Maine Voices Live with Theresa Secord

Theresa Secord is a traditional Penobscot basket maker and the founding director of the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance (MIBA). After earning a Master’s degree in geology and working for an oil company in the early 1980s, she returned to Maine to work for her tribe, heading up a mineral assessment program on 300,000 acres of Penobscot and Passamaquoddy lands. Soon after, in 1988 Secord learned to weave on Indian Island—the village where her mother was born—from an elder in the community, Madeline Tomer Shay. During her 21 years of leadership, MIBA was credited with saving the endangered art of ash and sweet grass basketry in the Maliseet, Micmac, Passamaquoddy and Penobscot tribes. Theresa has won a number of awards for her artistry and community work, including the Best of Basketry in the Santa Fe Indian Market, a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and an honorary doctorate from Colby College. Her work is featured in private collections and museums throughout the nation, including recent acquisitions (2024) by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and (2023) the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2021, she was named a Luce Indigenous Knowledge Fellow and in 2024, an inaugural Taproot Fellow. In 2025, she was honored with a $100,000 Ruth Arts Fellowship, a United States Artist Fellowship and a Cultural Capital Fellow (First Peoples Fund). Theresa lives and works in Maine teaching apprentices to ensure the basketry tradition continues.