Noelle’s Blanket

This summer while at Grand Portage for their yearly reenactment, my daughters were involved in a “Round Robin” trading session.  From this, Noelle (our oldest) got an old blanket for some beads, a “broken earring,” and a thimble.  She has been so proud of herself since.  She got the best trade in the world (thank you beyond words, Pete Avery) and has wrapped herself in it every night since. It is...

Wigwam Project – pt. I

-“The buildings and improvements in the country were then few, and circumscribed within a narrow compass, and in a great degree partook of the unpretending simple character of their occupants.  Some constructed of rough or unhewn logs, covered in cedar bark, here and there a sprinkling of lodges or wigwams… These wigwams were sometimes occupied by families of the half-blood Canadians and Indians, sometimes by the natives.”  ...

Bending Wood

I have been bending a bunch wood this last week.  This started with a project making a new head-bow for a cradleboard (dikinaagan) for a friend.  Having leftover hickory, I decided to bend up a few lacrosse sticks (bagaadawaan).  It has been a very long time since I had made sticks, and my hatred of making them was well formed in my days of bending ash for sticks up at Grand Portage.  Living a little further south, I cut...