$80,000 project more than just threads and needles
Jorge Barrera
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Dec 11/00) - Rosie Firth's father wouldn't let her sew with porcupine quills.
"He thought I'd get TB," Firth said as she pressed a purple quill between a needle and a piece of caribou hide..
No one knows the source of such beliefs; the only sure thing is the end result. Today, the only traditional Gwich'in clothing with quill decoration is found in museums.
A century later, Firth has joined seven other Gwich'in women to revive the art form that was lost in the amnesia that followed contact with European culture.
The Gwich'in Traditional Clothing Project visited Yellowknife last week to take a crash course in quilling techniques.
For five days, the women from Inuvik, Aklavik, Fort McPherson, and Tsiigehtchic sat at tables in the auditorium of the Prince of Wales Heritage centre as their fingers learned to trace ages- old rhythms and patterns.
Porcupine quills are dyed, then soaked in water to make them pliable. The sharp tips were clipped and then the women pulled the quills through their teeth to flatten them, then folded and re-folded to form a series of bridges. The quills are anchored to the hide with a stitch at each fold in the quill.
The pattern slowly crawled up the hide, a stitch at a time, as the quills were pulled into place like the scales on the back of a rainbow centipede.
The guide for their work was a man's outfit from the 19th Century on loan from the Museum of Civilization in Ottawa. The coat, pants, hood, mittens and a knife sheath were made with caribou hide and stitched with caribou sinew.
All hems were hidden by quills, lined like perfect rows of little teeth. The mittens were attached by a long strip of caribou hide solidly coated in quills. The knife sheath is a mini-mosaic of quills, hundreds of them stitched together, perfect rows, perfect symmetry.
Agnes Mitchell from Tsiigehtchic said it's a good thing they don't have to use caribou sinew and pulled a needle up to tighten the cotton thread. Her fingers flew up the caribou skin, and the quills fell into place side by side.
"I'm relearning how to quill again," she said, "I haven't done it for 25 years."
Quilling is new to Maureen Clark, also from Tsiigehtchic, but easily found the rhythm. She sat across from Mitchell and the two chanted, "over and under, over and under," then erupted in laughter.
"It's interesting to see a (200) year old garment," said Mitchell.
"It'll be tough to duplicate that outfit," she adds, " the stitching is so fine."
The Gwich'in say they began to lose the art of quilling almost 300 years ago. By the 19th century, the only clothes with quill trimmings were used for trade. Beads became the primary currency and because they were easier to string, gradually won out over quills.
The Gwich'in land claim calls for repatriation of their traditional clothing from museums, but "getting clothing from museums could take a long time so we thought we'd repatriate the tradition," said Karen Wright-Fraser, project co-ordinator.
In 1994 the Gwich'in Social and Cultural Institute (GSCI) and the Prince of Wales Heritage Centre in Yellowknife set about finding Gwich'in museum collections around the world.
"We found clothing from Washington DC at the Smithsonian, to the Canadian Museum of Civilisation in Hull, Quebec, to Scotland," said Ingrid Kritsch, research director for the GSCI.
Last February the heritage centre funded a trip to the Smithsonian and the Canadian Museum of Civilisation. Three Gwich'in elders went on the ten day trip. One of them was Firth who had never seen traditional quill work before.
"Enet'su"--oh my goodness in Gwich'in-- was all she could say when they pulled out the clothing at the Smithsonian.
In Nov of 1999 the heritage centre applied for funding from the Museum Assistance and received $80,000 for travel, food and honorariums for the eight women.
The women were chosen by an elders' board.
They each wrote letters describing the reasons for their interest in the project. They were chosen on the basis of reliability, sewing experience and age.
Quilling has hit some of the women emotionally.
"It's something that was lost in my community, it was a void in my life," said Mitchell.
"I couldn't get it from my grandmother because she died when I was 9."
Bending a quill over her needle Mitchell pulled the needle forward, down and through the surface of the caribou hide, thread trailing like spider's silk, until the stitch closed and disappeared.
