 If you watch Common Ground Online, consider becoming a member or making a donation at lptv.org. 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. I spend a lot of time on the computer. I spend a lot of time on the computer. It's the way our world has evolved. But my ancestors do not know what that is. But when I'm cutting bow rushes, or I'm weaving them, or moving 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 Hodawa 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, B.C., in the B.C. 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. Okay, 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 Knoknoshko. 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, now put them in here. And this is all it is. You're going to feel like, okay, so this is the beginning, and this is called twining. That's it. Okay, 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 onto your goods and a gathering bag, some place 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. So if 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've got to make sure that this doesn't twist, because if it does, then it'll come undone. So you've got to hold that here and go here. And so this is called the twining part. This is all this is. And so you've got, you're in between, 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, eh? 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 just so that you get the idea. 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 breaks, and it will, you'll find out that you learned 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. I 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 here at the end. 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 Penagan 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. It's not the prize. It's the process to get there. That's the prize. Because Nakhnashkorn 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 and 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. I'm going to put one in there. Okay? If you can count to two, you can weave. 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 Shkukumikwa. I'm 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 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 or using a microwave. 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 while we're here visiting here on the earth.