The eyes of Clara Neptune Keezer, a Passamaquoddy elder, brighten when she recalls the moment a voice on the other end of the phone announced that the basket maker from Pleasant Point near Perry had been awarded a 2002 National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. “I was happy,” she says quietly. “Later that night, I had lots of tears.”

On this day, she sits in the Circle of Four Directions wing at the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor, where a reception is taking place to commemorate her award. In the middle of the circular room, which distantly resembles a teepee, her fancy baskets are neatly arranged in a low-lit case emitting piped-in Indian ceremonial music.

In the careful atmosphere of this setting, Keezer’s baskets echo back over the years, not just the 70-plus years she has been alive, or the 200-year tradition of basket making in her family, but the 12,000 years that Indians have been in what the rest of us call Maine. Here, they harvested brown ash, pounded and split it, wove it into patch baskets to nestle into birch-bark canoes or to carry food from hunting and gathering expeditions. Here, they collected the sweetgrass, braided it or wound it around other materials. Later, much later, Europeans used the baskets, too. Later still, Victorian-minded tourists bought them as baubles and gifts.

But that was long ago and in the ensuing years, as Indian culture was challenged in new ways that had to do with land settlements and educational pursuits, the baskets fell into quiet practice among the Wabanaki, among the People of the Dawn.

All the while, Keezer was making baskets, sometimes with her sisters, sometimes with her own children, and eventually with other young members of her tribe but also with members of all four Maine Indian tribes: Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, Micmac, Maliseet. Once her work might have been thought of as factory production. She made baskets; she sold them. Now, in a country that has not always been kind to her people, she is – quietly, as usual – a national treasure.

Keezer is one of three Mainers to win the National Heritage Award since it was established in 1982, and one of two Maine Indian basket makers – Mary Mitchell Gabriel of Indian Township is the other – in eight years to win what is considered the nation’s most prestigious award for traditional artists. It comes with a $10,000 gift and an invitation to be honored at a September ceremony in Washington.

For Keezer, it also brings praise from the people who have worked alongside her.

“Clara is admired by everyone on the reservation,” said Molly Neptune Parker, a basket maker from Indian Township. “Everyone has their own style that is special, but Clara’s is shapely, colorful and fine. I think it’s great that she got the award because it tells the little ones that they can be as good as Clara and Mary.”

Since she was a child in Sipayik, the original Passamaquoddy name for Pleasant Point, Keezer was surrounded by basket makers – her father, her mother, her grandparents and six siblings all had a hand in the native craft. She made her first basket at age 8: “I don’t remember the shape. It was from a mustard or mayonnaise jar that I used as a mold. I got 50 cents when I sold it.”

These days, Keezer’s pieces, which are primarily fancy baskets, are in demand. Or, as Keezer likes to say: “When I first started, the baskets would sell for 25 cents. Now they sell for 25 dollars.”

Carpal tunnel syndrome has compromised the frequency with which she can make baskets. For now, her skills are curbed by pain in her hand. Income from the baskets is not quite enough to earn a living anyway. But Keezer fondly recalls the days when she rose at 6 a.m., worked all day, played bingo at night, and then went back to making baskets until early in the next morning.

“It was always around me and I took it for granted,” says Keezer, who learned the craft from her mother and grandmother. Her own grown sons make baskets. Her sister Theresa Neptune Gardner is a basket maker and teaches apprentices. Keezer’s other sister Angela Barnes, who is in her 80s, also makes baskets. Outside of the family, Keezer has two apprentices who go to her house both to learn the skill and to assure the preservation of the techniques.

“Our culture is dying off,” said Keezer. “I hope we can keep on teaching the younger ones.”

Recognition for Keezer’s contribution to American traditional arts comes at the 10-year anniversary of the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance, a nonprofit organization that has meticulously organized, promoted and preserved the indigenous craft. With NEA help, MIBA also provides outreach to schools and the opportunity for young apprentices to work alongside traditional masters such as Keezer and Gabriel, each of whom is now officially deemed a “living national treasure.”

Their works are on display at the Wabanaki Arts Center Gallery, a showcase and store for basket maker products. Located on North Main Street in Old Town, the gallery is situated on the banks of the Penobscot River and across from Indian Island, where Theresa Secord Hoffman’s family lived.

“We are literally a stone’s throw away from where people were making these baskets 100 years ago,” said Hoffman, director of the gallery, executive director of MIBA and a respected basket maker in her own right. “Basket making was considered menial work in my mother’s day. People didn’t get much money for the baskets, and imports from places such as the Philippines dried up the market. People didn’t care where they got their baskets from. Before the interstate, the baskets were a big draw for tourists. But now that has changed too.”

Hoffman didn’t recount the history of baskets in the area by way of complaint. Indeed, the work of the alliance represents a success story of bringing Maine Indian basket making back from the brink of extinction. More than 34 MIBA members have baskets and other traditional crafts on sale at the Wabanaki Arts Center, which opened last December.

Other than the annual Native American Festival in Bar Harbor, the Common Ground Fair in September and the Annual Maine Indian Basketmakers Market at the Hudson Museum in Orono, the gallery offers one of the largest collections of sellable baskets in the state.

In a decade, MIBA has doubled in size and annually progresses toward becoming a thriving organization. Nevertheless, of the 55 founding members, 17 have died. Among the 38 survivors, the average age is 63. It’s worth noting, too, that the average age of the newer members is 43. Given these numbers, Hoffman realizes the urgency to securing a strong foundation for keeping the methods of gathering and preparing materials, and making the baskets well-documented.

There is a budding crop of young basket makers, but as Keezer points out, it takes time to develop the skill.

“When young people first start, they just want to get it finished in a hurry,” she says. “I tell them to take their time. Most of them do want to learn but it’s hard with so much else going on.”

For Hoffman, the apprentice programs that Keezer and other Indians offer are a way to “practice culture.”

“People have to experience pride in their lives and culture because certainly they put up with a lot of the opposite,” said Hoffman. “We are always worried about supply. Our population of basket makers lives in tribal communities. Just making a living is difficult. It’s harder and harder to get young men to find the trees and pick the grass, dry it and bundle it. The people who do it feel a cultural duty. They did it with their grandparents and remember doing it. It’s what they have always done.”

Hoffman and Keezer are doing what they, too, have always done as Indian basket makers. But they are also blazing new trails that seek to put the crafts of Maine’s original people – those who have lived in the northeast corner of the country for 12,000 years – at the forefront of cultural preservation and economic possibility.