Mind
This box does not have a specific past that we know about, but we know it is from the Great Lakes region and we can imagine the mindfulness with which the birch bark it is made from may have been gathered, and the care and purpose that went into its making. Indigenous peoples in the Great Lakes area are experts in birch bark. They use birch bark to make containers, canoes, wigwam covers, utensils as well as medicine (Whiteford). Anishinaabe women spend hours carefully selecting trees suitable from which to harvest the bark. It is carefully cut and removed in a clockwise motion and this has to be done at the correct time of year. Indigenous women store rolls and folded pieces of birch bark after the gathering season (Inez). Since this box is elaborately decorated with commercial paint, maybe it was meant to be an item for sale to tourists. This doesn’t take away the image of Indigenous women’s attachments to their objects/art. “At the end of the twentieth century, their linkage with tradition and the esoteric meanings of their designs are important factors in providing the scattered and threatened Anishinabe peoples with an enduring sense of their common identity.” (Whiteford, 82).