 If you watch Common Ground online, consider becoming a member or making a donation at lptv.org. Lakeland PBS presents Common Ground, brought to you by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota. Production funding of Common Ground is made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji, continuing their second century of service to the community, a partnership for generations. Member, FDIC. Welcome to Common Ground. I'm your host, Scott Knudson. In this episode, Renee Dillard teaches traditional Anishinaabe bull rush weaving. Then watch the garden grow at the Boys and Girls Club of the Bemidji area. Weaving with natural fibers is not a hobby, it's a way of life. When you're on your phone, my grandmother does not know what this motion is. And I can spend a lot of time doing it. Or the smidgen-midgen on the computer. I spend a lot of time, we all do. It's the way our world has evolved. But my ancestors do not know what that is. But when I'm cutting bull rushes, or I'm weaving them or moving in them, or carrying them, or doing those things, those sounds and those motions, my ancestors recognize. And they go, who's doing that old stuff? I am Guasan, that come from the Little Traverse Bay Band of Odawa Indians. My English name is Renee Dillard. And I came to help my relatives here in the Bemidji area to learn how to weave with knock-knock. This is the earlier form of weaving. This is before non-native contact. A lot of these pieces don't survive and haven't survived in museums and such. So it's an art form that's been passed down from person to person. And so I came here to give it back to this community so they can pass it along to their relatives and bring this back. And in part, it's making a place for our ancestors to come and join us through ceremony. And although it doesn't have a practical use in our contemporary world, in this day, you know, in these contemporary times, but it does have a use when we're in ceremony so that we can make a place for our ancestors to come and join us. This is absolutely the correct time to weave because it's in the fall. The traditional time to weave is in the early morning when the dew is on the ground and towards the evening. In the meat of the day and the strength of the day, we're busy doing other things. I'm asking you to displace yourself in that world, BC, in the BC world before Columbus' world. We've got a couple of different projects. This one is a little bit more involved. I'm going to have you look at things differently now. This one has an actual bottom on it. We're not going to start there today. What we're going to start with is a simple one like this that's only folded over. So we're just going to do a small one and get started on that and then we'll see where it takes us because we have enough material to do more than one project. Oh, these are perfect. I'm excited now. I think I'm going to show you with the Knoshkorn. So I'm going to grab these and instead of splitting it I'm going to tie it together. So this is the beginning of the bottom of our bag. It's going to be easier to see with this than it is with that. So everything ends up happening in pairs. When you start you're going to find the center and the pair. Okay? Put them in here and this is all it is. You're going to feel like this is the beginning and this is called twining. That's it. But it's got to be done the same way every time. The utility bags are exactly that. They're utilitarian and if they have a strap like this one does then it would be used as a pocket and to hold on to your goods and a gathering bag someplace where you're going along in the bush and harvesting medicines or mushrooms or anything like that that you need. The ones without the straps and that have design and color and things like that on it those are more medicinal and they hold sacred items inside of there and there would be bag inside of bag inside of bag. This is on top I'm going to twist it and go like that I'm going to hide that knot it's going to end up in the middle just like with good beadwork. Then I'm going to put two more in since I cut them all the same I know that this is generally the right size and you got to make sure that this doesn't twist because if it does then it'll come undone. So you got to hold that here and go here this is all that part this is all this is so you got these are your twiners and this is the body of your basket this is the bottom of that little tiny basket that is folded over and so it looks like a stitch and that's all it is and we're going to do this all the way across all the way across the bottom I'm going to make a really small bag my idea about traditional knowledge is we have a responsibility once that has survived however it has survived and has been passed on to the individual it's our responsibility to give it away I often tell people that our communities have become really hungry for that information once again and they're so hungry but they don't know for what but they know that they're missing something there's a piece of something that isn't working and you have to understand where you come from in order to know where you're going and so as every generation within our communities come to decisions and challenges that our people face that's how we can heal ourselves from within is by passing this information along if one of these break and it will you'll find out then you'll learn something don't pull it that hard okay so on the last one I'm going to put one here there's a way of fixing it so that you can exactly see what happened they had a bend right in the place it's probably going to break so I'm going to avoid that I'm putting one in and okay now we're going to start going up the body of the basket I made three or four bends I don't know if this is a basket or a bag I'm calling it both you know Coco Pelagan is a basket and then a bag is a skim dance so I don't know through weaving because it has all of these beautiful values to teach us in the process of being able to make a mat or a bag or any of the items what ends up happening is the individual learns about themselves who they are and where they fit in this world I'm going over this way always knots up and I take one from a group of two and the next one from a group of two they have to be from two separate groups if you're taking them from the same group you've dropped one somewhere or something happened that's why you put one in at the end and it's going to continue like that all the way around now I don't have to keep track of it okay see how that is look at the origin of where it came from and now it's in a new group the neighbors became cozy we all have that neighborhood it's not necessarily the end product of having this bag is not the prize it's the process to get there that's the prize because Nakna Shkorn has taught me love and patience, perseverance it's taught me to be brave it's taught me trust it's taught me all of those things through harvesting processing these plants and then the end product all of those things manifest so there's the bottom of my bag so this ends up being like a coil it's a continuous that's what I mean it's a continuous weave and it just keeps going around and around now I'm going to come around and I know this is where I started because I got two in the same and I'm going to put one in there if you can count to two because you never have to go higher than two I certainly would hope and of course my desire is that our young people understand that our people have always had everything that we've needed always our mother has taken very good care of us and can continue to do so as long as we love and respect her and when I say our mother I'm meaning Shkokomikwa talking about our mother the earth and she gives us everything that we need and most of what we want we just have to redefine for ourselves what our needs and wants are she takes care of our housing she takes care of our clothes and our food all of those things and we need to acknowledge her in that way the difference is is that in a contemporary sense our wants have changed people think that they want something else that they don't really need is electricity needed not really do we want it yeah do we absolutely need it no we don't we don't need that do you need internet no you don't you want that it's a convenience thing it's a difference between cooking on an outside fire do you need the microwave no you don't do you want it yeah you do so we have to redefine the difference between what it is that we need and what it is that we want and where do we fit inside of there so it's kind of recapturing our purpose and our role why we're here visiting here on the earth when children are involved in a garden program like this year after year I see leadership skills being developed within these kids and also confidence in I know how to do this and then those children that develop those leadership skills are then mentoring the younger kids who are coming into the program and our goal is to keep that flow going well until kids are into adulthood and know how to grow their own food and share their own food this is also about access it's providing an opportunity to children that might not already have that opportunity it takes a lot of effort to have a garden and a lot of time and a lot of patience well my favorite part of the garden is because you feel really really proud once you know you helped plant something and I like how you help get food so you help the community you make friends too and you have lots of laughs my name is Andrea Onsted I'm the executive director of the Boys and Girls Club of the Bemidji area my name is Deb Dilly and I'm a SNAPEd educator with the University of Minnesota Extension I work in the health and nutrition program I teach nutrition to a lot of 4th and 5th grade students throughout Beltrami County I'm the manager for the Boys and Girls Club she is invaluable she has so much experience and expertise and she knows how to work with kids 11 years ago when I came to the Boys and Girls Club and approached them with the idea of what do you think about having a garden oh we can try this and we built one single raised bed behind the club and we decided to title it a pizza garden and so it was one raised bed like tomatoes and green peppers so that they could make pizza from those vegetables well it went pretty well so we continued year after year after year adding another garden bed up until we got to I think 9 or 10 raised garden beds behind the club at that point the program seemed to be going pretty well kids were engaged, kids loved the gardening we were doing lots of food preparation from the garden we were involved in actually planting and harvesting but we decided that maybe we would take it a little bit further and then in 2012 we got a grant from the Natural Resource Conservation Corps for the greenhouse which technically is a high tunnel because we don't heat it that high tunnel now allowed us to extend our growing season by a couple of months and decided to have raised beds inside that high tunnel and so that changed our program to where the kids were able to plant earlier and harvest later and it gave us much more produce than we had been growing before because the growing season is so much longer and beyond that now this past year we expanded that with an additional 15 raised beds so we began actually having the children plant seeds inside in the middle of the winter in January because by April we were able to transplant out to the high tunnel so this was a change for us we decided that we no longer were going to be needing donations from greenhouses but that we were going to take this program to an actual seed to table type of learning program so the children would be planting the seeds, putting them under grow lights and watching the seedlings grow and after about a month of doing that we would then take those seedlings we would transplant them into a little bit larger container continue to have them under the lights here inside and then in April depending on the weather it's warm enough evenings to be able to plant out in the high tunnel it would take us a few days and have a longer growing season kids love doing this and they really enjoy watching these plants grow and so many of the children have been involved with planting that seed in the dirt watching it grow through the different transplant stages and now they're putting it outside where it's a little bit larger and then to watch it continue to grow and produce fruit or vegetables throughout the summer is amazing to these kids so many of them have said I had no idea that this is how we get our peppers this is how we get our eggplant look at these tomatoes doing the same thing being that we had an extra 15 raised garden beds outside and of course being developed as far as the size and where they were going to go we met with T and K outdoors and said it would be really nice to do something like a three sisters garden being that the Boys and Girls Club has a lot of diversity within the population of the children that attend here there are a lot of children that have been involved with the garden community and the three sisters garden is a piece of that culture so the three sisters garden is where corn beans and squash are the three vegetables that are planted and there is significance behind how they are planted but to bring that education and that part of the culture to this garden was a really important thing to do at least two or three times during the summer the kids will have their own little farmers market right outside the Boys and Girls Club so what we do is we harvest what is available at that time and the kids and I come up with prices for the different items we set out a huge table the kids wash everything we have a tent it is like a farmers market only it is their market at their club and they I think take a lot of ownership in this so the garden is a unique program because it kind of ties together nutrition physical fitness and financial stewardship so we're tying those three things together we're asking them to kind of look at some of the market prices we know what the market price is but because we want to put produce in the hands of our club families at a reasonable rate so we're going to keep it very, very cost effective for our families but we tie that together with a program called Money Matters and that's where they are learning some of these entrepreneurial skills so they're learning, okay well you have this quantity of food and you're pricing at this we'll then multiply that out but through these farmers markets there's a lot of kindness about supply demand what's selling, what's not selling and also how to count money so we're teaching them those skills as well entrepreneurial skills physical fitness and the nutrition and making healthy choices for themselves the culmination of our garden program for the year is highlighted in a harvest dinner that the kids are harvest of all of our produce the end of the year harvest and so it's typically in October and we're pulling everything out of the high tunnel and everything out of the garden and coming up with a menu that's always vegetarian we use only the produce from our garden to create I think a very delicious menu and this year Chef Isaac Wally was our one volunteer he had seen us plant those seeds way back in February and bought produce from the club throughout the summer season and then we worked with him one on one to develop the menu for the harvest dinner and he helped work with our kids to create those things the children are preparing these foods up to a week and a half two weeks previous and then the day of all day affair many volunteers come in and help us out with this and during our harvest dinner the people who actually attend are the families of the children that were involved in the garden that year as well as some of the board members the donors and a variety of other community members that are kind of key to the club will always receive invitations as well and it's not just about the food that these kids feel in growing something and showing something to their family that they have like done and that they've accomplished and that they feel so proud of in one sense it's about the food and introducing their families to new fruits and vegetables because that's a key thing as well but also just the excitement the celebration of this whole program and its fruition we have a couple of months where things are cleaning up we're putting the garden to rest and we have a little bit of downtime and before you know it we're back at planting those seeds again every year we survey our kids through the national youth outcomes initiative so this is a boys and girls club national survey and every spring we ask our club members to give us feedback and out of that we have come to find out that our club members eat 11% more vegetables than their national peers so yay to that so by having kids planting seeds and growing these plants just from little bitty seeds all the way through till we get them out doors and then they're selling the food they're making dishes from the food they're having a harvest dinner where they're sharing their food with the community and that whole process is I think so enlightening to kids and showing the kids how and why to respect where good food comes from how easy it is to grow food how delicious that food is and how to share that food with others I think it's really important for children to see where their food is coming from common ground if you have an idea for common ground in north central minnesota email us at legacy at lptv.org or call 218-333-3014 to watch common ground online visit lptv.org and click local shows episodes or segments of common ground call 218-333-3020 production funding of common ground was made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji continuing their second century of service to the community a partnership for generations member FDIC common ground is brought to you by the minnesota arts and cultural heritage fund with money by the vote of the people November 4th 2008 if you watch common ground online consider becoming a member or making a donation at lptv.org