Brigette McConville (Warm Springs) is a traditional fisher, basket maker, and moccasin maker. With access to numerous traditional fishing sites Brigette smokes, cooks, and processes fish to sell in her shop on the Warm Springs Reservation. She serves on the Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission, the first woman to do so, and is the first Native American woman to be on the Board of Directors of the Oregon Historical Society.
Bio
Brigette McConville is from a very traditional family where she learned fishing, horse/rodeo skills, beadwork, basketry, regalia and moccasin making, and foodways from older family members. Both sides of Brigette’s family fished, but she mostly learned during childhood from her father’s side. Today, she and her husband have a fishing and retail business, Salmon King Fisheries. Between their two families, they have access to numerous traditional fishing sites located on both sides of the Columbia River as well as on some of its tributaries. Brigette smokes, cooks, and processes the fish they catch to sell in her shop, Salmon King, in Warm Springs. In addition, her maternal grandmother, Viola Kalama, a recognized tribal authority on basketry, taught Brigette to make baskets. This same grandmother taught her beadwork, which she loves. Brigette learned the Plateau style beadwork from her father’s sister. When she was young her parents sent her to stay with a Crow family on the Rosebud Reservation where Brigette learned to make traditional plateau moccasins; on another similar occasion she learned to make baby boards from someone at Ft. Hall, ID.
