Invitation 3: Making Fishskin Leather as a Process for Inqui
Introduction
I come from mixed Indigenous and Settler ancestries with family who still live off the land in Turtle Island and Nepal, to a certain degree. On my father’s side, my Great-Great-Great Grandmother Rosalie Janvier would have tanned hides as a lifeway - I know this because the skill was transmitted to my Great-Great-Auntie Flora, who was renowned for tanning 30 moose hides in one summer (which is an incredible feat). Her sister, my Great-Great Grandmother Blanche, did not tan hides or do any cultural crafts from the stories I’ve heard, and refused to speak her mothertongue (Dënesųłinë́, an Athabaskan language spoken in Northern Saskatchwan) until she was on her death bed and was too exhausted to pretend anymore. So the skill was not transmitted to me from my own bloodline, though I have held my Great-Great Auntie Flora’s bone scraper and a metal scraper she fashioned out of a broken spring from an ATV. Her tools work better and fit better in my hand than any modern tools I’ve come across - it is clear she was intimately twined with her craft.
On my mother’s side, my Great-Great Grandfather followed deer through the northern mountains of Nepal for survival. My mum, Kamala Tamang-Yonzon, is a Bönpo in the ancient healing tradition of Bon practiced by our clan, the Tamang people. Bönpos are in a symbiotic relationship with hide tanners, who make their sacred objects: drums made from goat and deer skin, hair-on deer mats, instruments made from deer bone, and porcupine quills for their regalia.
I was introduced in 2017 to the basic skills of hide tanning through a teacher who is of European origins, Mara Cur, on the unceded traditional territory of the Snuneymuxw, Snaw-naw-as, and Stzuminus people. Since then I have begun learning to tan moose hides with my Uncle Brian MacDonald who takes care of his grandmother’s (mentioned above) tools. He says he never learnt to tan hides from her, but he has lived off the land his whole life - so when we tanned a moose and buffalo hide together, a lot of innate knowing and old memories of watching his grandmother work rose to the surface.
I learnt to work with sheep and buffalo hides from my friend Shauna Mikomi Tsuyuki, who is a Yonsei, fourth generation, Japanese-Ukrainian settler who resides on Ktunaxa and Secwepemc territory in the East Kootenays. I got to teach a sheepskin workshop and learn more buffalo tanning on Secwe̓pemc territories and discovered how much more anticolonial and inventive I could be with hide tanning from Jaz Whitford and their dad Jim, who are mixed Secwe̓pemc & Scottish. And fishskin leather making I first learnt from Janey Chang, who is a first generation Chinese Canadian woman living on Skwxwú7mesh and Tsleil-Waututh Territory at the foot of the mountains and close to the ocean. I also learnt how to tan fish from Amber Sandy, who is Anishinaabe and a member of Neyaashiinigmiing, Chippewas of Nawash First Nation. They are all incredible people who I am so grateful to have received knowledge from and shared space with.
One time my Grandmother Kathie was watching while my sister Jamuna tanned a sheep hide. She had never been interested in helping before, but this day was beautiful and she reached out and took a turn to scrape the hide, sitting in the sun. After a few moments she told my sister that a memory came to her of being in the kitchen with my Great-Great Auntie Flora, who had looked after her when she was a baby. Her and her cousin were both strapped into cradle boards, while her Auntie cooked.
I believe that land, language and craft are intertwined with our DNA. Reclaiming these skills is reclaiming our worldview, our place here on earth; our birthright to be here - as long as we tend to everything around us in this world we’ve been gifted.
The process of hide tanning often involves holding an animal skin taut in a wooden frame, while we work at loosening its fibers and breaking down its fascial layers. The frame helps to make our efforts to relax the fibers more effective. There is a mutual relationship of listening. The hide tanner must listen to the animal skin in order to do their work well - how hard to scrape, how long, what adjustments to make in regards to tools, where to place the hide in relationship to the weather and climate, and many more considerations. All of these choices are in response to the history of the animal who lived in this skin.
In return, the animal skin listens to the hide tanner - with each scrape, they are changed, allowing themself to be transformed into another life form entirely, with each step that makes them a textile.
This process is inherently reciprocal. While the hide tanner enacts a ritual that tends the liminal space of death and resurrection for the skin of the animal, the skin transforms into a buckskin, leather or fur textile which can then tend the people by providing warmth, protection and holding.
Instructions: Making Fishskin Leather with Black Tea Tannins
Protocols
Acknowledge the political historic relationships of your people, their relationships with the local Host Nations where you live or have lived, and any role they may have played out to either preserve and uplift, or interrupt the lifeways of the Host Nations
- do you have a mess to clean up, or a torn relationship to repair?
- do you have relationships and ways of being and skills to reclaim?
Consider how you can gift back the teachings (without virtue signalling or transactional exchange) and be in service to rematriation of Indigenous lifeways
Do not relate what you learn here to making money
Gift the leather or something you make with the leather
Respect your role in the cycles of death and rebirth of the animal and the land by returning any guts, membranes, fur and scales to the land or the water
Approach the animal skin with reverence - it is your Elder
- (Elder - a biological being or material which holds certain principles within its very nature that teaches through the natural limitations one meets by being in relationship with it and learning how to use it appropriately. Also can be an individual who takes responsibility for guiding others according to lived experience with the principles that exist in nature.)
Practice listening with curiosity, patience, and dedication
Research Questions for Reflection
Before you begin:
Research the local Indigenous communities’ relationship with fish.
How has the infrastructure of the town or city you live in altered the local community’s capacity to be in relationship with fish?
Research what uses the host Nations had for fish, and its role in the community.
You are invited to hold a passenger in mind who you are challenged by, and perhaps wish to transform. Allow your work to soften, stretch and relax your mind into a new shape. Dedicate the transformation to the spirit of Rematriation.