Lakeland PBS presents Common Ground.

Brought to you by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

Production funding of Common Ground is made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji, continuing their second century of service to the community.

Member FDIC.

Welcome to Common Ground.

I'm producer director Scott Knudson.

In this episode we follow a grassroots non-profit native traditional skills organization Manitou Ogitagon.

Formal Ojibwe Introduction.

My name is Zac Earley.

I'm with Manidoo Ogitigaan.

We're a community-led non-profit that focuses on language and culture and are reviving our traditional ways and also through this we are healing ourselves.

Formal Ojibwe Introduction.

My name is Kaitlyn Grenier and I'm the co-director co-founder of Manidoo Ogitigaan.

Manidoo Ogitigaan is a grassroots community-led non-profit organization that started as a dream and a vision with me and my deceased father Larry Stillday who is a Ponemah elder.

He's from the community of Ponemah on the Red Lake Indian reservation.

So, it was brought to fruition by our co-director Zac Earley who's from White Earth and a founding group of board members who are all enrolled in the Red Lake and White Earth reservations.

I'm Ojibwa from White Earth.

My dad's Ojibwa and we said we saw a - speaking Ojibwa.

We did the snowshoe class at the Ponemah roundhouse and the roundhouse is a place where a lot of cultural activities happen and ceremonies.

Yeah, the roundhouse is a really, it's a special place for all of us since we all come together there.

A lot of times we just have informal celebrations and sometimes ceremonies and get-togethers and workshops and classes.

We do a lot of like things that center around the seasons, seasonal work and the spiritual things that our people were given and that are we're trying to revive.

Things like that.

We have a sugar bush camp and we've even made canoes, birch bark canoes.

We speaking Ojibwa and snow One of the events that Manidoo Ogitigaan had during the winter, because our work is seasonal, was a snowshoe build.

To us the snowshoe build was encompassing much more than just making a piece of art or functional something to wear that we need.

For us we were bringing together different people.

One of them was Nate Johnson.

He's a local artist and a respected friend of ours.

He lives off the land and Mary Mosse who is a Indigenous elder, Ojibwa first language speaker who also serves as a like an advisor to us.

Nate Johnson is a local artist and community member who has a vast knowledge in a lot of ways of living off the land and canoe building and also these old life ways.

And, also Mary Mosse and we tried to combine everyone's knowledge and to me it was a learning experience because I've never made snowshoes but I was learning just as much as anybody else like so.

The work that we do at Manidoo Ogitigaan is multi-generational so it's very important to us that we include people of all ages, youth elders, anyone who wants to participate and learn and teach and share.

So, we were really honored to take the kids from Red Lake schools out into the woods to harvest the materials for the Black Ash for the snowshoe making and one reason that I find it so important to be able to do that is because there's this misconception among a lot of people that these are materials or resources that we're using to create something.

But ,what what I learned from my dad and my uncles is that you know we're connected to everything that's here and those are actually our relatives.

So, who here has used snowshoes?

Has everybody used them in the sugar bush?

Who's used snowshoes?

Some of you have?

Okay good.

This is one of the traditional trees of this area for snowshoes is the Black Ash.

What do you say - speaking Ojibwa - snowshoe tree.

So, look at, you can you see how I when I rub it little kind of some flakes fall off.

That's one key and if it if it weren't frozen right now we'd all have wet feet because it's kind of wet here.

So, Black Ash likes wet feet.

So, does anybody else know what black ash could be used for?

The same tree that works for snowshoes is good for for your basket.

So, now you know a good spot to make baskets, here we took you to our spot and look how straight this tree is eh.

Everybody look at that.

It's no, there's no kinks and wobbles in it.

You know there's a perfectly straight tree.

One thing that you really want to look at and you might have to look carefully just and you may not be able to see this yet but next year you will.

If you want a tree that that goes straight up and there's no twists in the bark.

Sometimes you'll see a tree that's got twists in the bark and that doesn't work.

And then, everybody look at the branches and see how they kind of they're kind of fat and stubby like they got like a fat finger on them.

The trees have fat fingers.

That's one really good key.

Somebody Vince was saying, friend Vince Johnson, he couldn't come here you're saying it looks like somebody told him it looks like a chicken foot.

You get those fat fingers of a chicken foot.

So, anyway those are some some clues to help you find Black Ash.

Yeah, we had Mary Mosse.

She did the blessing and prayer, talked to the trees before we harvested and then Nate shared his knowledge of how to check the tree for the growth rings and what is an ideal type of tree to use.

We didn't just go and cut a tree.

It was a lot of looking around and checking different trees and when we finally did cut the tree we offered tobacco and the tree was cut down and then we split it out in the woods and a lot of the students participated and just a really good time.

So, that's what we're going to do with our group this week and you guys will see more of it.

We're going to cut this tree today and I'm going to show you how we split it apart.

So, we start to work these down just by hand using some simple tools and then maybe later in the week we'll show you how you take a deerskin for you hunters and people that know hunters take it to your skin and turn it.

Start to work on turning it into displacing.

Pretty amazing huh?

Just two things.

A tree and a deer skin and you get that.

So, everything you need's right here in the woods.

It's almost like as a teacher or I'm learning just as much as somebody who's supposedly a student.

I think that we just learn from each other.

To me that's what teaching is.

Just as much learning as it is sharing, just being there and participating.

Oh, that would be awesome.

We have a lot of kids.

Almost like it's gonna fall back.

Well, I mean we have 250 in there yeah.

We had the ceremonies.

We tried our best to ask permission first before we took the tree or we'd use tobacco.

You know, talk to that tree because it's living just like us.

It can hear us and that's one of the things we try to teach is the respect for all living things and we use our tobacco and our ceremonies to show that we appreciate the gifts and we ask permission.

So, to me - speaking Ojibwa - the ash tree that's a very important - speaking Ojibwa.

What would you say really honored or important tree.

And, I also, I heard some elders say before that these gifts that we're given from the creator, if they if we don't use them well they'll go away.

So, even though we're in a time where we don't have as much maybe there isn't as much as there was a long time ago, we still go and harvest birch bark or we still harvest the ash trees or the different medicines or different things that we're given to show our appreciation for this and our beliefs is that it will remain or keep going because we appreciate that gift and it's not just something that we forgot about.

You guys roll this out of the way.

I use snowshoes and because I snare rabbits in the winter, I trap and sometimes when the snow is really deep they're really useful.

What a nice tree.

Now we're gonna split it apart.

When we made snowshoes, what I did was just try to help out as much as I could from everything from going out in the woods and harvesting, looking for a tree, to splitting the wood.

Most of our workshops and seasonal activities are led by Indigenous knowledge keepers.

We also like to work with non-natives who have knowledge but connecting with other Indigenous knowledge keepers at the same time.

So, for example we had a canoe build with a non-native canoe builder who works with native canoe builders and we find that it's beneficial to come together.

That way everybody's welcome.

We like to make it a place where people can come together and teach side by side and share different perspectives and then also where everyone's welcome where there can be an appreciation for Indigenous culture and knowledge.

So, this has got a little bit what they call ring shake.

The class from Red Lake, they really like being out in the woods and participating.

It was just a really good time.

It's okay because we don't use that part of the tree anyway for the snowshoe and this helps us split it down here.

So, we'll just split this in half again.

I think one of the most important things that we can take from these seasonal activities and workshops is understanding how we're connected to everything.

Taking those teachings that our elders shared with us and then applying them in our activities and in our life so when we have these workshops and we're working with these materials we begin to understand.

We have a spiritual, physical, mental, emotional connection to everything that exists to the land and each other.

So, to properly understand for me that I'm not just taking something as a resource and learning how to respectfully work with those relatives.

I felt like it was a nice opportunity to share, for Mary to share that kind of knowledge with the students and Nate also.

He had a lot of really valuable knowledge when it came to how to identify an ash tree?

How do you know if it's the right tree to use because it has to be a certain age?

How do we sustainably work with what was gifted to us?

How do we work with it sustainably and then take care of it?

Because I feel like for us that's part of our job is to be caretakers of what takes care of us.

You ready?

Vince Johnson is one of our students and he's also a native chef and great photographer.

I first met Zac maybe three years ago and since then he's been one of the spiritual guys that I can look up to and, you know, he's a positive male role model within the community.

He's always looking after the people, making sure that their best interests is kept.

A lot of people know him from following around the elders when he was younger.

So, he'd learn from the elders follow him around and now that some of those elders has passed on, he's continuing those teachings that he learned from them.

Zac Earley worked for many years with deceased elder Anna C. Gibbs - speaking Ojibwa - and he shares many of the teachings that she taught him with all of us.

Well, I've been really involved in the culture for years now, studying the culture, food wise and then it was another opportunity for me to learn about snowshoes and how it has to deal with different types of snowshoes and how it meant for gathering food and just working with the tools and bringing back that aspect of the culture.

I'm a chef and a photographer, videographer and I've been working with Manidoo Ogitigaan with my catering company.

So, I usually cater for them when they have these classes and then I go do documentary style photography for them and take pictures of their of the process while I'm actually in the class learning with them.

That gives me extra memory, I like to say because I can go back to those photos and those videos that I took and re-watch them and remember like, oh this is what I forgot so.

Mary Mosse, first language speaker.

Everything we do goes hand in hand with the language, our Ojibwa language and it's we're in a dire time right now because all the elders are leaving and Mary is one of the last few remaining.

We're honored and blessed to be able to work with speakers like Mary.

Our language is extremely endangered.

It's going away but there's a bright spot as we have people that are trying to learn and we're that's what our, what we do in our work is we don't just focus on the cultural aspects of our, like we're not just building a birchbark canoe or we're not just making snowshoes.

Where everything we're doing is, we're trying to re-learn how to think in Ojibwa.

We're learning about the layers of the of the trees.

The layers of knowledge that's just like the layers of the earth and the sky and when you're carving out the ash, you see the layers, the growth rings.

It's the same as learning the language, as your discovering that the next layer of knowledge.

Speaking Ojibwa...So to me, our organization, Manitou Ogitagon is the language goes hand in hand as an and is just as important as making a birch bark basket or you can't do one without the other.

I mean we could do one without the other but another thing I've noticed is we focus just on the language and I'm talking about programs in general or because it's difficult in this time, you know, we since we don't have a lot of elders around that speak the language like Mary, we tend to focus just on what we're making, like making the snowshoes or tanning the hides or we're just focused on that part but when we have our elders and our speakers we can ask them questions like oh how do you say this?

I mean - speaking Ojibwa or they can guide us through how to talk about these things then it completes what we're doing as as we connect with who we are and share that and that's what we try to do is compliment the language revitalization that's already happening and try to work with the families of these immersion programs that are happening.

To me what we do is just as important as a school.

It's basically our first school is out in the woods.

Our first school is out in creation and it's to me it's a classroom without walls.

It's about connecting back to that Anishinaabe and - speaking Ojibwa - that Anishinaabe that which is not confined to the square walls or square buildings.

These institutional institutions...

I'm not getting down on the institutions but it's like we're trying to relearn who we are through our language and through our seasonal activities and things that we're given as a people.

I just think that with all the bills and everything, you know, you get more than just hands-on work and if you really think about it, you really understand how these tools connect you to your ancestors and how it comes full circle within the culture, you know and then the language, the tools, the stories and how everything just connects and it becomes full circle and you just get like mind-blowing once you can put it all together.

Very easy.

Yeah, we did it before like.

Did you use these homemade solutions?

I just used knife, sharp knife.

Wow!

That's very hard, sharp knife is very hard.

What I feel is the most important thing about Manidoo Ogitigaan is not necessarily the organization itself but the community that comes together to do the work.

We really strive to be more of a platform for others to teach and share and learn rather than, we don't look at it in the way that we're out teaching people or we're out revitalizing this or that.

It's more like people in the community and Anishinaabe are the ones who are doing that work.

It's not us it's them.

One of the reasons, personally like that this is so important to me, is that what we share and the view that we share, I feel is what was taught by my adopted dad and by my uncles.

What they shared over and over is what we try to live and how we do this work which is why for me it's so important and like a lot of these people are doing this work already on their own and for us, we like to be able to support them however we can where it's needed.

Maybe they don't have the ability to travel from one community to another that's where we step in and offer and help.

The work that we do through Manitou Ogitagon is important because it it helps strengthen the community.

There's very few elders left.

I mean, there still are some that know the language and some of our stories and ceremonies but it's becoming really few and far between and but then when we go out into the woods and we look around at the trees, the rocks, the sun, the moon, the stars, they're our elders and I guess that's part of the what we're doing is planting that seed for the future generations because we're going to be the elders and to me going out in the woods and fasting or doing things like that is how we we think ahead to the the future because it's all like a circle.

Everything is a circle of life.

Thanks for watching.

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Funding of Common Ground was made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji, continuing their second century of service to the community.

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