{"id":6571,"date":"2017-06-20T14:30:35","date_gmt":"2017-06-20T18:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=6571"},"modified":"2025-10-10T11:21:30","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T15:21:30","slug":"crafting-birchbark-canoe","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/crafting-birchbark-canoe\/","title":{"rendered":"Crafting a Birchbark Canoe"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Crafting a Birchbark Canoe\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

From February to May this year, a group of Carleton University students under the careful guidance of Daniel “Pinock” Smith, a well-known artist and canoe builder from Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg, learned how to build a wiigwaas chiimaan\u2014a birchbark canoe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In collaboration with the university\u2019s Centre for Aboriginal Culture and Education<\/a> (CACE), the Carleton University Art Gallery<\/a> (CUAG) hosted weekly gatherings where students, including myself, were introduced to customary Anishinaabe tools, materials and methods in canoe making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Alexandra Nahwegahbow (left) and other students hard at work.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Beyond what we learned to create with our hands, this work offered us lessons in humility, patience and the value of multiple forms of knowledge. In an interesting turn, as I reflect back on the last few months, it would seem that the most meaningful and important part of this canoe building workshop was that it wasn\u2019t really ever just about the canoe at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The crafting of our wiigwaas chiimaan<\/em> took place during the seasonal shift from winter into spring. The spring\u2014ziigwaan<\/em>\u2014is customarily a very special time for Anishinaabe. It\u2019s the time of year when the land warms up and the snow melts, giving way to rainfall. Lakes and rivers regain their current, and maple trees in the sugar bush begin to swell with sap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Under the guidance of artist and teacher Daniel “Pinock” Smith, the team crafts.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This is the season when that beloved bark culled from birch trees is highly cherished. For centuries of springtime seasons, the Anishinaabek have skillfully crafted, and sewn with spruce root, beautiful water-tight birchbark containers called bskitenaagan<\/em> and mokuk <\/em>to collect, carry and store maple water, syrup and sugar. Embodied in birchbark is this long history of catching and holding sweetness and sustenance which, together with its additional use for transport, was also certainly necessary for survival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Large sheets of lightweight birchbark cut, stretched and shaped into canoes allowed for easy mobility throughout Anishinaabeaki<\/em>, a territory permeated by lakes, waterways and complex trade routes.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Birchbark Canoe:
\nAn Object that Holds<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In one of the first sessions of our canoe building practice, our teacher Pinock described the wiigwaas<\/em> chiimaan <\/em>as a vessel \u2013 it is a boat to be sure, but in its simplest form he explained, it is also a very large container, much like a bskitenaagan<\/em> or a mokuk<\/em>\u2014as I understand it\u2014 an object that holds.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As native people, when we see our belongings and the things that we\u2019ve made – whether in a book, in museum storage or in a family member\u2019s living room – we\u2019re never really just looking at them as things<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n

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They are, rather, meaningful objects that have the ability to carry, hold and transmit memory across time and space.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Metaphorically, they are always vessels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coming in to some of the last building sessions, as we carefully placed the wooden ribs that shaped the rounded belly of our canoe, I thought about what this object would come to carry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Pinock (left) and the builders share a laugh.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Although we will ensure that it touches water before next fall, the majority of our canoe\u2019s life will be spent indoors, installed at the MacOdrum Library<\/a> at Carleton University. Yet, as Nishnaabeg writer Leanne Simpson indicates, meaning arises out of context and process, not necessarily content. What gives our canoe weight is the collective creation of entwined relationships that formed and reformed throughout its very making. Pinock put this quite poignantly: \u201cIt\u2019s not really the canoe that\u2019s important. It\u2019s learning how to build it, and learning how to communicate with each other.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pinock is a very treasured person in the Carleton University community. Known for his woodworking skills, and talents as an educator and workshop facilitator, he has always been immensely generous with his time. Also a bit of a trickster, his lighthearted teasing kept us laughing throughout our sessions, reminding us to be patient with our learning and to not to take ourselves too seriously\u2014which in the academic space, can sometimes be difficult to achieve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Huddled around the nearly finished wiigwaas chiimaan<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For many of us, it was the first time we had learned to work with these methods and materials. We often made mistakes and needed to ask for help.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cDon\u2019t worry about it my girl,\u201d Pinock would say after I\u2019d get unbelievably frustrated when I couldn\u2019t split thin strips of cedar wood without causing it to break, \u201cyou\u2019ll learn to get a feel for it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

This \u201clearning to get a feel for it\u201d arises from working the material with your own hands, listening for the right sound of the splitting wood, and carefully applying just the right amount of pressure down the rings of the cedar\u2019s natural grain. Some people refer to these acute abilities as maker\u2019s knowledge and Pinock has it in spades.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Experiential Learning is Critical<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In many Indigenous ways of teaching, the value of experiential learning is critical. Learners carefully listen, observe and then set out to repeat those given teachings. In the hours we spent preparing our materials to craft our wiigwaas chiimaan<\/em>, Pinock and his friend and assistant Paul “Mini” Stevens demonstrated the methods that we were to replicate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The repetitive techniques of collectively cutting, cleaning, and lacing spruce root, and splitting and planing planks of cedar seemed to rhythmically stir and activate conversation, story, and memory. For some of the canoe builders, repeating these movements seemed to heighten our awareness that we were part of a continuum, that we were engaging in an Indigenous making-practice generations old, and there is an immeasurable amount of comfort in mimicking the motions of your ancestors\u2019 hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Kasia Czarski-Jachimowicz in concentration as she wraps roots around the gunnel of the canoe.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Summer-Harmony Twenish, an Art History<\/a> student from Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg<\/a>, joined the workshop with a very special family member in mind. Having recently lost her grandmother\u2014a lady known for her fine work in birchbark\u2014 she sought material and making as a way to reconnect with her and renew their relationship. These understandings of repetition, return and renewal are central to many theories about Indigenous knowledge which recognize, as Onkwehonwe scholar Deborah Doxtator has asserted, the past can exist in the present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In many ways, our collective making formed new relationships while renewing old ones. Through our weekly canoe building gatherings, a group of people who began as relative strangers gradually grew to become good friends. In activating and restoring these kinds of meaningful connections, it seems fitting that our lessons should wrap up in April and May\u2014ziigwaan<\/em>\u2014 a time of cyclical return and regeneration, and that precious season when that beloved bark is cut, stretched and formed into vessels made to carry and hold sweetness and sustenance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Kasia Czarski-Jachimowicz in concentration as she wraps roots around the gunnel of the canoe.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Gchi miigwech to our teachers, Pinock and Mini; the Centre for Aboriginal Culture and Education (CACE); the Carleton University Art Gallery (CUAG); and fellow canoe-builders and helpers: Jasmin Aguirre, Dwayne Cox, Kasia Czarskijachimowicz, Sandra Dyck, Ruston Fellows, Celeste Larocque, Michelle Matthisen, Benny Michaud, Annie Kingston Miller, Rodney Nelson, William Raffelsieper, Gabby Richichi-Fried, Naomi Sarazin, Leah Snyder, Summer-Harmony Twenish, and Fiona Wright.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alexandra Kahsenni:io Nahwegahbow<\/em> is Anishinaabe and Kanien\u2019keha\u00c5L:ka<\/em> and a member of Whitefish River First Nation<\/a>. She is a PhD student in the Cultural Mediations<\/a> program at Carleton University\u2019s Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Culture<\/a>, where her research focuses on Indigenous visual and material culture from the Great Lakes region.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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From February to May this year, a group of Carleton University students under the careful guidance of Daniel “Pinock” Smith, a well-known artist and canoe builder from Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg, learned how to build a wiigwaas chiimaan\u2014a birchbark canoe. In collaboration with the university\u2019s Centre for Aboriginal Culture and Education (CACE), the Carleton University Art […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":410,"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_story_type":[28],"cu_story_tag":[1927],"class_list":["post-6571","cu_story","type-cu_story","status-publish","hentry","cu_story_type-community-partnerships","cu_story_tag-indigenous"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/6571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/410"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/6571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97652,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/6571\/revisions\/97652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_story_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_type?post=6571"},{"taxonomy":"cu_story_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_tag?post=6571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}