Instructors teach tanning skills, pass on Tłı̨chǫ culture to children in Behchokǫ̀, N.W.T.
CBC
In the elder's cabin behind Chief Jimmy Bruneau School in Behchokǫ̀, 11-year-old Chase Sanguez is cutting the fur off a caribou hide while his friend, Grant Lafferty uses a caribou bone to flesh another hide.
Both boys are part of a group of students learning traditional tanning skills from their instructor, Doreen Apple.
"First, we start, we remove all the hair and then we put it in the water and then we take it out and wring it out," explains Doreen Apple, one of three instructors teaching the students.
"It's the sound [it makes] that you have to listen to," explains Apple. "You have to force really hard."
In Tłı̨chǫ, Apple explains to the students in what they are going to do that day, what their grandparents used to do with the hides and what they can be used for.
She told them their grandparents would work on a couple of hides for maybe six to eight hours a day. Those hides are for making clothes, blankets, pillows, purses, jackets and babiche.
On this day, the students and instructors are making and repairing drums.
"No kids complain when they're coming here," said Apple. "They love it. You know, they love to be here with us, and we've been nice to them too. That's how we've been teaching those kids."
Lafferty is using the hide he has scraped to make a drum.
With Apple's help, he's looking to make holes to pass the babiche — a string also made from the hide — through it.
"[It's] so I can make the tuning of the drum with the babiche for drums, to make a tune," he explains.
He said you don't want to make the drum sound too low or too soft.
Jimmy Lafferty, another instructor, said learning tanning skills helps the kids learn part of their culture.
"[It's] really tough work, but you've got to be strong like two people," he said.