The Center for the Study of the Force Majeure is proud to be working in allyship with Knowledge Keepers from the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California on the Stewarding Knowledges project.

Our collaborations with members of the Washoe community began in 2013 when Benny and Laura Fillmore heard a lecture by Center Co-Founders Newton and Helen Harrison at the Nevada Museum about their seminal artwork: Sagehen: A Proving Ground, and volunteered to work with the Harrisons to help them better integrate indigenous understandings in the piece. That initial cooperation has evolved over the years. Laura is now on the Board of the Center and we have been developing a number of interrelated projects in Sagehen Forest Preserve as well as other locations in the traditional lands of the Washoe. Stewarding Knowledges is part of that evolution.

Stewarding Knowledges is designed to serve Tribal members on whose traditional homelands the project areas lie in Placer and Nevada Counties, and is a partnership between Wà:šiw and public artists, benefiting those who use public lands at both sites: Sagehen Creek Field Station in Nevada County and the Gatekeepers Basketry Museum in Placer County. The museum grounds are managed by CA State Parks, which signed an MOU a year ago with the Washoe Tribe allowing tribal members access to the parks system and creating a context for co-management of state parks lands.

Two Paths: One Journey

Stewarding Knowledges has two parts: supporting Washoe Tribal Artists in Master Apprenticeship programs with Knowledge Keepers in basketry and traditional songs. The second part is supporting the redesign of our Future Garden at Sagehen Creek Research Station and the design of a new Future Garden at the Marion Steinbach Indian Basket Museum in Tahoe City at Lake Tahoe.

Future Gardens: Every Place is the Story of its own Becoming

Future Gardens examine possible futures as places respond to and interact with a warming planet. As climate change reorganizes the planetary landscape, species will either adapt, migrate, or fall away in response to higher temperatures, rising waters, and less predictable precipitation patterns. How we can see into that future is essential for the flourishing, or even survival, of all living beings on earth. Future Gardens are long-range, intergenerational experimental places where the plant species of the future can be propagated in the present. Stewarding Knowledges engages Knowledge Keepers and allies in that re-imagination as we all move towards a warming future.

The Masters/Apprentice program is now underway. The small number of Washoe living on neighborhood-sized reservations makes the weavers and singers international treasures. We believe that our Indigenous collaborators are true leaders, and that this effort not only adds to the diversity of arts funded by this opportunity but also to the longevity of now gravely endangered art forms indigenous to northern California.

A team of five public artists and scientists are collaborating with the Washoe Knowledge Keepers, continuing the Sagehen: A Proving Ground art and science project. Stewardship, education, and re-establishing native seedlings of importance to the Wàši:šiw to traditional gathering places in the homeland are our priorities. Wà:šiw traditional tool makers and basketmakers will be on public and private lands in all of the places mentioned in our proposal tending the land; CA State Parks, the Gatekeepers Museum in Placer County, and Sagehen in Nevada County. We are in the process of planning a public ‘listening session’, a Washoe basketmakers and singers gathering in Tahoe in May of 2024 showcasing an “Indigenous Futurism,” a conversation with the Waši:šiw ‘Washoe People From Here’, modern stewards of Da’aw’a:ga’a ‘Lake Tahoe’, and our artist collaborators..

Artists and culture bearers in our group are aware of the need to decolonize our work as stewards of the land, and to find new ways to cooperate around what we believe are fundamental truths about Indigenous-led land management best practices. We believe this is our essential motivation: the time to understand the kinship that culture bearers’ feel to the natural world is right now—before we endure more warming, loss, degradation, extraction or devastating pollution.

We are grateful to the Upstate California Creative Corps for supporting us in this journey.

Stewarding Knowledges Team: Artists and Knowledge Keepers: L-R Trena Noval, Laura, Benny Fillmore, grandson Dewpelelik, Cara Denosotsie James, Lisa Grayshield, Leslie Ryan, Tammy Teller, Robin Brailsford, and Josh Harrison.
(Not pictured, song apprentice Hunter Fillmore, and master basketweavers Dinah Pete and Ramona Keller; and botanist Brett Hall.)
Photo by Susan Winters, Gatekeeper Museum director.

STEWARDING KNOWLEDGES INSTAGRAM