Harrison, who teaches American Indian art at Heritage University in Toppenish, is one of five Yakama tribal members from the Yakima Valley headed to the museum to demonstrate various traditional crafts such as beading, basket weaving and horse saddle making during the Plateau Native Arts Celebration.

HollyAnna Pinkham, a Yakama and one of the few people left who still make traditional Nez Perce saddles, will also offer a workshop.

Other Yakamas participating in workshops will be Roberta Danzuka, Geraldine Miller and Beatrice Tillequots.

Harrison worked on a tule basket recently at the Yakama Nation Museum in Toppenish. Her hands glided over dried tule as she wove through them a flat string-like fiber called raffia.

Pulling the raffia around each tule, she told how the roughly 2-foot tall baskets were mostly used for trade and held large amounts of salmon.

"Hundreds of pounds of salmon were kept in these bags," she said, explaining that they were traditionally made with Indian hemp rather than the commercial material more commonly found today.

Other baskets, some made of cornhusk, cedar and yarn, dotted the table as she worked.

Today, women still use baskets to gather traditional foods for sacred ceremonies at longhouses, a traditional church where feasts, funerals and memorials are held.

Harrison's aunt, Helen Jim, began teaching her how to make baskets in 1991, and three years ago she learned to make a Western Cascade-style tule basket at the Burke Museum.

Most of the time, she gives the baskets away to young Native American women practicing their food-gathering traditions.

"I give them away at medicine dances; I give them away at memorials," she said.

But occasionally, she gets requests from museums for baskets.

One time, she recalled, it took her two years to make 10 of the tall, strong tule baskets to fulfill a request from a museum.

She has one basket -- a wapaas used in root digging -- on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

Harrison said learning to make baskets has helped her keep a family tradition alive. She recalls studying baskets for sale at pawn shops.

"I'd look at them and I'd look at them. 'How'd they make 'em?" she recalled thinking. "And then my aunt finally taught me."

If you go

WHAT: Plateau Native Arts Celebration.

WHEN: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday.

WHERE: The Burke Museum, corner of NE 45th Street and 17th Avenue NE, on the University of Washington campus, Seattle.