Our Oklahoma Heritage: Cherokee National Treasure, basket weaver promotes tribal traditions in art

Michael Lee Dart

Michael Lee Dart was born on February 1, 1977, in Siloam Springs and grew up with deep ties to the Cherokee communities of eastern Oklahoma.

He has long been based in the Fairfield community of Adair County, a predominantly Cherokee area just northeast of Stilwell, where the rolling hills and wooded hollows supply both inspiration and the natural materials central to his craft.

As a boy, Dart watched his paternal grandmother, the late Pauline Dart, weave baskets and build furniture from willow, hickory and other plants gathered near her home. The sight of her hands shaping functional art from the land around them left a lasting impression.

At age 16, he formally took up basketry, learning the intricate techniques of double-wall weaving from Shawna Morton-Cain, herself a Cherokee National Treasure. The double-wall method requires the continuous weaving of both an interior and exterior wall within a single basket, a demanding skill that produces strong, beautiful forms.

Dart works in both traditional and contemporary styles. He gathers, processes, and weaves with local materials such as honeysuckle and buckbrush, and he prepares natural dyes from black walnut hulls, bloodroot, and Osage orange wood.

He also uses commercial rattan, reed, and aniline dyes when he wants colors that cannot be obtained from the woods. In his view, a basket remains traditional when every element is natural, and the weaving follows ancestral methods.

When commercial materials enter the process, the work becomes contemporary, even though the technique itself stays rooted in Cherokee practice.

His baskets have earned recognition at major regional shows, including the Cherokee National Holiday Art Show in Tahlequah, the Art Under the Oaks show at the Five Tribes Museum in Muskogee, and the Trail of Tears Art Show at the Cherokee Heritage Center in Park Hill.

In 2016, a replica wood-splint burden basket he presented at the Chickasaw Nation’s Artesian Art Market took Best of Show. The same year his work appeared in the book Oklahoma Cherokee Baskets.

Pieces have also been exhibited at the Cherokee National Museum and offered for sale through galleries such as Exhibit C in Oklahoma City’s Bricktown district.

In earlier years, Dart maintained an art studio in Tahlequah where he could be found working on intricate patterns, including pieces inspired by historical photographs and dreams. He continues to live and create from his base in the Fairfield community of Adair County while demonstrating techniques, leading workshops, and sharing knowledge with younger weavers.

In 2017, the Cherokee Nation named Dart a National Treasure for his mastery of traditional and contemporary basketry and for his efforts to teach and perpetuate the art among Cherokee citizens. He received the honor from then-Principal Chief Bill John Baker.

Since that recognition, he has continued offering free instruction to Cherokee youth, emphasizing that basketry is one of the oldest continuous art forms in the culture and that it must be passed on if it is to survive.

Dart finds both materials and motivation in the natural world of Adair County. The same oak-covered hills and river bottoms that sustained earlier generations of Cherokee weavers still provide the honeysuckle vines, buckbrush and dye plants he uses

. Through patient gathering, careful processing and precise weaving, he turns those materials into objects that carry forward a living tradition.

His story is one of quiet continuity. From watching his grandmother’s hands at work to becoming a National Treasure himself, Mike Dart has remained rooted in the Fairfield community and the wider Cherokee landscape of Adair County.

In an era when many traditional arts face the risk of disappearing, his baskets and his teaching keep an ancient practice vital and visible for the next generation.