From generation to generation: Ottawa artist shares porcupine quillwork heritage

Christine Toulouse remembers holding a warm cup of tea as her mother and grandmother first taught her how to pluck a porcupine. 

The trio sat on the front porch of her mother's home in Sagamok Anishnawbek, near Sault Ste. Marie in northern Ontario, where Toulouse watched as they skilfully removed the quills without pulling out clumps of fur from the dead animal.

A neighbour had picked it up from the side of the road for them after Toulouse's mother made requests for materials in the First Nations community. 

"I've always been a little bit messier of an artist, so when I harvest quills I get everything and then I'll sort it later," said Toulouse, recalling how impressed she was by their neatness as the women first introduced her to quillwork. 

"My grandma and my mom, particularly my mom, were really excited for me to get started."

Toulouse said she wasn't taught quillwork growing up; she decided to learn the traditional Indigenous craft, which involves weaving porcupine quills through birchbark, during the difficult summer of 2016.

At the time she was struggling with chronic back pain, which made working and socializing difficult.

When she learned about her mother's colon cancer diagnosis, she decided to move from Ottawa to Sagamok to care for her mom and to heal.

Her grandmother lived across the street and had always made a small amount of money from her quillwork, which she sold across North America and even displayed at the nearby Ojibwe Cultural Foundation.

Toulouse said her grandmother told her that if she needed to, she could sell the quill boxes she had gifted her. 

But Toulouse had a different idea and asked her grandmother to teach her.

"I decided that's what I really needed for my life, because I was spending a lot of time inside to take care of my mom and I needed something that fed my soul and connected me to community," she said.

That passing down of skills between generations of Indigenous families has always been a part of quillwork, according to the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation's archivist, who learned the craft thanks to her own grandmother, aunts and uncles.

"There's a lot of collective community effort that goes into collecting the materials themselves, and I think that's one of my favourite parts," shared Naomi Recollet.