Storytelling through Resurgence of Urban Hide Tanning Program

In the springtime Jessica Sanderson-Barry approached EPL to discuss to host hidetanning at the Stanley A. Milner Library. In July 2022, we started this project in ceremony with our Elder-in-Residence Nohkom Jo-Ann Saddleback. Over two days that month we fleshed a moose hide with community members outside the Stanley A. Milner Branch. The moose was laced up and placed in PÎYÊSÎW WÂSKÂHIKAN to cure over the next month. In September, over five days community members dropped in to help scrape the moose hide. This was an amazing community activity with Elders, babies, and people from all different who got to participate in Indigenous landbased teachings in the core of Edmonton.  

Jessica Sanderson-Barry's statement about the project:  

This safe space will allow folks who do not have access to land-based learning or transportation to attend ceremony or hide camps that typically occur outside of the Edmonton area. There will be an opportunity to try moose meat, flesh and scrape a moose hide, work with finished smoked moose hides and make themselves a small project.  

The moose was and is vital to our community, we have deep-rooted connection to the moose from harvest to hide tanning, to the many of uses it brings to our families. Every hide is different and has its own story, from the place it lived, to where it was harvested, what community it fed and how everything in the moose was used. This is a form of storytelling and understanding what the moose brings to our people.  

My intention is to share my knowledge through storytelling by tanning this hide alongside with the guidance of an Elder. Hide tanning is form of reclamation, sovereignty, its cultural resurgence, it provides healing to our communities and my hopes is to revitalized these traditional practices within our Indigenous kin in the amiskwaciwaskahikan area so we continue to tell our stories of who we are and where we come from.  

This project was supported by the Funding Indigenous Resurgence in Edmonton (FIRE) program through the Edmonton Heritage Council.