry’s background is in art and natural sciences. She earned degree in Marine Science from the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, attended courses at Shoals Marine Lab, and Rhode Island School of Design CE, and holds a certificate in Digital Tribal Stewardship from Washington State University. She was an advisor for many years for the New England Foundation of the Arts Native program in Boston.

See Elizabeth’s current work on exhibit in:

• Seals and Society at the Seacoast Science Center, Rye, NH: https://www.sealsandsociety.com/about
• Interwoven Power at the Monclaire Art Museum, Montclaire, NJ: https://montclairartmuseum.org/exhibition/interwoven-power-native-knowledge-native-art
• Shifting Boundaries at the Smithsonian: https://asia.si.edu/whats-on/exhibitions/shifting-boundaries/
• Across Boundaries Across Borders at the Trustees Fruitlands Museum in Harvard, MA: https://thetrustees.org/exhibit/across-boundaries-across-barriers/

Learn more about the Elizabeth and her work by visiting her website: www.elizabethjamesperry.com