Birch Bark Basket Making

http://www.giftoflanguageandculture.ca/birchbark_basket_01.htm Steps for Making a Birch Bark Basket. This video provides all the steps needed to make a birch bark basket. Depending on the size, you can use it for picking berries or to store treats and other items.

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• cree
• birch
• bark
• woodland
• la
• ronge
• basket
• culture
• language
• Indian
• native
• first
• nation
• aboriginal
• saskatchewan

[raktvk]

Sorry! I see you are Cree! Thank you for sharing. I have longed to do this for years!

[raktvk]

Please excuse. What Nation are you from? And could you show processing the spruce root? This flummoxes me....

[smollie007]

Than you for sharing your knowledge.

[kayleighhilyard]

Do you need to soak the bark first to make it pliable? If so, how long? I tried making a birch basket and the bark cracked.

[withoutnameorplace]

@FacetsOfTruth There won't be any birch left in your area if you harvest bark the way she did at the end of the video. When you cut a ring of any size around a tree's trunk, you kill the tree. The main trunk's inner bark is like an arterial vein, and fluids flow up the trunk from the roots. If you want to harvest bark, please get it from dead trees or from branches instead of main trunk. I don't know much about other barks, but that's worth looking into.

[withoutnameorplace]

@sapporo81414 Any size excision will cease upward fluid flow beyond the point of the cut. That tree died shortly after. Please harvest from dead trees only.

[FacetsOfTruth]

Very informative. Thank you so much for sharing this knowledge with us. I will make some of these now. I look forward to seeing how it turns out. I didn't know that you could use spruce root so well. We do not have many birch trees in Ohio here. We have many OAKS, Sycamore, Hickory and Pines. I wonder if other barks can be used this way, or if only birch will work? Do you happen to know of other barks that can work. Maybe if they are soaked first?

[sapporo81414]

is it alright to strip such a large section of bark from a birch tree like at the end of the video??

[d25music]

That looks like fun

[Wildtreat]

A very good explanation.  I look forward to trying this!