White spruce roots called watap stitch canoes and baskets for Great Lakes Indigenous peoples

Evidence

The forest floor here is all spruce needles, rusty brown, deep and soft, with the occasional pale drift of maple or black cherry leaves. Ferns, mosses, and trailing partridgeberry glow in the few sun flecks that penetrate the dense canopy. We’re here to harvest watap, the roots of white spruce, Picea glauca—a cultural keystone for indigenous peoples throughout the Great Lakes, strong enough to stitch together birch bark canoes and wigwams, flexible enough for beautiful baskets. The roots of other spruces are serviceable, but it’s worth hunting for the glaucous foliage and pungent feline odor of white spruce. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 839

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines watap, the white spruce root fiber, a cultural keystone material.
• XREF: connects to: Indigenous plant knowledge holds that plants arrive where and when their gifts are needed — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural…, 419; Indigenous harvesting practices are environmental factors plants depend on for survival — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 499

Broader Connections

• Indigenous plant knowledge holds that plants arrive where and when their gifts are needed #exemplifies (0.72) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss, 419
• Indigenous harvesting practices are environmental factors plants depend on for survival #expands (0.70) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 499