Baskets are not only integral tools for carrying babies, harvesting seeds, and even cooking, but they also tell you about the health of the land. For example, sourberry is a common material for baskets, but the long, unbranched pieces that are necessary for basketmaking are hard to find in older sourberry patches. The plant needs to clipped and burned to produce the long, straight shoots that ae suitable for weaving. This means that without fire and renewed sourberry stalks, it is very difficult to make baskets. Below are some of the North Fork Mono Tribe's baskets