Clockwise from top left: Wayne Valliere and his apprentices scrape the outer bark off of a long strip of bark; the canoe is formed and marked for embellishments.
Two falls ago, Wayne Valliere (Minogheezig) was an artist in residence at Northwestern University’s Center for Native American and Indigenous Research. Valliere, from Lac du Flambeau, Wis., is one of a handful of Ojibwe master canoe builders. He has been honored by the National Endowment for the Arts as a National Heritage Fellow for his impeccable craftsmanship. In his work he is steadfast, persistent, and assured; each snow snake, wigwam, and lacrosse stick he builds — and whoever he builds it with — carries Anishinaabe culture into the future.
Hosting Valliere’s work at Northwestern defied the university’s colonial history. The school was cofounded and funded by John Evans, the governor of Colorado who was involved in the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre, in a town that bears his name. The campus is just north of Chicago on the shores of Lake Michigan, land that once belonged to the Council of Three Fires — the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi. In the 200 years since their removal, a birch bark canoe had not touched those waters, and the art of canoe building was nearly forgotten.
Some may have never touched a tool, but they learned to tie pine roots and strain hot pitch.
To build a canoe is to know the forests; Valliere and his apprentice, Jeffery Cisneros, had spent the year harvesting, always offering thanks. “Even though these things were put here for Anishinaabe, we still have to ask,” Valliere said. On campus, they piled the forests’ gifts into an empty gallery space in the art department. Over the next three weeks, the canoe would be born here.
Sheets of birch bark, both loose summer skin and a tighter winter kind, were unrolled and stretched. The skin was trimmed, stitched together, and tied to a frame with pine root. At nearly every step, they poured boiling water over the materials to keep them loose and flexible. Soaked planks from the cedar swamps were bent into U-shaped ribs. They defined the hull, and the new relative made of trees took on impressive rigidity. “When these things are all put together, they become mashkawiziiwin,” Wayne explained, meaning “strong.”
Apprentices and Valliere stand with the completed canoe at the edge of Lake Michigan.
That strength was reflected by the union of the builders, a revolving cast of strangers: a young man from Chicago, a curious woman from St. Louis, a passing student. Some may have never touched a tool, but they learned to tie pine roots and strain hot pitch. We exchanged our work for new friends and knowledge, and imprinted that trade upon the new canoe.
Valliere believes that unity is key to meeting our greatest urgency: to help the Earth heal. He reminded every student, educator, and news anchor of the universal necessity of clean air and water. When Lake Michigan’s waves first kissed the hull that gray, blustery morning, it was not only a homecoming for the Anishinaabe but a call from the future. It told us to keep building together, to weave mutual respect into the global relationship between ourselves and our planet. It said we must breathe new life into places with dark histories, because new relatives will be born there.
PHOTO TEAM: CONNIE DENG, JULIA MACCARY, MICHELLE LIU
ABOUT THE AUTHORKoji Taylor is a journalism student at Northwestern from San Francisco. He met Wayne Valliere through a course taught by Dr. Patty Loew, who arranged the residency and deserves special thanks.
LEARN MORE: Watch Northwestern University’s video of master canoe builder Wayne Valliere.