Hide Tanning Immersion 2021

AMBER SANDY

Amber Sandy is Anishinaabe and a member of Neyaashiinigmiing, Chippewas of Nawash First Nation. She is an artist with a focus on leather work, beadwork, tufting and furs. Amber is a hide tanner and uses moose, deer and fish skins to make leather by hand. As the coordinator of Indigenous Knowledge and Science Outreach for SciXchange at Ryerson University, she is an enthusiastic advocate of land based education! Her work focuses on integrating Indigenous and western science in her approach to conservation, environmental science and education. It is her passion to strive for increased access to traditional land based practices, art and otherwise, for Indigenous people.

CARMAN MCKAY

Carman is a self-determined artist, educator, and cultural resource for a variety of communities throughout Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley, belonging to the Musqueam and Matsqui First Nations.

Carman is passionate about sharing Indigenous life skills, understandings, and perspectives to the abundance of learners who have arrived in Coast Salish Territory. As a teacher, Carman honours the responsibility in sharing both traditional and contemporary cultural practices, and bringing these together for cross-cultural understanding, dialogue, and decolonization.

JUNE PARDUE

June Pardue is a renowned Alutiiq and Inupiaq artist from Kodiak Island. Her work includes traditional waterproof stitching, slippers-making from her family’s generational methods, and fish skin tanning. June is an Elder who is very active in her community as a mentor to others, and teaches online to people around the world.

MARA CUR

Mara Cur is an artist and environmental educator originally from Treaty 4 territory, residing on Sto:Lo Nation territory. She curates Crowsnest Wildcraft.  She is also the founder of the annual arts and skills event Limina Gathering, which she leads alongside other practitioners.

Mara’s approach is to use landbased skills as vessels for personal healing and cross-cultural relationship building. As a settler on Turtle Island, she strives after the intersection of personal and cultural regeneration.

SHAUNA MIKOMI

Shauna Mikomi is a hide tanner, wild foods forager, and student. She began her skills journey travelling across the continent to learn place-based skills from peers and mentors. She is an alumnus of the Living Wild program in the Methow Valley, WA, USA and has been deepening her relationship to place ever since. Shauna specializes in Buffalo hide tanning and lives close by a beloved herd at the Rocky Mountain Buffalo Ranch, in Golden, BC on Ktunaxa and Secwepemc territories.

AMY WEEKS

Amy is a settler currently living in the shared territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh first peoples (Vancouver) but originally from Mi’maq territory (Nova Scotia). Since participating in the 2019/2020 Hide Tanning Immersion Program she has been practicing some form of tanning on an almost daily basis. Most of her experience has been with rabbits, sheep, deer and most recently goats. This summer, Amy has been focusing on learning about bark-tanning from both sustainably-harvested trees and commercial bark. Amy loves the practice of creating raw materials from the hides and is building up her test sample pieces.

ADELE ARSENEAU

Adele maskwasowiskwew Arseneau (Caron)

A Nehiyaw/Metis visual artist, Adele creates work around storytelling and engages the audience to consider cultural appropriation, along with social and environmental issues. Her intent is to educate from an indigenous perspective and counteract current stereotypes.

Displaced from her family’s traditional territory of Northern Saskatchewan, Adele grew up with the Dakelh (Carrier) people of British Columbia in Prince George and Fraser Lake. Incorporating traditional ovoids, split u’s, and trigons of her adopted family into the flowing form lines of her Cree style to create her designs. She carves cedar, beads contemporary Métis and plains style traditional beadwork/earrings, and paints in acrylic on hand tanned rawhide. She has completed a hide tanning residency with Crowsnest Wildcraft, the Reconciliation Carving program at Langara, and holds diplomas in Fine Art and Graphic Design. Her newest educational endeavor includes reclaiming her mother’s language of nehiyaw (Cree), and is now partway through a 2-year nehiyaw language program.

Currently, she is a member of the North Vancouver Arts Council, Seymour Art Gallery, and CARFAC. Since 2015, her work has shown in galleries from North Vancouver to White Rock, including public art with the City of Vancouver. Dedicated to reconnecting with her culture, she looks forward to where her artistic journey is going to take her.

Adele’s portfolio can be viewed at: https://aarseneau.com or on Instagram at: @metiscaron

BONNIE KLOHN

Bonnie Klohn is a 5th generation settler in Secwepemcul’ecw, with ancestral ties to the salmon-bearing Tweed River in Scotland. She recently completed a MA at Concordia University around salmon, Indigenous food systems, settler allyship and socially engaged art.

She is interested in hide tanning and ancestral skills as a part of a relational practice between humans and other animals. Bonnie is part of the collaborative leadership team at the Kamloops Food Policy Council and is part of a budding workers co-operative focused on food systems called Tapestry.

Suna Galay