ABSTRACT
Many species have special cultural and historical value to tribes. In the Great Lakes region, culturally significant species include sugar maple, paper birch, northern white cedar, hop hornbeam, balsam fir, and black ash. Black ash has special importance for American Indian and First Nations peoples in the Great Lakes region. Its ring-porous wood allows layers of xylem to be easily separated into strips for basket-making. The emerald ash borer Agrilus planipennis Fairmaire is the most destructive invasive forest insect yet to infest North America. It threatens North America's ash resources, including black ash and Indigenous cultures and traditions that rely on it. In the Great Lakes region, traditional methods to process black ash for basketmaking involve systematically pounding debarked, whole logs to delaminate the growth rings from one another using a heavy wooden mallet or the back of an axe. An axe blade or knife is used to score a splint, or strip of thin wood, along the true grain.
