Chatter Marks EP 55 Traditional Chilkat weaving with Lily Hope

Crude Conversations

Lily Hope is a traditional Chilkat Weaver from Juneau, Alaska. Both of her parents worked as full-time artists, so she grew up around the hustle of entrepreneurship and the responsibility of carrying on tradition. Her mom, Clarissa Rizal, learned how to weave from the late Master Chilkat Weaver, Jennie Thlunaut. Lily says that her mom probably felt the urgency of her own mortality, that it was imperative to teach her daughter the art of weaving because in the last 150 years there have been less than a dozen Chilkat ceremonial robe makers. So, Lily was introduced to it at 14 or 15 years old. It wasn’t a pleasurable experience though. Her mom pretty much forced her into it, making her weave rows and rows before she could do anything leisurely like hang out with friends. It was a chore, but it also turned out to be her calling.

Whether she’s weaving among a group or teaching others how to do it, she finds her happy place in human connection. When she’s with a group of other weavers, there’s commiserating, there’s camaraderie, there’s knowledge sharing. When she’s teaching, she’s passing on tradition and she’s helping her students understand techniques. Seeing them finally wrap their minds around the intricacies of a technique and implement it is one of her greatest joys.

Lily weaves ceremonial regalia for museums now. She says that her mom helped her understand and be comfortable with the idea. That they’ve been making these Chilkat blankets and robes for hundreds, if not thousands of years, and many of them live in museums. And, for right now, museums operate as incubators, taking care of these pieces and sharing their stories, until it’s time for them to be released back into the world.