Anishinaabe artist’s birch bark artwork to be featured at the Art Gallery of Burlington
By Rick Garrick
FORT WILLIAM FIRST NATION — Fort William First Nation’s Helen Pelletier recently had her wiigwas (birch bark) artwork printed on fabric and ribbons by Siltex Mills, which is based in Winnipeg. Pelletier’s fabric and ribbon designs are posted on the Siltex website.
“It’s winter birch bark etchings,” Pelletier says. “I harvest the winter birch bark at a certain time of year; it’s an actual certain type of bark, it’s not the same as the summer birch bark. We get it a little earlier, and when you take it off the tree, there’s a layer of cambium that’s left on the bark, which allows me to scrape away, so it’s like an etching.”
Pelletier says birch bark etching is an art that the Anishinaabe people did on their birch bark canoes, baskets, and other items.
“It’s on our canoes, our baskets, everything,” Pelletier says. “It’s just like a lost form. I’ve been working with bark since 1998, but specifically with winter birch bark on canoes since 2016 up on the mountain (Anemki Wajiw) doing canoes. We’d do etchings on the end of them or the middle, and they would be always just really cool representations of community.”
Pelletier says she got involved with Siltex after Jackie Traverse, one of the Indigenous artists who also has her artwork printed on fabric and ribbons by Siltex, asked if she was interested.
“So I said, ‘Yes, this is a great opportunity, miigwech,’” Pelletier says. “I gave her my e-mail and number and they contacted me right away, and that was over a year ago. They have a graphic designer and they worked with my designs and they did all the work and I’m really happy.”
Pelletier says she initially worked with birch bark in 1998 at Fort William Historical Park with Ann Magiskan.
“She will always be my number one teacher,” Pelletier says. “I was so blessed to work with her, and she taught me all about birch bark and how important and how much value it adds.”
Pelletier says she fell in love with birch bark back then, and began learning how to harvest and work with birch bark, as well as building relationships with people who knew how to work with birch bark.
“I was super lucky then and it was just a love affair with birch bark,” Pelletier says. “As I got older, it started being like a healing process for me so I just stopped working and [was] continuously making baskets and different things. It was all making me feel better, and that’s why I continuously make.”
Pelletier says the birch bark comes off the tree with ease when it is harvested at the right time of the year.
“It just gives it to you, and it’s like a whole experience of gratitude and reciprocal relationship,” Pelletier says. “It’s so awesome, it’s like tapping maple, the same thing, that reciprocative relationship. So when you know when to harvest and you go out there at the right time, it just pops right off.”
Pelletier says she recently created some birch bark corsets, which will be featured along with some of her other work, including a gun case, some baskets, and vests, at Art Gallery of Burlington’s upcoming Wiigwasitig/waskway/Honouring the Birch Tree exhibition, which opens on Sept. 12. Curated by Albany Sutherland, the exhibition features the work of Pelletier, Pat Bruderer, Amber Sandy, Seth Arcand, and Angelique Merasty.
“There will be other pieces as well but I’m kind of newly showing the corsets off that I really love because they’re for my [late] niece,” Pelletier says. “They’re something different because they’re completely framed and structured to fit a woman’s body perfectly.”