Jane Wiseman

Tribal Enrollment Number: CYF258

Jane was born on December 8, 1947 in the Nelson Island area of Southwest Alaska. She has lived most of her life in the village of Chefornak. Her cultural group is Central Yup’ik. She has 4 children, 7 grandchildren and 2 great-grandchildren. She has spent her life being a Yup’ik woman–wife, mother and grandmother, processing all the fish, wildfowl, seals and oil for her family, and gathering berries, greens, grass and mouse food from the tundra. She has been making grass baskets since she was 10 years old. She gathers, dries and dyes the grasses herself. The “inside grass” for the inside of the coils is a different type of grass than the “outside grass”. Special care is taken in drying and handling the outside grass, and it is split and sewn with a sewing needle