Born: 26 November 1898, United States
Died: 12 February 1976
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Ida Dora Corbett
The following is republished from the National Park Service. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).
Ida Blackeagle was a Cultural Demonstrator at the Nez Perce National Historical Park who was instrumental to the revitalization of Nimíipuu cornhusk weaving in the mid-twentieth century. Her efforts showcasing the craft and mentoring the next generations of Nimíipuu weavers has preserved this art form, which uses dried and folded husks to create baskets and other vessels, traditionally used for storing food.
Ida Blackeagle was born Ida Dora Corbett on November 26, 1898. Silas and Ellen Corbett parented Ida and her siblings on the Nez Perce Indian Reservation in Idaho. While the reservation was established in 1855, the Nimíipuu people called this and the interior northwest home for thousands of years. They refer to themselves in numerous ways, including Nez Perce, a name originated by French Canadian fur trappers in the eighteenth century, and Nimíipuu, which translates to “we the people” or “the real people.” Just shy of her sixteenth birthday on October 12, 1914, Ida Corbett married Joseph Blackeagle. Four years her senior, he was the grandnephew of Young Chief Joseph (Hinmátoonyalatkákt), who, along with four other non-treaty band leaders, led his people during the Flight of 1877. Between 1916 and 1939, Blackeagle gave birth to twelve children. However, only two of her children lived past their early twenties and at least five of them died from tuberculosis.
Blackeagle first began weaving cornhusk baskets at the age of twelve. She passed on the craft to her daughters and community through classes at the Lapwai High School.v In the late 1940s, she taught her friend Rose Frank, who went onto international fame for her craftsmanship and the National Endowment of the Arts named her a National Heritage Fellow in 1991. Blackeagle initially sold her work at “Indian fairs,” a venue for Native Americans to sell produce, crafts, and artwork. In 1966 The National Park Service (NPS) hired Blackeagle and another Nimíipuu woman, Viola Morris, as Cultural Demonstrators at the new Nez Perce National Historic Park; they were the first people to hold that job title across the NPS. They were also two of only a handful of Nimíipuu employees initially hired at the Nez Perce park. As Cultural Demonstrators, Blackeagle and Morris did beadwork, weaving, and other craftwork in front of visitors. Their work asserted a Nimíipuu identity that stressed the resiliency of cultural traditions even in the face of significant ongoing changes. The use of cornhusk to make baskets is itself an example of cultural adaptation from the mid-nineteenth century; when the establishment of reservations and Anglo-American settlement restricted the Nimíipuu’s seasonal movements, weavers replaced their traditional basket fibers of beargrass, cedar, and dogbane with cornhusks. Continuing in this tradition, Blackeagle utilized the Cultural Demonstrator position as another means to mentor other Nimíipuu women as makers of Nimíipuu cultural items.
Blackeagle worked at the Nez Perce National Historical Park until her death on February 12, 1976. She shares a gravestone with her daughter Josephine, who died less than two months later, in a cemetery in Kamiah, Idaho. Ida Blackeagle’s legacy lives on in her weaving and beadwork and through the numerous people she taught and inspired. She was one of nine Nimíipuu artists to be featured in an exhibition at the Nez Perce National Historical Park in 1991, which was the first sapatq’ayn (display) of twentieth-century Nimíipuu artists. The exhibit encapsulated how Blackeagle’s weaving bridged past and future generations and traditions.