(playful music) - [Announcer] Welcome, everyone to the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series.

(mysterious music) (audience applauding) - Welcome, everyone to the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series.

My name's Chrisstina Hamilton, the series director.

Today, we present Ottawa and Pottawatomi artist and Culture Sharer, Kelly Church of the Matchi-be-nash-she-wish tribe in Hopkins, Michigan.

Kelly's work connects directly to the Michigan landscape and it also connects to the University of Michigan as Kelly is herself a Wolverine and extra, especially folks, Kelly is a Stamps school alumna.

(audience cheering and applauding) Yeah, students.

You can do it too.

So today is a homecoming and it is a sincere honor to present her on this stage.

Today's event is presented in partnership with the Stamps Gallery and our series partners, Detroit Public Television, PBS books, and Michigan Public.

Kelly's appearance here is happening in tandem with the Stamps Gallery Exhibition, Kelly Church & Cherish Parrish, In Our Words, An Intergenerational Dialogue.

This is an exhibition showcasing mother and daughter, two contemporary indigenous artists whose practices have sustained and bolstered the relevance of the age old Anishinaabi practice of black ash basket weaving.

The best news for you all tonight is that the exhibition opening happens right after this.

So this evening, directly following Kelly's talk here, you can all go around the corner and join us at the gallery, see the exquisite work, absolutely exquisite.

Meet Kelly, ask questions.

Oh, and there'll be food too.

So what's not to love?

The exhibition will be on view through December 7th and it is complemented by a program of talks, workshops, round tables that celebrate the thriving contemporary indigenous art practices of the Great Lakes region.

So there are many programs, but I just wanna highlight a few key ones for you today that Kelly is part of.

Tomorrow morning at 10 AM, there will be a weaving workshop led by Kelly Church and her daughter, Cherish Parrish.

And then there will also be an exhibition tour that the two of them will lead.

That will be the Saturday, the 28th at 2 PM and then a very important panel that will happen on October 5th, another Saturday at 2 PM on American Indian Boarding Schools.

So all this information is in the Stamps Gallery brochure.

There are some out in the lobby, there are tons of them down at the gallery.

So grab one or you can go online and get more information.

So we are not gonna have a regular Q&A in here today.

Instead, we ask you all to join us at the gallery.

There will be a Q&A and opening reception there.

The Stamps Gallery, if you don't know, it is just around the corner on division.

So if you exit the theater, turn right, walk to the next corner, go right and then it will be on your right and we'll see you there.

Please do remember to silence your cell phones.

And to introduce our guest today we have someone who has been at the heart of all of it with Kelly and Cherish.

Please welcome the exhibition curator and Stamps Gallery director, Srimoyee Mitra.

(audience cheering and applauding) - Thank you so much, Chrisstina.

Hello, everyone.

My name is Srimoyee Mitra.

My pronouns are she/hers and I'm the director of Stamps Gallery.

Stamps Gallery is a public center for art and design that's part of the Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design at the University of Michigan.

So I'd like to start my remarks today and introduction with the land acknowledgement.

Ann Arbor resides on the ancestral, traditional, and contemporary territories of the Anishinaabe people of the Three Fire Confederacy, the Ojibwe, Ottawa & Potawatomi, and the Wyandot.

We live, work and play on these territories.

We must be mindful of the historical and contemporary injustices and struggle for self-determination experienced by indigenous communities while recognizing their strength, resilience, and sovereignty.

I have the honor today to introduce you to the renowned black ash basket maker, fiber artist, educator, activist, and knowledge sharer , Kelly Church.

Yes.

(audience cheering and applauding) Church comes from an unbroken line of black ash basket makers and works with fibers of the woods and the forests in Michigan to create weavings that share urgent issues that affect us all.

Her work tells stories from her ancestors, shares teachings, and draws attention to the deliberate fissures and gaps in history books and national narratives of indigenous experiences from the past and the present day.

Church has dedicated much of her at practice to raising awareness and educating multiple generations of diverse publics and indigenous communities across the country about sustaining traditions for future generations and how to care for plants and trees that are vital to fostering a sustainable ecosystem.

So over the last year, I've had the honor and privilege of working closely with Kelly Church and her daughter, Cherish Parrish for their solo exhibition, In Our Words, An Intergenerational Dialogue.

As Chrisstina mentioned, that's opening at Stamps Gallery this evening after the Penny Stamps lecture today.

During this time, I've learned so much through our conversations and through Kelly's stunning baskets, weavings, and sculptural objects.

That remind us that regardless of the challenges facing our present and future generations, no matter how mind boggling they are, we can do something about them.

So Kelly Church received her Associate of Fine Arts from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1996, and her BFA from the Stamp School of Art and Design at the University of Michigan in 1998.

She is nationally recognized and is the recipient of numerous awards and honors including the 2018 National Endowment for the Arts Heritage Fellowship.

She's a four-time recipient of the Artist Leadership Program Fellowship through the National Museum of the American Indian in D.C.

In 2022, she received the First People's Fund Community Spirit Award for her continued sharing of traditional teachings among Michigan native communities.

And in 2024, she was named one of the United States Artist Fellows.

Please join me in welcoming Kelly Church.

(audience applauding) (bright music) - So Cherish and I did our first show together in Grand Rapids, Michigan at the Grand Rapids Art Museum.

It was during the pandemic, so I think the art we expressed was, you know, coming from the pandemic, our feelings and the things that were happening and also expressed our culture.

So this show is kind of a continued conversation from that show and we're furthering our dialogue about our art.

So in this show, we'll be having many pieces that we make.

All of our work comes from fibers of the forest.

So we're using all of these materials that were taken from our people during the boarding school time and we're showing our strength and resilience of our native people and all of the wonderful cultural traditional teachings that we've always had and that we still have today.

In this show, we're going to be featuring the Treaty of Fort Meigs and that is the treaty that was signed to obtain the land that U of M is on today.

A lot of people think, "Well, natives just signed away their land.

They gave it to us and so they signed these treaties, they knew what they were doing."

A lot of these treaties will have X marks on it.

And that means really they didn't even know how to sign their name so how could they possibly read something they were signing?

They weren't really writing treaties for us, they were writing treaties for them to take from us.

I like to say that all land today that we are on, it's all native land.

This show is going to be different from both shows you've seen because it will include history, it will include generational, weavings, generational work, and it will include a lot of things that people just really don't know because it was not told in schools, it was not shared in our history books and native people have a lot of history that is vibrant and wonderful to share.

To be able to share our work with our alum and the school is just a wonderful thing.

When I attended school, I went to the art school and I was doing painting and I did sculpture.

And so I think the sculpture class is one that really set me up for the direction that I'm doing now because now I'm weaving fibers into sculptural shapes to tell my story.

And so being able to share it with the community where we both went to school is, it's an honor, it's a pleasure and we're excited to do so.

- It's such a privilege to be able to show in Ann Arbor.

It's been my favorite town since I was a young child.

When my mom went to school there, I was so excited when I got accepted.

It also means a ton to be able to show my work with my mom 'cause my mom and I learned.

She taught me a lot, but we also learned this together from our cousins.

I know both of us like to use our work in order to inform people on not just historical aspects but cultural aspects.

I really enjoy being able to inform people in a more friendly way with my artwork rather than just being cocky with my response.

- It's really exciting to be able to share a show with Cherish.

If Cherish were not my daughter, I would be a fan of her work.

And I know people probably think, "Oh yeah, everybody loves their kids are."

No, my daughter is really talented, she has a great imagination.

While I showed her the basics of black ash, she took this to a place of her own style.

Just looking at her growth and her weaving abilities, which are just phenomenal, it's really exciting to be in a show with Cherish Parrish and then to have her as my daughter is even more exciting.

(bright music) (audience applauding) Thank you.

(speaking in foreign language) And what I just said is, hello, how are you?

My name is Kelly Church and I'm from Hopkins, Michigan.

Tonight, I'm going to share with you my black ash journey.

So this is kind of where our journey begins, but it's not really a beginning.

Sometimes in the non-native world, people like proof of things.

And so this is a photo from 1919 of my family weaving baskets.

When you look at this picture, we have a great-grandfather of mine in there, we have a grandmother and my grandfather's in that picture.

He's that little tiny baby holding on to that splitter in the middle of the photo.

He was two years old.

So then we were able to date it.

From this photo, I learned from my father, Bill Church, I learned, I taught Cherish, and we have many generations that will come after us.

So according to this, we have six generations, but my grandmother always said we had made baskets before they made cameras.

(audience laughing) So this is where black ash, we have to start everything.

The first thing we do is we go into the woods and we start harvesting trees.

We don't just get to harvest any tree, we have to go into a swamp first.

So first, we have to identify the landscape.

All black ash trees grow in swamp lands or wetlands.

They're the kind of land where when you walk you can actually feel someone walking six feet ahead of you or behind you because the ground is really different in that way.

So if you've never been to a swamp, you gotta go out there just to try that, you know, just to jump on it and say, "Did you feel it?"

Six feet back.

So when we go out into the swamp, the first thing we do is we're looking for black ash trees.

This is what a black ash tree looks like.

So to me, it has kind of a grayer bark to it.

So when I walk out to the woods, I like to tell people, "I don't know all the trees of the woods, but I know my ash trees very well."

So when I look into a forest, I can say black ash, black ash, white ash, not ash, not ash, not ash.

And a good basket tree must grow straight.

So you can see the bark on this tree is growing straight up and down.

Now I encourage you when you leave here today to look at trees and look at the bark of trees.

Not all of them grow straight up and down.

Some bark will go up and then they'll start curving around.

All trees grow differently.

A good basket tree will have straight bark because the straight bark dictates the way the growth rings will grow.

And I'm using the growth rings from the tree.

When we harvest our trees, we're first looking for, if I'm in the wintertime, I will be looking for that bark.

And I'll also identify it by the leaves.

On the left side, we have a leaf bud from the wintertime, so I can identify it by that little tiny end of that bud, it looks like a chocolate chip.

I'll take pictures, bring the binoculars, you know, to be able to identify it.

And another way is in the summertime, the leaves grow directly across from each other and you see how they grow off the stem and right off of the stem.

There is no little tiny leaf off of that main stem.

That is another way to identify our trees.

So when we get home, we'll begin pounding on the logs.

We identify if it has good growth rings when we're in the woods by notching into it with an ax.

You can see I give axes to little kids.

I do teach them how to use them first.

But we will notch into that tree that you saw in the second slide with a hatchet.

And we'll check out the growth rings on it.

We're looking for growth rings that are approximately the thickness of a nickel, not the width but the thickness of a nickel.

That's the ideal size for a growth ring.

Once we identify that, we give thanks and then we harvest the tree and we bring it home.

When we get the trees out of these woods, we have to carry them out on our shoulders.

So you always are nicest to your strongest friends.

Luckily, I have a husband who's really strong and so he'll carry these logs out on his shoulder and what you do is if you have a six to eight-foot log, you bend down about three to four feet, you put it on your shoulder and then you gently pick it up because it's really heavy so you're gentle.

And then both sides will be even.

And then you start walking out of that forest and hopefully, you don't stop until you get to your car.

You're always down.

So that's what you know at the very end of a black ash trail, you have to go up a hill.

That is the trickiest part.

I have to admit, when I was younger and I used to carry logs out, I've gotten to the bottom of the hill and I've stopped.

I've not been able to move.

And one time one of my cousins said, "We're surprised you made it this far, Kelly."

So I was thankful that they would always help me get those logs up the hill out of the woods.

When we get home, we begin debarking that log end to end.

So I want you to imagine a six-foot log of the width of two inches.

We will debark it with the backside of an axe or a draw shaved knife from the old antique days.

We'll go to antique shops and find those.

So two inch in width, end to end.

And then we take a very old axe and this is where I solicit axes.

Old axeheads are very hard to find.

They will be in your grandfather's garage, something nobody wants anymore, at the end of the video, I might have my address, please mail them to me.

(audience laughing) So my grandfather had an old axehead and we used it for a long time and then we lost it.

And we lost it in the woods.

It flew off in the woods when we were working, we never located it so we had to find another one.

So this is what we do.

We go to antique shops and we look for them.

So when we're pounding on it with the backside of an old axe, we have to pound every half inch down that log.

The backside of an ax is only an inch in width.

So we're pounding as hard as we're chopping a tree.

Flat down on it.

Half inch, half inch, half inch, all the way down the log.

And then the growth rings will begin to pop up and release.

Okay.

So after we pound on it, the growth rings begin to pop up in release.

And you can see here that is what is happening.

So each one of those growth rings will be about the thickness of a nickel, two inch in width.

It'll be the length of the log.

We only pull where we have pounded.

If we pull and it stops and I'm talking pull gently, like get a six-year-old to pull up the splints for you.

If it pulls that easily and they come up, we pull them.

As soon as the six-year-old cannot pull them anymore, that means we need to pound more to remove those growth rings.

Once I get the growth rings off, we separate them and we put them into the contraption on the right.

That contraption splits things so we call it a splitter.

We don't come up with really fancy words for things.

Everything is kind of what it does.

So our splitter splits our splints.

I stick it down in that hole in the bottom, put it up through the middle.

It's two pieces of wood and it looks like a big clothespin if you see the whole splitter.

And in between the top part, it has two pieces of metal because wood likes to stick to wood.

So it has two pieces of metal there that makes it easy for me to score the wood and peel it apart.

And you can see here where I've scored it and I'm beginning to peel it apart, the inside of the growth ring is where the beautiful black ash material comes from.

So the outside is very porous, it has hairs on it, it's very rough.

Once you score it and peel it apart, it is silky, it is smooth, it is beautiful, it is shiny.

And if you get to see the exhibition, you'll see how beautiful that material is.

So on the right side, you can see all the shine from it.

That is what the black ash looks like after I split it.

Oops.

So these are some creations we make from the black ash trees our people have been making since before this country existed.

Our people have been making black ash baskets since before this country existed.

We have documentation in museums.

So if a basket fragments are preserved by metal fragments in the ground, they won't rot away into totality.

So there have been basket fragments found in upper state New York that were dated 2,000 years ago and they were preserved by some metal in the ground.

We know we have been weaving for a very long time.

Are we as native people to share and pass on traditions and our stories and our history is orally.

And we do this for a reason.

We share our stories orally and we also have like you know, little stories of lessons that we learn from.

We do not write these down because if you write things down, then you tend to forget to talk about it and pass it on again.

So it's like our history books today or maybe your family history, maybe someone in your family wrote it down once, then you think it's safe forever and so you don't talk about it anymore.

So in our native way we like to share our stories orally and we like to share them in the way that it is continually passed on and that the next generation will get the same teachings that they did thousands of years before.

So these are some items that we have always made.

Cradleboards.

The top of that cradleboard is carved out of black ash.

It's a very flexible material.

We can carve it, we can steam it, it will dry and it stays in that shape.

The footboard is also carved outta black ash.

And we did it in the same way.

We carved it, we steamed it, we shaped it and let it dry.

These are snow shoes is another wonderful thing that our people used our ash trees for.

On the right side are some more traditional baskets that are indicative of Great Lakes materials.

We like to put handles feet fancy things and the handles don't even really serve a purpose.

They're just to look good, so.

(chuckles) so it's what you might see if you might go to maybe a powwow or a gift shop, you'll see these beautiful baskets.

Now these are some baskets that my daughter and I make and we take our traditional materials and we make innovative baskets to tell our stories today.

So I like to weave baskets about this bug called the emerald ash borer.

And he's coming up in another picture.

I got a great picture of him one day.

But I'd like to talk about the emerald ash borer in my work.

So I will take baskets, I'll dye them green and I'll add copper to them this.

(alarm rings) Oops, sorry, everybody.

I'm diabetic so sometimes, the alarm will go off.

So I like to weave about stories of things that are affecting us today.

And my daughter, Cherish weaves lots of beautiful body baskets that talk about our women and our role as native women in all of the things we do.

As native women, we are mothers, we are culture sharers.

We carry on the next generations.

We also teach the next generations.

We're aunts, we're grandmothers, we're sisters.

We're part of the caretaking.

Men caretake just as well as we do, but we are caretakers.

And so there's many different roles that you have.

As a black ash basket weaver, you take on more roles, you become a botanist.

We have that emerald ash borer.

We're entomologists.

We're keepers of the forest.

And I don't mean I keep the forest.

I mean I try to keep an eye on that forest to study the health of it, to watch the health of it and to see what is going on so we can keep it safe for the future generations.

Okay, so this is the emerald ash borer.

This is was in Brighton, Michigan, back in, I believe it was about 2010.

We took some bark off of a tree and he was right there.

So you can see his really big eye.

He actually, we didn't know we were gonna get that lucky.

We took the bark off, then we had our cameras out and this little guy just kinda woke up like, "You just took away my, you know, curtain."

So this is a live ash borer in the middle of summer.

They're just starting to emerge.

He just turned from a larvae, which will be about an inch, a inch and a quarter inch and a half in size.

They shrink down to this tiny beetle, which is a beautiful green.

If you were a bug collector or perhaps a child that loved bugs, you would wanna keep him for a pet.

He's that pretty.

He has metallic green wings and body.

His stomach is copper colored.

But this little tiny bug, which is only as big as the head of Lincoln on a penny can bore out of a bark on a black ash tree that is about a quarter inch to a half inch thick.

I always find that amazing that this bug can do that.

It is this small and it can bore through wood to get out.

So it starts as a larvae, it girdles the tree turns into the beetle, bores its way out and continues to eat and lay eggs.

They lay eggs that are only about as big as the tip of a pencil.

Really tiny, tiny little eggs so you're unable to see them.

When your trees start dying, you'll notice your ash trees not having any leaves at the top.

Eventually, the leaf will get much bare.

They'll start getting sprouts out the side, the little shoots, the bark will fall off and eventually, your trees will die.

The emerald ash borer can kill an entire ash stand in three to five years.

So that's how quickly it happens.

The last place I was harvesting at, this year, we just actually got back last weekend.

So last year, this place had, hmm, maybe half leaf cover.

The emerald ash borer is there.

It's up by the Porcupine Mountains on some private land.

And so this year we went.

We had that warm winter that all of us experienced here in Michigan.

The emerald ash borer usually will go hibernate for the winter, like a bear.

This year it was warm, he was awake.

That stand had maybe six twigs of leaves left in it.

So the emerald ash borer is very hearty.

It loves its food, it loves ash trees and it continuously eats them.

On the right side, we have the very first log we harvested.

That was in about 2009.

We harvested this log, we removed the bark, and we saw the squiggle marks.

This was up by Elk Rapids.

And I was teaching some kids up there.

So this is the first time that we got to see them in the log.

When we pounded out those growth rings, the little hole from it went down about five growth rings.

There was still a little tiny hole left.

So even the larvae can really cause some damage.

Now these are gonna be the most important things for the future generations.

And the most important thing for all of us to think about today, to collect for future generations.

And I don't mean just ash seeds, I mean all seeds.

So this is how we identify when an ash tree is going to be seeding.

In the background there, you see that little ball, those little tiny leaf buds will kinda turn into a flower ball and then in the summer, they will turn into leaves that start coming down.

In the fall, we will start harvesting those leaves.

It's around this time of year.

Black ash trees only seed every five to seven years.

When they drop their seeds to the ground, that seed must germinate for two years before it begins to grow.

So now we're talking about seven to nine years before we'll ever have another cycle of ash trees.

This is why it's been so difficult to keep the black ash trees replenished just in normal without the emerald ash borer.

But now with the emerald ash borer, we used to go into the woods and take some seeds, you know, plant 20 trees for the one we were going to take for the future generations.

Now those seeds are very important and it's critical to save them.

So the seed bank in Fort Collins, Colorado has looked at our seeds and studied them.

We can save them for 25 years.

They will still be viable.

So there are ash seeds at the Seed Bank in Fort Collins, Colorado.

About 10 to 15 years ago, there was a lot of seed collection going on by different groups, the Forestry Service and different groups that were interested in what was happening to the ash trees.

We also collaborated with them during some programs I was able to do through NMAI.

And so now we have a whole network of government agencies that work with just little old basket weavers like me.

So this is some of the stories that I like to tell.

On the right side there, you see a hat.

That is about our water.

You know, I'm always interested in what I'm reading about and what I'm sharing.

I like to read a lot about and learn about it.

I wasn't aware that Michigan had 21% of the world's fresh water.

Did you also know that we, ourselves, are made up of about 60% water?

So when people say water is life, it's not just a slogan, it's not a good meme, it's really truth.

We need water to live.

So it's very critical that we look out for future generations.

In the native world, we like to say seven generations.

And what we mean is we're looking out seven generations ahead of us.

We want to make sure that our grandkids, our great grandkids, and all of those that we will never, ever meet, have what we have today.

And so it's very important for us today to protect our great lakes.

So this talks about the pipeline that was put in in the 1950s.

You know how much we've learned since then?

A lot.

So that pipeline is at the most sound.

It's had at least 62 or more incidences.

And I believe it's something that we all need to be aware of, especially as Michiganders.

We like to fish, we like to swim, we do boating.

And also, water is critical for life.

So as people from Michigan and the people of the Great Lakes, it is up to us to protect our water.

And how do we do that?

Well, we don't pollute it for one thing, but we can also, I always like to tell the young people, the future is yours.

You guys run for those offices that protect the water.

You guys run for those offices and I will vote for you.

You see what you want in the future for your children and your future generations.

And I want you to take charge.

Don't wait for others to do it.

Never sit at home and you know, complain.

None of those things do it.

I want everyone in this room when you don't like something to think about what you can do, one little thing you can do.

I always think about, I know 10 things I can't do, but what can I do?

So that's about the water.

The one on the left is in the exhibition.

If you get a chance to come and see it, it's called Continuum.

So it has the white in it from the larvae, it has the green in it, from the emerald ash borer, has the copper in it from his belly.

Then it has copper beads strung throughout because it's showing a continuum of this tradition.

Weaving is going to continue with or without the ash trees, but black ash baskets will no longer be black ash baskets without the ash trees.

So we can continue our weaving, which 75% of what I do is harvest and pound and split and scrape and process that material for weaving.

25% is the weaving of the basket.

So this talks about continuum, how things change but they continue.

But in the future, I hope it will come back to where we are today, that we're able to teach our children how to harvest trees that they'll replant the seeds in the future, wait 25, 40 years for them to grow.

And they'll have the same teachings, we will.

We talked about it a long time ago as black ash basket weavers, myself in the Akwesasne.

We were talking we're like, "We may skip a generation of harvesters."

And that's a really scary thing to think about when you think you've been doing it for so many generations, you know, before the country existed.

And now we're at a time when we may have to skip a generation of harvesters until we can get the trees to grow again.

So this basket on the left, I call traditional transformations.

It's kind of like showing the ash turning into copper.

You know, that's showing that we won't have our ash to weave with, but we will have, you know, other materials that speaks on the same.

And on the right, I call those seventh generation black ash baskets.

That's in seven generations, what could be if we do not collect those seeds and replant and continue to make those memories and document.

And there are things we can do.

Everything I think of I can do, I do.

So this is made out of a vinyl blind.

It has ribbons in it.

And then I incorporate strips of ash in there.

One to three strips of ash in each basket.

So it's called a seventh generation black ash basket but it actually only has one to three strips of ash in it.

The one that goes with continuum has zero strips of ash in it.

That is showing the end.

I like to call them my scare baskets.

I'm like, "Hey, guess what?

We're only gonna have to final blinds to weave with if we don't collect seeds."

I'm hoping to scare people into collecting seeds if that's the only way I can get them to do it.

No, I'm kidding.

(audience laughing) So this is one of the most important baskets for future generations to be able to harvest those trees.

It is a bark basket.

It's a basket that we used to be able to make like, you know, four to six weeks out of the year, the sap is running, you get your tree for the growth rings.

That one log will make many baskets.

We only harvested a few trees a year 'cause one tree you could two logs out of.

So maybe you know, two, three trees a year.

This part of it, if the bark was peeling, we'd be like, "Oh yay.

We get a bonus basket, the bark basket."

So you could slice down the tree and you can literally just peel the bark off.

And that's how easily it comes off.

The sap feels like a really silky water, but it dries your hands out just really crazy.

So I always like, sap is really weird how it dries your hands out, but it feels very silky, like a silky water as you're peeling it.

So this is when I was teaching up at Grand Traverse Band.

We found a tree where the bark was peeling.

It was an extra teaching, they all peeled it off and then we went inside and made bark baskets.

So the bark basket is going to become one of the most rare baskets because the emerald ash borer kills the bark of the tree first.

That is what will fall off.

We've hardly get to make these anymore.

So they used to be this like bonus fun, easy basket to make.

You know, you can shape them an hour, let them cure.

So now I'm a bark basket hoarder.

I keep many bark baskets, forge future generations.

So if the ash tree, and I like to say if.

I don't believe it will ever be this way, but if the ash tree is ever to be not there at all, until we regrow it again, they will have these to use in the future to identify that tree once it grows.

And in the side it says, "May the forest be with you."

I like to do a lot of things like I did Darth Vader and I call it the bark side or the dark side, the bark side.

So this is one of the things that you see when you enter the gallery.

It's called the Tipping Point.

Back in the 1800s, the late 1800s, Simon Pokagon made a book outta Birch bark.

And in this book, it was called the Red Man's Rebuke.

But he took it to the Chicago Fair, I believe it was in 1893.

And there, he called it something like a Red Man's Greeting.

You know, how can you get someone to buy your book if you're calling it the Red Man's rebuke, right?

So he called it the Red Man's Greeting.

But when you open the book, it was the same one with two different titles.

And what he talks about is, is what is happening, what he sees.

He sees non-native people coming in and cutting down the trees and they're changing the landscape.

And his children are changing.

They're getting sent away to schools.

He sees a future for his people that doesn't look very...

It looks very bleak.

And so he shares in this book about what he sees the future and what may happen and what he sees will happen.

It is actually in our exhibition.

The University of Michigan owns a book of Simon Pokagon's "Birch Bark Book."

If you come to the exhibition, you can see it under glass.

I've never seen it before, it's incredible.

It's very small, but it's very powerful and very mighty.

I encourage you to look it up online and to read some of what he wrote.

So this piece is called The Tipping Point.

And on the one side we have our birch bark.

It's holding some copper, it's holding some cork, it's holding some seeds, it's holding some water, it's holding some honey.

You know, honey is something that you can sustain from but it also comes from bees, which help us sustain our food source.

So it's talking about these things that we need to protect, things that are sustainable.

And the other side is the tipping point.

It's everything that we have today.

We have candy wrappers, I have, you know, bottle caps, we have metal, we have garbage, cigarette butts.

Cigarette butts.

I didn't wanna pick up a dirty cigarette butt 'cause I don't smoke cigarettes.

So I had to buy a pack of cigarettes and tear the butts off to put it in here.

But you see those everywhere.

These things are not biodegradable.

We need to start changing our ways.

And even if we change one way, let's say you use paper plates, use biodegradable paper plates.

You know, let's say you love watermelon, start growing your watermelon.

You know, there's just little things that we can do.

And every time we do one thing, we might encourage ourself to do another.

But this is where you enter the exhibition.

And so our histories as native people haven't been shared and they must be shared.

And so when it has been shared, it hasn't always been shared truthfully.

It must be truthful.

When it is truthful, it also has not been shared enough.

And so our history existed before this country existed.

This part was very important for me to share because my dad was a historian.

His name was Bill Church.

He was able to research and do the history for six tribes in the state of Michigan to get federal recognition.

He was the last commissioner on Indian affairs in Michigan because after they implemented procedures and policies for federal recognition, we did not need that commission anymore.

So we have 14, I believe, federally recognized tribes in Michigan.

We also have a state recognized tribe, the Mackinac Band.

And this is due to the work that our people did.

Now you have to know your history to get your tribe recognized.

So this is one of those things that you know, I was talking about.

If you don't write it down, you know, or if you do write it down, you get comfortable.

And where is it?

So the government knows all native tribe's history, they have it.

So when you are trying to get recognized, there's like certain tribes that have been able to get recognized for over 30 years, it's because they're missing one part of their history.

You know who knows that missing part?

The government.

They have it.

So when you're doing your history, and I learned this from my dad, he would go there, and he would tell them, "Here's what I have."

And she'd say, "Yes, you have more."

So he knew he had to find more history, but they will not tell you what part you're missing.

So this is part of where I call that extractive, they have our history, but they don't wanna help us to become federally recognized.

So they do know our history but history has become so ingrained in me and so important.

Whatever I talk about today, even with the water and the pipeline in the future becomes history.

What happens in the future with that pipeline?

What stories will there be?

Did we save our water?

Do we have fresh water seven generations from now?

Are they still enjoying the great lakes without any repercussions?

Or are we going to be talking about how we did nothing?

Those are the choices that we have today.

And so this is where I like to just share with people the things you can do.

You know, it's like, "Well, I can't do that.

The government, the politicians, you know.

"Hey, become a politician.

You can be the one that runs for your local office, your bigger office."

But today, these are some things that we can do.

Little acts big or small.

You can collect seeds, plant seeds, clean your neighborhood, drive less, walk more.

Stop using pesticides to beautify your lawns and protect and conserve our water.

My lawn at home, if you guys saw my house, you would just drive by and be like, "Whoa, they're lazy.

They don't even mow."

I mow small portions of my yard because I have a natural yard.

My yard grows berries, it has wild roses, it has blood root.

There's so many things growing around there.

To mow it like my neighbor does and make sure it looks good for everybody driving by, I would be killing a lot of natural plant life.

So I have a natural yard and I have very small spaces where I go sit and you know, maybe enjoy a little fireplace outside.

We have a fire pit or outback also where we grow our garden.

So I encourage you to just take on anything that you can do.

Collecting seeds, this is my favorite part to share with everyone.

In the fall time, I showed you those seeds.

So this is the time of year, it's called pine cones.

It's those seeds on trees.

Any seed you see today, collect those seeds and replant them.

Even if you're just taking a walk down the street, you see a seed on the ground, plant it, of course plant it somewhere.

Maybe not in someone yard if it's their yard.

But go down to the end of the road to the woods or something.

We need more trees.

We have 803 million ash trees on public lands in Michigan.

We have lost over 700 million to 750 million.

I'm going to guess based on my observations of being in the woods and looking at these trees.

That is how much we have lost in 20 years.

We have not replanted that many.

We also have the bronze birch bore killing our birch trees.

We have the pine beetle killing swaths of pine trees in Colorado.

We have many bugs that haven't made their way here yet and we hope they don't.

Being a peninsula is one of those saving graces we have.

There's one way in and that bridge to come in.

So I encourage everyone today, if you see a tree that has a seed on it, plant a tree, plant two trees and plant one every single year.

So everywhere I go I'm like, "Okay, let's see.

There's maybe like 50 people out here today.

Next year, we have 50 more trees."

But I was in the Folklife Festival this summer and I told at least 100 people.

So no, really.

Next year, we're gonna have 150 trees.

So I really do wanna encourage people to implement what you can to do today for tomorrow.

So these are materials that we also work with.

As we lose our black ash teachings, not our black ash teachings, but our black ash trees.

In essence, it is like losing your teachings 'cause you can't readily pass them on.

It's also losing part of our language because we say as (speaking in foreign language).

That's black ash basket.

If I don't have a black ash basket, I won't be saying those words as much.

And so losing part of our tradition to the emerald ash borer means we're losing part of our language as well.

Or say not going to be saying it as much.

This year is wing English.

We call it sweetgrass.

We can grow this.

It's very aromatic, it's very sustainable.

So there's some sweetgrass in that scale there.

It's very sustainable.

This stuff went through the winter.

It was 30 degrees, 60 degrees, 80 degrees, 20 degrees.

You know, our winter was crazy.

The grass would start to grow, it would go dormant.

It would grow again.

It would go dormant.

It survived the whole crazy winter.

I saw our trees start to budding.

The trees get really confused when that happens in the winter and it affects them differently.

But this is a very sustainable material.

It's also very strong.

If I get one piece of sweet grass wet, it will hold together the bottom of my wood split basket.

This is birch bark.

Birch bark is one of the most versatile trees that we have.

It has the bronze birch bar affecting it.

We need to be aware of that.

But we can use this for making a container.

We use it for canoes.

You can build a whole birch bark canoe out of birch bark and float it down the river.

I can attest to this.

My tribe, the Gun Lake tribe, Matchi-be-nash-she-wish tribe down in Allegan, Michigan.

We built a canoe just three weeks ago and they built the canoe from start to finish in seven days.

And then we took it out on the lake and had a ceremony for it.

And they'll be collecting wild rice with it this year.

So this, we can live in it and lodges.

It starts fires.

It is one of the most versatile trees that we have.

This is called basswood.

It's the inner bark of the basswood tree.

Our people made cordage out of it.

So this is how we made rope that we made into fishing nets, to catch sturgeon, to catch salmon and all of the wonderful white fish and walleye, delicious fish that we have in our great lakes.

So these are some creations that I call Baskets of Healing.

On the right, I have a mass that's from COVID COVID is still here.

It hasn't gone away.

I actually contracted it a few weeks ago in Santa Fe.

Came home, I think it was a big spreader down there.

We all had it.

So it's something that is still going on today.

Copper's a very healing material and wearing masks, we can help heal each other.

My daughter on the right, this is one of her new pieces, I encourage you to come and see at the show.

It has jingles on it and it represents our jingle dress dancers.

And they also dance for our healing.

And so this talks about our boarding schools.

This is something I like to share because it's not talked about very much.

And so this is called before and after.

This is what children looked like before they went to boarding school and when they came out.

And so these are some of the stories that you'll see in some of the history that I share during our show.

Kill the Indians, save the man.

That was the slogan for the boarding schools.

I wanted to show the top of this 'cause I want you to see that building in the back.

It looks like an institution with a bunch of army people coming out.

Those army people are children.

They took native children from the ages of like three years old on up and took them away from their parents.

And these kids did not graduate school.

They survived school and many of them didn't make it home.

So I encourage you to come and see.

This is a top hat and this is the top of the hat.

I have news stories around the hat that tell about these boarding schools, facts about the boarding schools, truths about the boarding schools.

And I also have those able to read in the back of the reading room if you're unable to read it on the hat.

And so I like to leave people with messages that are uplifting and good and positive.

I would like you to see in this, what they were doing at boarding schools was taking away our language.

I know some of my language, but not all.

So they did not succeed there.

We do have language keepers.

We have Alphonse here at U of M, so we still have our language.

They tried to take away all of our cultural teachings.

But I have mentors and elders back home who taught me every single thing on here.

We have black ash, birch bark, basswood, sweetgrass, white cedar bark.

We have all of these teachings we have been able to still carry on today.

That is our strength and our resilience.

The things they tried to take away, they did not succeed with.

You couldn't do it today.

There's no way you could even try today because we are so strong and we are resilient.

And I encourage you to come learn about our history and see the strength and resilience that we have.

And so I'm going to leave you with this word, sustainability.

This is what we all need to think about for the future.

Not just to make baskets, but for the future of everyone.

And at the bottom, you can see on the floor it says, "Future generations depend on it to survive."

So I'm looking out for all of you, all of your future generations, please look out for mine as well.

Oh, and we hope you enjoy the exhibition.

(Kelly speaking in foreign language) (audience applauding) That's it.

So please join us.

We're all gonna leave now.

We're gonna go down to the exhibition.

I'll be there if anyone has any questions, I'll take questions.

We can visit, we can talk, there's food and there's lots of good art.

So I hope to see you there.