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DEH GAH GOT'IE KOE/FORT PROVIDENCE
Five students from Deh Gah School have learned the art of making traditional snowshoes.

Students at Deh Gah School in Fort Providence display the traditional snowshoes they made during a workshop organized by the Aboriginal Sports Circle of the NWT. Participants included, from left, Bobbi-Lynn Gargan, Kelsey Bonnetrouge, Dakota Nadli, Craig Bonnetrouge and Delaney Vandell. - photo courtesy of Derek Squirrel

The students participated in the first snowshoe-making workshop organized by the Aboriginal Sports Circle of the NWT. The organization ran the workshop at the Fort Providence school from March 5 to 9.

"This is a lost art," said Derek Squirrel, a community co-ordinator with the sports circle.

A lot of elders who have the knowledge of how to make snowshoes are dying and aren't leaving the skills behind with the younger generations, he said.

"It's something we believe strongly in, the traditional knowledge of the North," said Squirrel.

Squirrel said the Sports Circle organized the workshop and plans to do one more this year and four in the next fiscal year, because it believes such workshops help preserve the knowledge.

Manny Buckley, from the Hay River Reserve, led the workshop. Buckley, who's originally from northern Saskatchewan, learned how to make snowshoes by watching his grandfather. Traditionally, snowshoes were made in the spring, summer or fall and used for hunting during the winter, he said.

The snowshoes are softer for walking and stay above the snow better than the store-bought varieties, he said. They are, however, not as durable and wear out faster when used on crusty snow surfaces.

For the workshop, Buckley prepared two 1.4-metre lengths of spruce for each student.

The students spent the first two days using draw knives to carve the poles, making a long point for the front of their snowshoes and a longer point for the back.

Physical strength

To bend the snowshoes into shape, the students tied the nose of the snowshoe together and put in one of the crosspieces before using their physical strength and clamps to bend the other ends of the poles until they met and could be tied with babiche.

The students then slipped the second crosspiece into place.

Students finished their snowshoes by using babiche – dried strips of moose hide soaked in water and dried – to make the webbing. The toes of the snowshoes are normally curled up but the wood was too dry to complete that stage, said Squirrel. The students plan to do it later with teacher James Hatch, who also participated in the workshop.

Squirrel said the workshop went very well.

"They caught on," he said about the students. "Sometimes they didn't want to leave."

Squirrel said the workshop drew lots of attention with other students and teachers from the school coming into the classroom to watch the process.

Buckley said it made him feel good after the students learned how to make snowshoes.

"It makes a lot of friendships doing that with the kids," he said.

In addition to running more workshops for students, the sports circle is also hoping to train people from the various regions in how to teach snowshoe-making.

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