In this episode of Fresh Coast Creatives, Leslie Hamp talks to Native photographer Minnie Wabanimkee about her work as a photographer, her part in the upcoming exhibit at the Ziibiwing Center of Anishinabe Culture & Lifeways this fall and the recent quillboxes she's photographed.
Producer Leslie Hamp met up with Minnie Wabanimkee, at the lifelong photographer's home in Peshawbestown, just north of Suttons Bay.
Wabanimkee is member of the Grand Traverse Band of Odawa and Chippewa Indians and is part of a major upcoming exhibition where dozens of her photos and two of her videos will be on display.
The show will be called "It's More Than A Quillbox."
"It’s about porcupine art, I guess you could say," Wabanimkee told Hamp. "You have a piece of birch bark and it has a design on it and one quill at a time is woven into that birch bark to make a design and a pattern that’s pleasing to the eye, that tells you something, that’s colorful, that’s natural and it’s woven on the edges with sweetgrass, and it’s just phenomenal."
Quillwork dates back hundreds of years as the oldest form of embroidery used by Native Americans in this region. This quillwork often adorns quillboxes, which were used to store food items or special collections or as decorative pieces.
Photo credit: Minnie Wabanimkee
But now it’s a dying art, and there’s a great push to teach younger generations.
Wabanimkee has been preserving Native American culture in her photographs for decades. In the upcoming exhibit, her photography focuses on the quill workers who live in the Great Lakes region, including Canada.
"I do not ask people to stop what they're doing and smile. I usually work around the person that I'm photographing," said Wabanimkee.
She shares an image of Yvonne Walker Keshick, a member of the Little Traverse Bay Band of Odawa in the Petoskey area.
Yvonne has been making quillboxes since she was a teenager. Minnie says Yvonne’s quillboxes are artistically perfect.
She describes one that stood out to her.
"It must be 12 to 15 inches wide and half as tall. And it shows the life cycle of a native woman, and it's all natural colors. There are no dyes used in her quillbox."
Yvonne has taught four of her children how to create quillwork art, and it has become a family practice. They all do quillwork and it supplements their income.
Wabanimkee showed Hamp a photo of Yvonne’s family at Burt Lake, 30 miles south of the Mackinac Bridge. This is where they go every spring to pick sweetgrass for their artwork before the heat of the summer.
Wabanimkee talks more about the art of photographing quillworkers.
"What I try to do is get a meaningful photograph; something that will tell you something about that person or that person’s work, so that you can look at that photo and actually feel something emotionally. I like to show where that piece came from, where that piece lived, where that person lived. Because in Wikwemikong, Canada, it's so different from here."
There’s a lot left to do before the exhibit opens at the Ziibiwing Center of Anishinabe Culture & Lifeways in Mt. Pleasant this Fall, but Wabanimkee says the team of five native elders, an interpreter, photographer and the MSU staff are on track.
"The quillwork exhibit is going to be bilingual, which will be the first in Anishinaabemowin, which is our language, and also English. There'll be videos. There’ll be 80 to 100 quillboxes. There’s going to be photographs. There’s going to be a tribute to the elders who have passed on who did quillwork, the teachers," Wabanimkee said. "And we’re hoping that we get enough people to come and see the exhibit that they will have an appreciation for this lost, dying art that is so amazing."
Support for Fresh Coast Creatives comes from the Northwest Michigan Arts & Culture Network, inviting you to warm up with the arts this winter, and through an award from Michigan Arts & Culture Council.