Why CIBA Exists Weaving and use of baskets has been a core element of the spiritual and material culture of California Indian tribes for millennia. Continuation of the basketweaving tradition is essential to the continued survival of California Indian culture. CIBA's purpose is to preserve, promote, and perpetuate California Indian basketweaving traditions while providing a healthy physical, social, spiritual, and economic environment for basketweavers. We work to create and expand a functioning network of basketweavers who support one another in their gathering and weaving activities, and who pass their tradition to the next generation.
Pesticides are a widespread threat to basketry plants.
We work to halt their use on public and private lands while promoting alternative, environmentally sustainable forest management policies and practices. We strive also to improve safe, convenient access for basketweavers to gathering areas, while promoting a habitat stewardship role for native gatherers. To these ends, we educate government policy makers, resource managers, and the public, while supporting native communities in their efforts to influence local resource management decisions that affect their environment and health. How CIBA Was Started Research during the mid-1980s by CIBA's current executive director revealed concerns among some that California Indian basketweaving traditions could be at risk of dying out. Few younger weavers were learning to weave, and the mostly older women who continued to weave were finding it increasingly difficult to carry on their work.