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Michigan Heritage Awards
Arts
Nomination Form (PDF)
Arts Nomination
Form (word)
Community
Leadership Nomination Form (PDF)
Community Leadership
Nomination Form (word)
^ MHA Awardees List ^
Photo courtesy of Renée "Wasson" Dillard
Renée "Wasson" Dillard
2010 awardee, Harbor Springs (Emmet County),
black ash baskets, fiber arts
Renée “Wasson” Dillard is a highly accomplished master
finger weaver, black ash basket maker, culture bearer and educator. Born
of a Scottish-American mother and Odawa father, Renée grew up near
Grand Rapids. She draws on her two heritages for her love for traditional
fiber arts. In addition to black ash baskets she weaves cedar bark and cattail
and bulrush mats, makes birch bark boxes, and finger weaves sashes, a tradition
she learned as a young girl from her mother. She began making baskets as
a child, learning from her grandmother “as a way of life”. Today
Wasson weaves and teaches basketmaking full time in order to preserve this
tradition. She teaches the entire black ash basket process from harvesting
and processing the tree into usable basket materials to forming the materials
into traditional patterns and shapes. Her students include two young women
through the Michigan Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program and she is
a stalwart teacher at gatherings of weavers in the state. Her work and teaching
gained her recognition by museums such as the Grand Rapids Public Museum,
the Ziibiwing Center of Anishinabe Culture and Lifeways and Culture, and
the MSU Museum and she has demonstrated her work at festivals, including
at the Great Lakes Folk Festival in the special MSU Museum/Smithsonian Institution
“Carriers of Culture” program. She is recognized for her dedicated,
effective teaching and for passing on her skills to others within tribal
communities and in museum programs, offering workshops to youth, adults
and elders through pow wows and artist-in-residencies.
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