Wiigwaasi-jiimaanan (birch bark canoes) are one of the essential tools invented by Ojibwe-Anishinaabe people, using materials commonly found in the Great Lakes region — our homeland for 1,000s of years. These lightweight and durable vehicles formed the basis of travel for everyone in the region, not just the Ojibwe. I have come to think of the Ojibwe canoe as the driver of early economies across Turtle Island.
Sofia Vanderlan belongs to the Caribou clan, adik odoodeman, one of the extended family of clans from Gichi Onigamiing — the Grand Portage Reservation. She lives in the Twin Cities, but spends summers up north with her grandmother, where she worked at the Grand Portage National Monument for several years. This is where she got inspired to build a birch bark canoe by hand. Her connection to canoe building extends back through time, before both she and her grandmother were born.
“The oldest canoe at Grand Portage National Monument, which is about 120 years old, was donated by the Caribou family, which I think is kind of neat,” Vanderlan said. “I’m not a direct family member of this person, but we’re both of the Caribou family, and so that’s kind of cool.”
A birch bark canoe is streamlined in a way that is, when compared to modern Kevlar canoes, able to hold more weight. Vanderlan said it is amazing to be able to say that this ancient technology beats what we have today.
“For 1000s of years — [the canoe] has been here,” said Vanderlan. “And when Europeans got here, they saw that a family of six could sit in one of these wild ricing canoes that are maybe 14 feet long, and that one person could carry it.”
It’s nice and cool, and smells like pumpkin
Sofia Vanderlan, Ojibwe artist, courtesy of Grand Portage National Monument.
I asked Sofia about her process, and her answer reflected a thoughtful approach that followed the way of traditional canoe building. Before any work started, permission was secured from the Band to collect bark on tribal lands. After that, timing was everything.
“Around the beginning of July, after the wild roses bloom and after the fireflies come out, we went and collected the birch bark,” Vanderlan said. “It’s easier to take the birch bark off then. It wants to come off. It’s almost like there’s a corset on this birch tree, and you’re taking that off, and the tree’s like, ‘Oh, thank you.’”
She said, she was looking for a tree that was alive and straight, without knots or a lot of limbs, with as big a circumference as possible. For this canoe project, Vanderlan worked with Karl Koster, a ranger at the Grand Portage National Monument, along with a small team of builders, including Vanderlan.
Once they found a tree to work with, they gave an offering of asemaa or tobacco. This ritual is done to honor the tree, and give thanks for its many gifts.
“We say ‘miigwech,’ and then we take a knife, and I start at the bottom and make like a little slit, and kind of test and see if the bark wants to come off,” Vanderlan said. “Because sometimes it’s like, ‘no, I do not want to come off.’ If it says, ‘Yeah,’ you can keep slowly going up and up and up, making this vertical slit. If you cut vertically, it will not kill the tree. If you cut sideways, you will kill the tree.”
According to Vanderlan, they look for the nice, orange hue at the center of the bark layer. When that layer was reached, the harvesters kept cutting in a vertical line until they could get ahold of the bark and begin to peel it off. “It comes off pretty easily, and nicely when it wants to,” Vanderlan said. Her final step in the harvest was sticking her face on the birch tree.
I asked why that was important.
“I was told to do that once upon a time, and now I do it every time,” Vanderlan said. “I stick my face on the tree and just smell it. It smells so good. It’s nice and cool and smells like pumpkin, and it’s lovely.”
After that, the harvested bark is carefully rolled up. Again, timing is key because if they get it at the right time, then the bark is very flexible and comes straight off the tree.
The birch bark pieces are laid out flat, with enough for the full length and width of the boat. Then a frame is placed over the top of it and weighed down with rocks to keep it in place. Hot water is poured along the edge of the frame to keep it pliable.
“Water keeps it from cracking, and heat makes it pliable,” Vanderlan said, and offered this example: “If I’m making a birch bark basket, I like to soak it in some water before I start stitching, and then heat will help me bend it a little bit.”
Spruce Gum vs. Flex Seal
Flex Seal, courtesy of Sofia Vanderlan
Like the handling of the birch pieces, the canoe came together in the “old” way, using spruce root as a kind of thread.
“So, we collect [spruce root] around the same time that we collect the birch bark,” Vanderlan said. “You can collect it anytime, as long as the ground isn’t frozen, but it’s kind of handy to do it while you’re collecting birch bark. When we go harvest the spruce root, I tell people, ‘I want it to be pencil sized.’”
Awls are used to punch holes in the bark, and then the canoe builders weave the pencil-sized lengths of spruce root through the holes, tying it all together. Vanderlan likes to use two different tools for this part of the project—a rectangular awl to drill the holes, and a round one to smooth it out, which helps hold the shape of the puncture. The spruce root is then woven through, using a “figure-eight” type of stitching technique.
The group of boat builders did everything in a historically accurate way except for sealing the seams. Sofia explained a bit about the old way of making a canoe water-tight.
“Generally, birch bark pitch is made out of bear grease, spruce gum and charcoal,” she said. “Spruce gum is kind of your main part. It’s the little nodules that you find on the sides of the trees that are really, really sticky. The way it was described to me by Karl [a technician] is if you had spruce gum slapped onto a window in the hot sun alongside pine tar and other things, spruce gum would be the last one to drip. So, that’s why we use spruce gum.”
I asked why charcoal was used and she explained that charcoal is like when sawdust is used to fill a hole in woodwork.” She said, “it just kind of adds more structure to it. It also colors it, because it’s handy to see where and when it breaks off.” And what about bear grease? She said, “adding rendered bare fat, makes it more elastic.”
“But we cheated,” Vanderlan said. “We may (or may not) have used Flex Seal.”
Laughing, she explained that they did everything else historically-accurately, except for that.
The canoe will eventually be on display at the Isle Royale Ferry Terminal in Grand Portage, and it will be in an area with a lot of sunlight. UV sunlight can damage most any surface, and in those conditions, traditional spruce pitch tends to harden and eventually crack, and so they chose a modern material to seal the seams. Sofia speculated that given the choice, our ancestors may have done the same.
“If they would have had Flex Seal back then they would have used it.”
Before it goes on display, Vanderlan hopes to use it to harvest manoomin — wild rice, in the early fall.
Thinking in Flowers
Flower petal trim, courtesy of Agatha Armstrong
Sofia learned to bead at her grandmother’s house in Grand Portage. Her friend and teacher was Mary Ann Gagnon-iban, a respected member of the Grand Portage community who has now passed on. Mary Ann would come to her grandma’s house for dinner, followed by a beading lesson.
“My first beadwork piece was a flower that I made for my grandma, and it’s kind of taken off ever since,” she said. “I do a lot of flowers.”
And so, when it came time to trim the canoe using the bark remainders, Vanderlan created her own decorative design inspired by floral beadwork.
“Usually [the trim] is a rounded rectangle or like a half circle. But this time I made it pointed in the center, going out like a flower. If you look at Ojibwe beadwork, you see that four petaled flower with the pointed petals.”
Vanderlan’s petal design was used to cover the grommets, and trim the jiimaan from end-to-end.
In late summer, Vanderlan was able to take the canoe out on its maiden voyage.
“It has been a very long time since I’ve been in a canoe,” Vanderlan said. “If I’m being very candid and honest, I looked up how to get into a canoe the night before on YouTube.”
Turns out, Vanderlan and the canoe did just fine.
“I wanted to take my mom and my sister for the first time out,” she said. “And so, we did. I had finished pitching it and the day before, and we carried it down to the water. Generally, birch bark canoes are known for being very, very light. My canoe is not, because we’re not exactly experts. We’re learning. And so, this one had two people carrying it down. But it’s still lighter than an aluminum canoe, so that’s kind of cool.”
I asked her how it felt to paddle a canoe she built, in such a historic place. She said that it was really, nice taking her mom and sister out and how it meant a lot to be able to do that with them.
In learning about Vanderlan’s canoe project, I wondered about the connection between the young people of today, and our ancestors who paddled these waters 1,000 years ago. This association was not lost on Vanderlan, who said:
“One of my friends told me this past spring, ‘your hands will know what to do.’ And I think that applied to making this birch bark canoe. My hands figured its way out, as I was building it, you know? My hands knew what to make and how to make it look nice, I guess.”
When she returns to the Twin Cities for her fourth year at college, Vanderlan will continue exploring her personal connection to the skills and artistic gifts of her ancestors. She shared a story about her connection to Ojibwe floral design, and why this imagery resonates with her.
“I think in flowers,’ she said. “Bead work is a huge part of my life, and it’s an important part of our culture as well. The name of the canoe is Oginii-waabigwan, which means rose in Ojibwemowin. It’s the rose canoe, partly because you collect birch bark when the wild roses bloom. And so, that’s how it got its name.”
Mii’iw—that’s all—the end.
Catch more news at Great Lakes Now:
Where the strawberries still grow
The Legacy of Chief Blackstone: Ojibwe resistance in Great Lakes history
Featured image: Paddling with her mother and sister on Grand Portage Bay, courtesy of Agatha Armstrong
