VANCOUVER—The St. Kateri Tekakwitha Centre will be fresh with the smell of pine needles as locals with native backgrounds learn to craft baskets Jan. 7.
It’s part of a series of cultural workshops aiming to bring healing to former residential school students and others who feel uprooted from their heritage.
“If it serves a purpose for people to learn these arts and crafts and to maybe find a way to come back to God or the Church, that would be the ultimate thing,” said Rennie Nahanee, archdiocesan First Nations Ministry coordinator.
The five- or six-inch pine needles can be woven into tiny baskets for show, or slightly larger ones to hold things like jewellery, Nahanee said. The centre, next door to Sacred Heart Church in Vancouver, has been hosting cultural activities like this one bi-weekly since March.
“Pine needle basket-making is not really indigenous to this area of B.C.; it’s more the eastern part of Canada,” Nahanee continued, “but it’s not just about making the pine needle basket or drum or moccasins.”
He hopes the from-scratch crafts will reconnect his fellow natives to their roots, strengthen their community, and bring some of them back to the Church. “For me, I’ve never made any regalia things in my life, so it was really good for me to connect to that part of my culture.”
The free hands-on activities are fairly intense, so the workshop usually has a 10-person limit, though instructors Dave and Donna McKoewn don’t turn anyone away.
The whole project is funded by the Moving Forward Together Campaign, which ran Dec. 7-8, 2013, to support the St. Kateri Tekakwitha Centre and the Talitha Koum Society. Nahanee hopes it will run until December 2015. Upcoming crafts include vest making and healing through painting.
More information is available through the archdiocesan First Nations Ministry office: 604-683-0281 ext. 274.
