Sault Tribe elder works to preserve ancient tradition

[00:00:00]He can be like a little kid in a candy store sometimes. [laughter] >> Watch your hands.

[00:00:07]>> Like he gets excited when you get him out in the woods. He just wants to go.

[00:00:11]And he's kind of the same way when you get him building a canoe.

[00:00:15]>> Ron Paquin is an elder with the Sioux Tribe of Chippewa Indians in Sault Ste.

[00:00:19]Marie, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

[00:00:21]On a cold spring weekend, he was teaching his apprentices how to make traditional birch bark canoes out of materials from the forest, the way the ancestors did.

[00:00:31]>> Move that one over. I had to teach myself cuz nobody was around that knew how to do it, you know.

[00:00:37]>> The 83-year-old has worked tirelessly to preserve this ancient technique, which was in danger of dying.

[00:00:43]>> It's extremely important to maintain this.

[00:00:48]>> Oh, you're doing it.

[00:00:49]>> It's one of the most amazing technologies that Native American people had. When settlers came over and they saw that, they quit using their boats and started using canoes. If you see any canoe now, it's based off our canoe.

[00:01:05]>> But like most Native Americans at the time, Paquin ignored his heritage.

[00:01:10]Back then, being Indian only brought problems, something his apprentices lived through as well.

[00:01:16]>> My grandfather, my mother told me quite a few times that he would not teach her the language. He would not share any of the ceremonies because he was brought up in a time where it was not good to be Indian. That's where we lost a lot of our language, a lot of our ceremonies. And put in schools where they forced religion on you, and their food, and their culture. And like the old saying goes, kill the Indian, save the man.

[00:01:42]That was all real.

[00:01:44]>> I got Indian friends that are Indian, full bloods, and they still don't want to admit they're Indian.

[00:01:51]Because of all that, you know.

[00:01:56]>> But as he got older, he came to embrace his culture.

[00:01:59]He taught himself Indian crafting techniques, including the lost art of making canoes. And now, students eagerly travel long distances to learn from him.

[00:02:09]>> All of my grand start making canoes, but if it one of them does, I'm satisfied, you know?

[00:02:15]>> We feel proud of who we are now, and feel proud to share our our culture, and we're eager to to learn basically what we don't know that was taken away from us.