Cape Breton Mi'kmaw elder Margaret Pelletier on the Spirit of Basket Weaving

"I think with me, there is a spirit within me that makes the basket. I always told my mother that. It's like I can make the basket, I'm just the physical form. You probably feel like that if you are a basket weaver. You are just the physical form that is there, but you have to have that spirit within you that moves your hands and makes the basket, and you're not actually making it yourself. And I think if we had more people that felt like that, I think we'd have so many basket weavers. But I really would like to increase as many basket weavers as we could, because it is really such a fine art, and it is so nice to do."

 - Clip from an interview with Margaret (Margie) Pelletier, a Mi'kmaw elder and basket maker from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada. Recorded at Grenfell Campus, Memorial University, Corner Brook, Newfoundland, Canada, on 17 March 2012 by Dale Jarvis.