Everything Ash Webinar Series: Theresa Secord – honoring basketmakers, MIBA, and our shared cultural heritage
Everything Ash Webinar Series: How & Why We Should Respond to the Emerald Ash Borer Crisis
During May and June, Maine Audubon and partners will host a four-part series of evening webinars, each of which will focus on a specific aspect of the looming EAB crisis. Leaders from government, research, and cultural organizations will educate and inspire us about ash trees and what can be done to conserve them. The webinars will take place at 6 pm on select Thursdays.
June 12: Theresa Secord—Honoring basketmakers, MIBA, and our shared cultural heritage
Theresa Secord will offer a culminating presentation on the cultural and community implications of conserving Brown Ash and share her craft and connections related to the tree at the center of Wabanaki origins.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Theresa Secord (born 1958, Portland Maine) is a traditional Penobscot basket maker and the founding director of the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance (MIBA). After earning a Master’s degree in geology and working for an oil company in the early 1980s, she returned to Maine to work for her tribe, heading up a mineral assessment program on 300,000 acres of Penobscot and Passamaquoddy lands. Soon after, in 1988 Secord learned to weave on Indian Island—the village where her mother was born—from an elder in the community, Madeline Tomer Shay. During her 21 years of leadership, MIBA was credited with saving the endangered art of ash and sweet grass basketry in the Maliseet, Micmac, Passamaquoddy and Penobscot tribes. Theresa has won a number of awards for her artistry and community work, including the Best of Basketry in the Santa Fe Indian Market, a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and an honorary doctorate from Colby College. Her work is featured in private collections and museums throughout the nation, including recent acquisitions (2024) by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and (2023) the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2021, she was named a Luce Indigenous Knowledge Fellow and in 2024, an inaugural Taproot Fellow. In 2025, she was honored with a $100,000 Ruth Arts Fellowship, a United States Artist Fellowship and a Cultural Capital Fellow (First Peoples Fund). Theresa lives and works in Maine teaching apprentices to ensure the basketry tradition continues.
Full series
May 8: Allison Kanoti – Impacts and Response in Maine
Maine Forest Service entomologist Allison Kanoti will introduce us to the importance of Fraxinus (all three species) to forests, developed landscapes, and the economy. Allison will also cover the history of EAB presence and impacts in Maine to date, the state response, and how we all can get involved to help.
May 22: Tony D’Amato, Univ. of Vermont—Benefits and ecosystem services of Ash
Tony D’Amato is a regionally esteemed forest ecologist who will share the natural history of Fraxinus and present for us the innumerable benefits of having Ash in our forests and in our neighborhoods.
June 5: APCAW panel—Cultural importance of Ash, multicultural response to EAB
A panel of Wabanaki and non-Wabanaki researchers at the Ash Protection Collaboration Across Waponahkik lab will share and discuss the benefits of a blended, multicultural approach to protecting our ash, as well as how people can get involved to support this work.