Melinda West | West Gardens Basketry

Growing, gathering, and weaving with plant fibers from the Pacific Northwest

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Ernestine Hayes – “Here We Are Together – Our Only Future Is a Future Together. As Humans.”

February 7, 2026 By Melinda

To listen to Earnestine Hayes in this beautiful short profile is a gift to any heart that aches for the ills in the world today. I’m so grateful that she found her gift of writing. I hope you enjoy!

“I believe that the things that we learn about balance and about sharing and kinship and survival and dependence are not strictly Indigenous values and knowledge, they are human values and human knowledge, because we are all human and we share all these human experiences of grief and love and excitement and fear, but also because … here we are together. Here we are together. History and events and circumstances have put colonizers and colonized and oppressed and oppressors and all of us together here, now, and our only future is a future together. As humans.”

– Ernestine Hayes (Kaagwaantaan Clan of the Tlingit Nation)

 

 

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Recent Posts

  • Lissa Hunter’s Take Two Online Workshop
  • Ernestine Hayes – “Here We Are Together – Our Only Future Is a Future Together. As Humans.”
  • Healing Words – Human Values
  • Greetings – It’s 2026!
  • The Community Completes the Artist

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About Melinda

Forty years ago, while sitting on the beach playing with my young children, I made my first basket out of a pile of willow trimmings someone had tossed there. It looked wildly made like a crazy bird’s nest. While being together with my two sons on a beautiful Pacific Northwest shoreline, this simple experience of crafting with the natural materials at hand kindled a passion for creating forms using plant fibers. I thank my family, my community, and all my teachers for cultivating this gift in me.
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