Aboriginal Gathering Place Creates Material Practice Wellness Kits for Indigenous Students

With pandemic restrictions only gradually beginning to lift in B.C., the Aboriginal Gathering Place at Emily Carr University has been assembling Material Practice Wellness kits to send to Indigenous community members.

Led by Brenda Crabtree, Director of the AGP and Special Advisor to the President on Indigenous Initiatives, and AGP Associate Director Connie Watts, the project is a way to engage remotely with community members, and sustain connection during the first phase of provincial reopening.

“We are targeting the kits for the Aboriginal students first, and depending on how many are left we will be including Aboriginal staff and faculty,” says Connie.

“The kits are a cultural connection to the materials and to the land.”

Materials on hand at the AGP include a selection of beads, natural and dyed caribou hair for tufting, hide rattle kits (cut rattle shaped hide, sinew for the seam and wooden dowel for the handle), interfacing and felt for beading, porcupine quills, leather and beading needles, scissors, tanned fish skins, tanned beaver tails, smoke tanned moose hide, seal skin, tanned hide, earring and necklace clasps, key ring, larger glass beads, horse hair, feathers, shimmering abalone buttons and thread.

Many of these will make their way into the wellness kits; others will be used to support other projects, such as the Decolonizing the Healthcare System through Cultural Connections initiative, which is temporarily on hold due to COVID-related health risks.

“With the diversity of materials, it will really let the students open up their creativity,” Connie says. “We will have zoom workshops and encourage the students to post their creations on social media.”

Brenda and Connie are excited to host these zoom workshop for our Indigenous creative practitioners. They will provide additional space for learning and sharing Aboriginal material practice. Brenda and her team were among the first to provide an online “First Nations art, technology and design course” (now called Aboriginal material practice) 15 years ago.

“They mailed out packages with DVD demonstrations and printed handouts,” Connie says. “The students would meet online once a week and post their creations on a Moodle site.”

According to Brenda, even in those early days of online learning, the effort was a huge success, and participants had a great time connecting remotely.

Meanwhile, with the AGP’s annual grad lunch cancelled because of the pandemic, a series of gorgeous ceramic works by BC artist Laura Wee Lay Laq is being readied as gifts for ECU’s 16 Indigenous graduates in the Class of 2020.

“The gifts give us a reason to talk, to come together,” says Connie. “To talk about creating.”