This time of year finds many Native Americans across the Pacific Northwest treating hazel, through fire and cutting. The native hazel shrub – not to be confused with hazelnut trees – is prized for its sticks, often used for traditional basketry.
Recently, Siletz tribal member Jerome Viles and his father, elder and basket weaver Drew Viles, went to a remote hazel growth outside of Eugene to burn and cut back its shoots. KLCC’s Brian Bull tagged along and produced this audio postcard.
JEROME VILES: Jii-la, shii-du', Jerome Viles. I'm a Siletz tribal member. My family comes from the Rogue River area of southern Oregon and also related to folks up at Chinook Indian Nation.
Today we are propane torching hazel in hopes of getting good long sticks for basket weavers.
Hazel has evolved to live with fire. There used to be a lot more fire on the landscapes in Oregon here. There's a lot of regulation around fire these days. We can't burn at normal times like we used to in the late summer and fall. There's a lot of fire restrictions. So winter is a time you can burn. That's part of why we're doing propane torching.
And when it burns, it stimulates a plant to send up really straight, long shoots. So when it doesn't burn, we're still able to get shoots, but they're not as straight or long, so basket weavers really want those long, straight hazel shoots to weave, you know, baby baskets and all sorts of other baskets.
If you come over here and look at it, you can see where the bark has popped off. So you're flash boiling any sap that's in there, and it pops and you can hear, hear that crackling sound, and then you get the bark starting to blister, and then it explodes. And that will kill these sticks, but leave the roots alive underneath. Obviously.
What motivates me to be doing this is my dad. He's a basket weaver. He makes baby baskets for a lot of folks in our tribe. So he has a need for a lot of hazel to do that. My role in it is just trying to get him straight sticks to weave with.
DREW VILES: My name is Drew Viles. I'm Siletz and I'm a basket maker.
Hazel’s been used for thousands of years for baskets and for it to propagate properly, for it to grow straight, and without taper, without many branches, those are all things that don't help a basket look good. If it's kind of stubby, or if it has branches coming off, you can't use it for baskets.
Coppicing. That's one technique that we've resorted to since reservation times to tend the hazel with. Hazel likes to be coppiced. It likes to put up straight shoots after coppicing.
JEROME VILES: So that means cutting them that also stimulates straight shoots. We've found it's not as good as burning, but it can be a good substitute.
DREW VILES: The season for gathering hazel sticks is a few months off. It's spring when the bark starts slipping. That's when you go and get the hazel shoots.
JEROME VILES: Yeah, we'll probably get sticks from this, not this coming spring, but the spring after would be when I'd expect sticks. So in 2026, we'll hopefully be seeing some good straight, long shoots coming up that we can use.
DREW VILES: Widespread use up and down the Pacific Coast for hazel, it's a superior basket making element, and regalia for dancing. I'm a cradle basket maker. That's my specialty is to make cradle baskets for babies to live in during their first few months of life. They get strapped in, swaddled, into cradle baskets. Gay-yu we call them, and those cradle baskets can be found in Northern California, in Southern Oregon, widespread.
(Someone) was commenting that when they see somebody practicing traditional knowledge, if they hear someone speak in their ancestral language, it gives them an assurance that things are going to be all right for the next seven generations.
And I hadn't thought about in those terms, but that gives me encouragement and makes my heart a lot lighter when you see young people who are practicing their culture.
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