Right now we're trying to revive
everything but as you see as we're walking up, it's all disappearing. So it's hard to revive
something like what we're doing. And again it's getting harder and harder for
us to find places like this where it's left alone and we know that they're gonna log
it because they have the tape markings on all these areas. You can see them as you're
walking. In recent years we've been going further and further back to try to find what
we utilize for our teachings, our traditional culture, what we want to show, and
we brought some family members up here a few weeks ago. A couple of nephews, and
they go, "This is what we do, Uncle? Yes, Auntie." "Yes, this is what we do." We come out it really often during this time in a six week
period and I always, you know, say that it's my favourite time of the year. It
really is, it just, it makes me happy out here it fills me up and we go
with family members but mostly we're by ourselves. And it's, I don't know, it just brings us
closer than we already are and we have a pattern now. When my kids were young, it
was mostly me pulling the bark and my brothers and now I've become a little
bit spoiled because he pulls the bark and I split the the outer bark off. Hey, sweets. We came out—what as our first time, three
weeks ago?–we went out and that came off so beautifully and I got so excited
and he was like, "Do you not get like the sockeye fever in how, like, you're fishing." Like, yes, ready! We want to
thank the Creator for this day. Thank you for getting us here. Thank you for
showing and teaching our our knowledge our culture, our heritage, our history. It's a great pleasure to do stuff like this and especially on a day like
this, beautiful day. Some days the ravens are around, the eagles, we see the owl. We've
seen a black bear the other day just down the road. You see signs of elk and
deer so you're safe. Makes you feel safe. It does. So we'll put this on
the bottom of the tree and again we want to thank you guys for joining us today
and being with us today. My late mother before she passed away
she used to say that, "When you're down and you're depressed," she said, "Go up on
the hillside and find the biggest cedar tree. All the things you try to leave
with, with the tree and they'll exhume it and kick it up the branches and let it
go." You know, she was in residential school for
about ten years she still remembered a lot. What the, uh, this
is about the size we're looking for. A little bigger and you're always looking
around, looking for clear spots, branches no branches. Usually you're trying to do
the top side so you can pull uphill that's easier because you can't go down.
When you're going down it it goes higher and your arms go higher and higher up
and it's harder to pull. And you'll see that's about two hands wide and that's
as wide as we'll take off this tree otherwise all the sap runs out of it and
the tree will die I'm trying to go up higher so you have a good running
start when it starts peeling. Okay so once that's, your strip is down
you're gonna put your knife in and you're gonna split the outer bark
off the inner bark so when when the bark separates beautifully like–the
outer bark up the inner bark–you know that this is the perfect time of the
year to be gathering. If the sap wasn't running this nice it would stick, this
would have a really hard time taking it off and sometimes
you'd have to chip away with your knife. When you're a beginner you learn after
the first year or so that, "Hey I don't want to spend all my time doing that so
I'll wait another couple weeks to make sure the sap's running and there's not
any pitch left in the inner bark." If it's having a hard time coming off, that
outer bark having a hard time coming off, then often you'll have pitchy inner
bark. And then with this cedar we're gonna make some hats and mats and
baskets of all different shapes and sizes and little woven frogs and rope
regalia we do a lot of regalia cedar capes. Sometimes you can spin your cedar
bark into your wool as well for your Salish weaving. So many things that we
make. The imagination can just go wild when you're weaving with bark on what you
want to make. I think it's over that way that one. One,
anyway. Okay, it's gonna come down. The Tree of Life,
right? Does everything for you, your home your weapons, tools, your canoes, you
name it, there could be a different a thousand different things that you can
use this tree for. We even use it for herring eggs. So we cut the branches off
when it's the season that just passed the spawn and we put it in in the water and
they would spawn on the branches and they'd pull them up and sometimes they'd use
old trees. So it's, it's a very versatile and it's utilized in so many different
ways it's just amazing and that's why we're thankful to the tree. We're
thankful to our ancestors who pass down the teachings and the knowledge so that
we can do this ourselves and hopefully we can pass it on to the next
generations who are willing to learn. This is my favorite color this burgundy
in here I love that color and when you gather your roots they have
the same color as this burgundy. While I'm waiting for my bark to come off to be
able to split the outer bark off I gather the Oregon grape. I just dyed some
wool last week in the most beautiful yellow with this. So we're not just out
here gathering bark or sometimes there's medicine plants out here and in the moss
like the rattlesnake plantain or there's a nice Oregon grape just waiting here
and it's really really strong the colour is really strong at this time of the
year when the new shoots are coming up and all the new growths. Yeah. Look at
that colour. Ah! Wow, yeah, it's beautiful. Yeah. So sometimes Robert's like, "What
are we doing out here?" Cause I'm sidetracked. For me, it's the most fulfilling thing and I
feel connected to my grandmother who taught us so much. We were with her
everyday and it almost makes me emotional when I talk about her and
everything that she taught us. But I think, um, it's so it's the weirdest thing,
it's like I can feel her and it fills me up and I feel rich and I'm thankful. I'm
thankful that in this world that we still get to do what our people did for
thousands of years and that bark sometimes when you touch it it's like
you can feel that sap running and the energy and it's the most amazing feeling
and I don't, I don't like to share that with a lot of people because sometimes
people think you're crazy about how you're so connected to something but
it's a living being and, and it just it saddens me sometimes for the amount of
logging but we understand that also but on the other hand when we're teaching
those children in our nation on those little eight-year-old girls that are
weaving and they have that knack for [it] in them, it's just in them, I think, "Are there
gonna be trees left for them? Are we going to be able to keep, people say
practicing our culture, but no, are we going to be able to keep you know doing
our way of life that we've done forever?" And I think what happened to the fish
and the cockles and the cedar and will it just all be you know concrete and our
resources gonna be gone? So it's, it's emotional sometimes when you're and you
think about all of that and what's gonna happen to our world and for our children
and for our grandchildren. I mean, we're gonna be grandparents soon in October. He's
gonna have his first grandchild and will that grandchild have that same
experience? Will have they that same way of life? Is
somebody going to bring him or her out here and show them? And when you know you
turn into a young man or young woman to have those ceremonies that are
supposed to be done out here, will that happen? So, for me, not only basket
weaving and cedar stripping and Salish loom weaving and all that we do goes in
this big circle but I get scared sometimes that maybe it won't. That maybe
coming out of residential school and everybody having that desire to learn
and to know, will it just all disappear because we won't have the resources
anymore? So. But mostly I'm happy out here.
