Summer Book Camp 2011 Review

“The Birchbark House” by Louise Erdrich was chosen for the 2010 Summer Book Club. It spotlights the life of Omakayas, a young Ojibwe girl of seven winters living in the village of LaPointe on an island in Lake Superior around 1849. She lives with her parents, grandmother, older sister, and two younger brothers. The book explores clans, natural medicines, hunting and gathering food, the right to name people with special meanings, legends, preserving land to live on, membership within tribes, and the devastation of smallpox, with some similarities to our own Mohawk stories and traditions.

To experience the life of “Omakayas” the book club room was transformed into a “birchbark house”. Decorative willow branches lined the walls, long rolls of light brown paper replicating birchbark hung overhead and down the walls, and various birchbark baskets hung from the ceiling.
The children entered the birchbark house and shared their news and stories, allowing them to be familiar with each other, to enhance their public speaking capabilities, and to provide an avenue for showcasing their talent and interests. Omakayas’s life was discovered with the reading from each chapter of “The Birchbark House” and the children were given opportunities to enhance their reading abilities in an atmosphere of respect and empowerment.

Daily excursions in Kahnawake resembled the life journeys of Omakayas. The children looked at different trees looking for birchbark trees and collected small pieces that had fallen off to use on their miniature birchbark houses. We visited The Old Indian Village to see the totem poles and to feel what it was like to be inside the longhouse. The children created their own totem poles incorporating their clans. The Catholic Church was visited so that the children could see the types of robes the priests wore and the beadwork display reminding them of Omakayas’s struggle to bead her brother’s moccasins. Iron Horse Warehouse was a great place for the children to see many items similar to those described in “The Birchbark House”. Animal skins and fur, birchbark baskets and canoes, the size of a real bear (Omakayas encounters a mother bear and her cubs), and beaded jewelry were items that could be felt and looked at to make the story more concrete and expand their own creations such as miniature canoes and cradleboards, beaded earrings, miniature birchbark houses within a diorama, paintings, small totem poles, yarn birds, and small log winter homes. Some of the other places visited included; the Cultural Center, the Seaway, and areas around Kahnawake to focus on architecture and plant life, collecting rocks and willow branches to make rock people and willow dolls just like she did. Story summer books were designed, developed and illustrated by each child’s as souvenir of their adventures.

Guest speaker Kahnawakeron:non artist Ross Montour inspired the children with his hands-on presentation on how to draw encouraging them to free their inhibitions about “not being good at drawing” to produce their masterpiece. The groups also visited Ross’s painting exhibition at the Cultural Center. Another guest Patricia Eshkibok talked about her life as an Ojibwe (Anishinabe Kwe) woman on the Wikwemikong Unceded Reserve. Similarities were made between Patricia and the main character from our story, Omakayas. Patricia’s message to the children “Always be proud of themselves despite what anyone may say otherwise”.

For the summer of 2011, the sequel to the Birchbark house “The Game of Silence” will continue the adventurous life journey of Omakayas. A video amalgamation of summer highlights will be included with the souvenir book and family ancestry will be researched to see how we are all related.