Folk Arts - Master Artist - Mary Leitka

As a young girl, Mary Leitka learned to make baskets from her mother, Leila Fisher, a nationally recognized basketmaker. Leitka gathers and uses a variety of materials grown in the Coastal Salish area for her weavings, including sweet grass, bear grass, river bottom grass, cattails, spruce roots, and cedar bark and boughs. She is known for her cedar hats, skirts, capes, sleeping and table mats, and baskets. Leitka has given demonstrations on weaving these items at the Jefferson County Museum. As the recipient of a 1992 Apprenticeship grant, Leitka taught one of her daughters, Rosetta, Salish basket weaving.

The traditional songs that Hoh paddlers sing during their canoe journeys have been in Leitka’s family for generations. Leitka first learned these songs and their spiritual significance at potlatch gatherings, where they are generally used. As the recipient of a 1997 Apprenticeship grant, Leitka taught her daughter, Jonette Bennett, their traditional Hoh paddle songs and drumming. Leitka focused her teachings on the stories and specific drumming techniques that accompany each song and how to prepare spiritually to receive each song. Leitka also shared that each family has its own songs and that it is considered discourteous to sing another family’s songs. True to the Hoh ways of handing down customs, Bennett will take her mother's place as lead singer at potlatches and canoe journeys when Leitka believes that her daughter has mastered these songs.