On Thursday, Nov. 21, a handmade birch bark canoe will be launched into the waters of Lake Mendota near Memorial Union Terrace by Wayne Valliere (Mino-giizhig in Ojibwe), of the Lac du Flambeau band of Lake Superior Chippewa. Valliere is this semester’s artist-in-residence in the wood/furniture program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Since mid-July, Valliere has been constructing the canoe with the help of UW-Madison faculty, art and folklore students, and middle-school students from Lac du Flambeau Public School’s ENVISION program and Madison’s Goodman Community Center. From peeling birch bark in the forests around Lac du Flambeau, to applying black pine pitch as waterproofing, Valliere sees the canoe project as a way to pass on Ojibwe heritage to a new generation.
“I've made my life about keeping our traditional ways,” he says.
Valliere is an artist and Ojibwe language and culture educator at Lac du Flambeau Public School on the Lac du Flambeau Indian Reservation in northern Wisconsin.
Valliere’s canoe-building has been filmed by Nick Steeves (x’14), a Communication Arts major interested in film as a career. A blog, Wiigwaasi-Jiimaan (canoe, in Ojibwe), showcases videos by Steeves and others, as well as photographs and narratives posted by Colin Connors, a graduate student in Scandinavian studies pursuing a minor in folklore. Marcus Cederström, also a Ph.D. minor in the Department of Comparative Literature and Folklore Studies (CLFS) designed the blog.
DuBois
“The canoe project has been a rich practicum for graduate students interested in exploring the public humanities,” says Tom DuBois, professor of CLFS and Scandinavian studies. “All of these students joined the project originally to photograph and help document, but became involved in lending a hand in the building as well. The process is infectious!”
There were some steamy moments on the 7th floor of Mosse Humanities Building this fall, as boiling water was poured over the birch bark to keep it hydrated, and the wooden ribs were steamed to make them supple enough to bend. Valliere stitched the canoe’s birch bark “hide” with spruce root pulled out of the ground up north this summer with the help of DuBois, Art Department Chair Tom Loeser, and folklorist Tim Frandy, who helped facilitate Valliere’s visit.
Valliere is the ninth artist-in-residence to be invited to campus by Loeser, who launched the program five years ago with funding from the Windgate Foundation.
“The artist-in-residence is always a practicing artist rather than a teacher,” says Loeser. “They are here to work intensively, and in that capacity they serve as a role model, mentor, and friend to students.”
Building on the success of the canoe-building project, next semester DuBois will lead an independent study course working on two documentary films and a children's book based on Valliere’s work here and in Lac du Flambeau. DuBois will take his students up to the Lac du Flambeau reservation in February for the third annual Ojibwe Winter Games, organized by Valliere. As they’ve done with the canoe-building here, the students will film and pitch in to help.
This semester, two visits from youth involved with Lac du Flambeau’s ENVISION program (an initiative that promotes Native American approaches in the classroom), as well as youth from the Goodman Community Center, helped turn Valliere’s project into an “intergenerational, intercultural, environmental arts project” that became known as “Wiigwaasi-JIIMAAN: These Canoes Carry Culture.”
Thursday’s canoe launch will celebrate the culmination of the canoe-building project, as the UW-Madison Wunk Sheek drum (a Native American student organization) welcomes the public, as well as the Lac du Flambeau students and the Goodman Community Center students, to the shoreline. The birch bark canoe will be carried over from Vilas Hall between 2:15-2:45, and Valliere will slip it into the water. Using his hand-carved cedar paddles, Valliere and one of the Lac du Flambeau students will push off for a short trip. The boat is “absolutely” seaworthy, according to Loeser.
“It could go all the way across Lake Mendota and back,” he says.
Students will enjoy a traditional feast and brief Native American ceremony preceding the launch.
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To see a photo of the canoe in Lake Mendota and hear more about the launch, read this story from University Communications.