>> The birchbark canoe
is the apex of our crafts,
of our art form in our region.
Even our culture goes way back.
We hunted, fished, gathered.
Everything we did
was out of the birchbark canoe.
And in recent times,
we've lost that culture.
My name is Wayne Valliere.
My native name is Miminogiizhig
and it means "Good Sky."
My clan is Mockwa,
which is the bear.
There's approximately 150
canoe builders in the Midwest,
but you're only going to find
three Native American
canoe builders.
Myself, my older brother,
and one of my teachers.
My teacher, Marvin Defoe,
from Red Cliff,
came to our community when
I was probably 11 years old, and
he built a model birchbark canoe
one summer for some teachers.
By the time I was 16, I'd built
my first birchbark canoe.
You don't go on your terms,
on your time.
You go on nature's time.
For an example, the birch.
It only peels in mid-June
to maybe early July.
So there's a short window
of opportunity
to actually harvest the bark.
The roots are there,
gotten usually later in the fall
when the sap runs into the tree.
We usually harvest our cedar
when the swamp is frozen,
because when we go into
the cedar swamp,
there's no mosquitoes.
It's easy to travel into
the swamps to get the cedar
for all the woodworking
in the canoe.
The pitch runs in late August,
when it's the hottest
part of the summer,
because we use white pine pitch
with a concoction of deer tallow
and crushed hardwood coals.
A friend of mine
by the name of Tim Frandy,
who is a doctor in folklore
down here in Madison,
he just graduated.
He heard about these
residencies, so we collaborated
with the university
and some other people
and created this project.
We brought some of our
at-risk kids from our community,
and also some of our kids
that were not at risk
in our community, and got them
involved in the canoe project.
This canoe here
played a major role
in the lives of our ancestors.
My grandmother, she
challenged me as a young boy.
She said your grandfathers
are written throughout history,
she said.
They were very, very exceptional
men.
And she said, what I challenge
you and your brothers,
what I challenge you young men,
is that, what will your
great-grandchildren say
about you someday?
So, I'd like to say that
the work I've done in working in
Nishnawbe, saving our language
and working in different areas,
saving our culture, I'd like
for my great-grandchildren
to talk about their
great-grandfather and say,
"Hey, he did his job, he kept
that alive for our people
We didn't have to go looking
for it.
It's here for us."
[all cheering]