Traditional First Nation Medicine Pouches and How to Make It

[Music] why apply a tip Bernice Jensen's quest hello everyone my name is Bernice Jensen I work at the Kamloops aboriginal Friendship Society and I work in partnership with school district 73 today we're going to be talking about traditional medicine pouches and also we're going to show you how to make a medicine pouch so I have with me my co-workers and guests that are going to introduce themselves as well why else Bachman hi my name is Justine Manuel and I am the elders cultural coordinator for the Kamen's Friendship Society why Houska halt is greased strokin all Shama squeeze Ernie I come from income up Lux at the Okanagan Indian band quiet tan shade and Ishikawa and Jessica hello my name is Jessica and I'm the youth worker at the Kamloops Aboriginal Friendship Society okay so today we're going to talk about medicine pouches so first of all I would like to talk about our traditional medicine pouches that First Nations people had so a long time ago for First Nations people they would all have medicine pouches that they would use for the protection and they would have items such as sage cedar tobacco that they could carry with them or it could be something special as maybe a baby's piece of hair that's a locket of hair that they would put in there it could be pretty much anything that they feel that is near and dear to them that they would like to take with them each person would have a medicine pouch that they would go out and when they would go on to the land if they were harvesting or gathering they could take out their medicine from their pouch and leave an offering to the creator and to Mother Earth here today I have someone buy medicine coaches that I have that I use when I go out this one is what I use when I go drumming and for this one I have rat root that helps with your throat when you're singing this one here is made from a good friend from the Okanagan and this one I have in my medicine here I have a little bit of stage so I can leave an offering when I'm picking berries or digging digging or when I'm harvesting plants this one here is another style as well and this one I have tobacco type or it could be a sage thyme and so all of them have a little something in it this one here I got that from a friend who is an artist and in there she has left me a lucky quarter so I will always be lucky in life so I'm gonna turn it over to Justine and she's gonna talk about medicine coaches as well so from what I've been told about medicine pouches is again that is a protection so you usually put in something that is either tobacco or sage or even ochre if you have some red ochre anything that you feel close to and then you know when you're putting that tobacco in or that sage and you talk to that tobacco and sage and you ask for this to watch over you to make you feel secure and safe and you just wear it and you carry it with you and it just gives you a sense of security that you're always going to be ok wait okay so I have a few deerskin medicine pouches to show you so these were gifted to me from my mum from Chase a local Aboriginal artisan in chase made these deerskin pouches I always like to use medicine pouches that either I've made that were gifted to me or that were bought from a local artisan I like to support local anything traditional I think it's nice to do that so like it's been said the four sacred medicines I usually will keep tobacco or sage in my medicine pouches or something like a stone or a crystal I have a lot of those gifted to me and they helped me feel grounded connected safe they gave me a sense of connection to creators so I like to keep them in my pouch and carry it with me I'll take them with me wherever I go and sometimes I'll leave them in my car too just so I have that extra protection on the road so the traditional medicine pouches have a lot of different significance for people in addition to using for protection you might use different elements so for example a person that has an affinity towards water may use a shell or carry a shell in their medicine pouch they use the herbs to signify the earth they might put a piece of an animal for example at Bear Claw or some other part of an animal on in or on their medicine pouch and as well as a feather or something to signify the air and they might put a symbol a fire or something along that line to signify one of the elements so there's a lot of significance in the traditional medicine pouches some of my relatives from the Lakota people when the child is born they take the umbilical cord the belly button and they sew it into a medicine pouch and they tie that on to the baby's cradle board once the child is older they then sew it into a medicine pouch that the child will wear around their neck so the significance of different people from across North America there's universal teachings but also individual tribes have their individual teachings as well thank you so this fans are our parts that we're going to be talking about the medicine pouch now we're going to move over onto how to to put together a medicine pouch and we will move on to our next area and locations thank you now we are at our crafting table and we're going to talk about how we're going to do a medicine pouch so one of the things are some of the items that you need to do this is you need scissors and you can use a rotary cutter and you also need a leather punch which I don't have with me right now because I did some templates already so here are some of my templates now the measurements for the template is 2 inches by 6 inches so I cut them out they're ready to go then with the leather pouch or with the leather punch what I do is when I'm going to be punching the holes in I'm going to line it up so it it's about 2/3 and it's going to be folded from there I'm going to use my leather punch and you're going to see that I punched right through one two three and I'll do the other side one two three then I do a hole above the three on the the top flap I'll do two holes here and I match it with two holes there so that this will get now before we do that part though we're going to talk about how to cut the leather and we're going to talk about how to cut the string how to lace it up and then Justine's going to show us one that you can buy from a sir so here I have my rotary cutter I have my cutting board I've laid out the leather and with this I'm going to just use my ruler and I'm going to cut it there it is so then from there I would do my six inches right here and these are really nice cutting boards because you can see the length that you need it there it is so now here we would use the leather punch we'd go three quarters we'd go two thirds fold it in half we'd do one two three four here one two three four on the top two here once I get the two holes punched on the top I fold it down mark it through the holes so that I know where this part goes so once a game we would do it we would have it like this fold it then through here one two that tells me where the holes are going to be this is going to be your tie to cold close it off after you're done so now I'm finished by part of Anna's have my sister birdie talk about how to cut the lacing you're going to measure your lacing you're gonna cut it but you want to bring it around your head have it like your fist length so that when it lays on your around your neck it's gonna be an appropriate length there and you see right here it's already we've already started this and you just use your scissors and you're going to go all the way around the very edge of the leather about a quarter of an inch and you want to make it to the length that you need it for for your lacing and I'm going to pass it over now no I've been weaving this leather template here that Bernie showed you so what I've done is I folded it up and I've started to weave one side of it here so what I did is I went underneath put the string and I just weaved it through to behind again and then back up and over top so the front of it looks like that there and what I'm going to keep doing is weaving through the three holes that have lined up together on this side so I'll grab a pen here what you can do if you can't quite see your holes is take something like a pen or a pencil and just push it through your two holes to make sure they're lined up to stretch them out a bit if you need more room and what I've done with the end of my string here is I've cut it into a fine point because that acts as our needle when we're weaving through so I'll do my next hole here and pull you want to line it up to you so that your pieces of leather string are straight and not twisting as you thread so I'll go behind and back in here and then back down for my final one and my strings going to end up coming out like this at the end and then I'm almost at the end and I'll add a few pony beads you can add pony beads feathers anything you like okay so I finished weaving my piece of string here our leather through the holes on this side so the pouch is going to open up like this I've made the bottoms equal and with this extra string you remember I had the piece going across here I've moved up all that extra string because that is going to be the part that goes around and then you can decorate it with pony beads or whatever you like okay so I'm just going to give us an example of a kit that you can buy I'm not sure where this was purchased I was gifted this little crafting kit so it comes with all the materials that you need it's already pre-cut for you it has the leather it has a needle and a few beads and it has the instructions too so that's always an option if you don't if you're not able to get your hands on some leather but we do encourage people to reach out to local hunters and local artists to purchase buckskin and beads and just to kind of have an authentic medicine pouch but this is always an option so what are the last things that I wanted to talk about was that all of our venison pouches are going to be unique and different now that we've got it finished we've I've added the pattern of the yellow red and blue and then as I came through the top part I added the reverse and I did red yellow red blue again and then I reversed it and I did blue blue red yellow and then I weaved it through and then I put it on the bottom part I've got my sage here I'm gonna tuck it inside of my medicine pouch and this is where this part here is going to go in and this is like a tie-down so we can tie it down there's one side there's the other side here and so when I go into the classrooms I like to have the students make these and they're all different and unique so now I'm going to add two more beads a blue one here and another one here and that's how I'm going to end mine so we all of our medicine pouches are different and unique just like all of us and there we go so there is my medicine pouch and I'd like to say thank you to everyone cooks gem to all of you for joining us today to do the video and I hope you enjoyed it please subscribe and we will talk to you soon and we'll let my sister and my co-workers show you their medicine pouches and say farewell as well so thank you for joining us today it's been a monitoring a privilege to be a part of this this is my little medicine pouch you can see I like the blue in the yellow and again thank you for joining us okay and here's my pouch that I did I added on some pony beads so this was fun thanks for joining us Meyer say thank you so mine is a little bit different because it is store-bought so there's the option to open it and then just tighten it there isn't a flap over but that's it's still very nice and I chose these colors and so yeah thanks for coming and thanks for my coworker inviting me to this wait I'm just to remind you again that today and during all of our videos were conscious and careful to keep our safe social distance during this time am i safe so i also forgot to mention that you can add feathers to your medicine pouch as well and that's really easy to do because you just get the the quill part of the feather you can slide it into the pony bead and there it is so I would like to also say cooks gem to tyler Jensen my son for being the video cameraman the videographer and he also does all of our editing for all of our videos so a big cooks jam to my son for doing that as well so we're gonna put on our medicine pouches and we're going to say a last farewell with ladies thank you everyone for joining us and here is my medicine pouch Thank You merci [Music]

Channel: Bernice Jensen

Views: 5,603

Rating: 4.9382238 out of 5

Keywords: Indigenousmedicinepouches, #traditionalfirstnationsmedicinepouches, #firstnationsmedicinepouches, #medicinepouches, #traditionalmedicinepoucheds, #historyofthemedicinepouches, #howtomakeamedicinepouch

Id: NWzWpQmR5uU

Length: 19min 19sec (1159 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 23 2020