Materials and Sustainability

The birch bark, sweetgrass, and porcupine quills that make up this box are all native to the Great Lakes region. These materials were harvested sustainably by the artist, as the birch bark can only be harvested during certain times of the year. The artist would have known the and worked respectively in that time frame to collect the material to make this object (Proctor, 2016). However at the time this box was made a great shift was made in how humans of the Great Lakes region interacted with their environment. Land was privatized by the settler-colonizers and deforestation began which lead to strain on ecology and overexplotation of natural resources (Hayes,2020). This amongst many other influences changed the way of life Indigenous people had known for centuries, including creating a barrier for Indigenous people to get the materials they needed to create their traditional artwork. Ironically, the overexplotation of land is what made the settler-colonizers wealthy enough to tour and buy this object. 

Photo credit- Lynne Swanson