From a Square to a Circle: Haida Basketry

As fibre and weaving arts experience a long-overdue recognition within the art world, Haida weaver Delores Churchill’s book is a testament to the high regard this art form has enjoyed in Indigenous communities for millennia. Part memoir and part how-to guide to traditional Haida weaving techniques, Churchill’s writings overlap threads of her mother Selina’s (Ilst’ayaa’s) teachings and their complicated relationship with the passion of returning to weaving later in life after rebuking it as a child. The latter is summed up in the book’s foreword: “I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. It is like I am in love!” she exclaimed to Cheryl Samuel, one of her early teachers