Post by Okwes on Mar 7, 2008 14:09:54 GMT -5
Outdoorsman touts old ways as expertise revives ancient crafts
BY ERIC SHARP • FREE PRESS OUTDOORS WRITER • February 28, 2008
EDITOR'S NOTE: This article has been corrected since its initial publication. It had incorrectly placed Mikado in the Michigan Thumb. Mikado is north of Saginaw Bay and about 35 miles south of Alpena.
You shoot a deer and take it to the processor. He hands you back packages of steaks, chops, sausage and burger.
Jim Miller says you're shortchanging yourself by not getting back what he considers the best piece of all -- the hide, which you could tan the way your ancestors did and produce leather products superior to anything you can buy in most stores.
It was nearly 20 years ago that Miller, who lives near Mikado, got interested in Native American crafts that largely had been forgotten -- things like basket weaving and lodge building, making birchbark canoes without metal fasteners, and tanning animal hides.
"After a while, I realized this was the lifestyle of all of our ancestors at some point, not just Native Americans," said Miller, who 15 years ago quit a good job selling Rolex watches and pianos to start Willow Winds, a kind of reeducation center where people learn stone-age skills while realizing that stone-age people were remarkably adept at using natural materials.
He soon became a popular speaker and demonstrator at schools around the state, and today through Sunday he'll be demonstrating ancient ways and answering questions in a booth at Outdoorama, the state's biggest outdoors show, at the Rock Financial Center in Novi.
This year's Outdoorama will be presented not by Michigan United Conservation Clubs -- which had run it for 34 years -- but by a Grand Rapids company called Showspan that specializes in putting on such exhibitions. But there will be the usual mix of outdoors equipment retailers, trip outfitters, lodges, and fishing and hunting seminars, and MUCC will continue to present the popular Wildlife Encounters exhibit where kids and adults can get up close and personal with live birds of prey, waterfowl and Michigan mammals.
Miller said that although brain-tanning a hide is slower than using chemicals, it's well within the capabilities of modern hunters, and he encourages them to try it "as a continuation of the hunt. At the show, I'll be working on the hide from a buck I killed this season, and as I'm working on it, I think how cool it was to take this deer with my grandpa's .30-.30 and make something useful out of it."
His expertise in ancient techniques has brought him jobs as a consultant to television and theatrical moviemakers, some of whom have used his buffalo robes, deerskins, bark baskets and other paraphernalia to add verisimilitude to Native American encampments in films such as "The Indian in the Closet" and "Thunderheart."
Miller is such an authority that he has been hired by the Pottawatomie in Oklahoma to help build a traditional village at the tribe's cultural center.
"Some people think it's funny that Indians have a white man teach them traditional skills. But you have to remember that these people had their cultures nearly destroyed, and we (whites) did it," Miller said.
"The Pottawatomie used to live in Michigan, but they were moved out west. They went to a place that was so different that a lot of the skills they had just couldn't be used there. You can't make birchbark canoes when you don't have any birch trees," he said.
One of Miller's ancestors was Antoine Laforest, a founding settler in Detroit. Two of Antoine's brothers didn't want to be farmers, so they became coureurs des bois, "woods runners" who lived with and learned the crafts and skills of Native Americans and who established the fur trade that drove much of the early settlement of Canada and the United States.
He likes to think that some of those Laforest genes that course through his veins have helped him understand the people who lived here for millennia before the French arrived.
"When I talk to people, especially kids, I show them things like how an Indian made a basket or a canoe. Then I ask them how did your ancestors make basket and boats way back when? Because you know they needed such things, and all cultures made them. I tell the kids to check out how their ancestors did it in India or England or Africa," he said.
He said he also can show people that modern techniques may be faster and easier but aren't always best, something he learned a few years ago from an old Athabasca Indian couple in Alaska.
"I took a pair of beaver mittens I had made and used them to paddle my canoe in cold weather. They both just started grinning when they saw them. The old man went in and got another pair of beaver mittens, and he told me that his wife had given them to him on their wedding day 50 years before," Miller said.
"They were still perfect. She told me, 'I do old way. White man's leather no good. Hair fall out and leather rot.' And they're right," Miller said. "Brain-tanned leather is just so much denser and supple that you can hardly compare them."
At Outdoorama, Miller will carve canoe paddles and use the hide and tendons from deer to show how Native Americans fashioned clothing and tools.
He knows that a lot of people will want to see how he can make a fire in a few seconds by twirling a piece of cattail stem on a block of wood and using the ensuing hot coals to light tinder, adding, "My hands will be raw by the end of that day.
"If people want to try it, they can. I like them to ask first, but there's no 'Don't Touch' signs in my booth, I think it helps people understand the things we do if they handle the things we make," he said.
Miller can be reached online at www.jmwillowwinds.com or by calling 989-736-3487.
BY ERIC SHARP • FREE PRESS OUTDOORS WRITER • February 28, 2008
EDITOR'S NOTE: This article has been corrected since its initial publication. It had incorrectly placed Mikado in the Michigan Thumb. Mikado is north of Saginaw Bay and about 35 miles south of Alpena.
You shoot a deer and take it to the processor. He hands you back packages of steaks, chops, sausage and burger.
Jim Miller says you're shortchanging yourself by not getting back what he considers the best piece of all -- the hide, which you could tan the way your ancestors did and produce leather products superior to anything you can buy in most stores.
It was nearly 20 years ago that Miller, who lives near Mikado, got interested in Native American crafts that largely had been forgotten -- things like basket weaving and lodge building, making birchbark canoes without metal fasteners, and tanning animal hides.
"After a while, I realized this was the lifestyle of all of our ancestors at some point, not just Native Americans," said Miller, who 15 years ago quit a good job selling Rolex watches and pianos to start Willow Winds, a kind of reeducation center where people learn stone-age skills while realizing that stone-age people were remarkably adept at using natural materials.
He soon became a popular speaker and demonstrator at schools around the state, and today through Sunday he'll be demonstrating ancient ways and answering questions in a booth at Outdoorama, the state's biggest outdoors show, at the Rock Financial Center in Novi.
This year's Outdoorama will be presented not by Michigan United Conservation Clubs -- which had run it for 34 years -- but by a Grand Rapids company called Showspan that specializes in putting on such exhibitions. But there will be the usual mix of outdoors equipment retailers, trip outfitters, lodges, and fishing and hunting seminars, and MUCC will continue to present the popular Wildlife Encounters exhibit where kids and adults can get up close and personal with live birds of prey, waterfowl and Michigan mammals.
Miller said that although brain-tanning a hide is slower than using chemicals, it's well within the capabilities of modern hunters, and he encourages them to try it "as a continuation of the hunt. At the show, I'll be working on the hide from a buck I killed this season, and as I'm working on it, I think how cool it was to take this deer with my grandpa's .30-.30 and make something useful out of it."
His expertise in ancient techniques has brought him jobs as a consultant to television and theatrical moviemakers, some of whom have used his buffalo robes, deerskins, bark baskets and other paraphernalia to add verisimilitude to Native American encampments in films such as "The Indian in the Closet" and "Thunderheart."
Miller is such an authority that he has been hired by the Pottawatomie in Oklahoma to help build a traditional village at the tribe's cultural center.
"Some people think it's funny that Indians have a white man teach them traditional skills. But you have to remember that these people had their cultures nearly destroyed, and we (whites) did it," Miller said.
"The Pottawatomie used to live in Michigan, but they were moved out west. They went to a place that was so different that a lot of the skills they had just couldn't be used there. You can't make birchbark canoes when you don't have any birch trees," he said.
One of Miller's ancestors was Antoine Laforest, a founding settler in Detroit. Two of Antoine's brothers didn't want to be farmers, so they became coureurs des bois, "woods runners" who lived with and learned the crafts and skills of Native Americans and who established the fur trade that drove much of the early settlement of Canada and the United States.
He likes to think that some of those Laforest genes that course through his veins have helped him understand the people who lived here for millennia before the French arrived.
"When I talk to people, especially kids, I show them things like how an Indian made a basket or a canoe. Then I ask them how did your ancestors make basket and boats way back when? Because you know they needed such things, and all cultures made them. I tell the kids to check out how their ancestors did it in India or England or Africa," he said.
He said he also can show people that modern techniques may be faster and easier but aren't always best, something he learned a few years ago from an old Athabasca Indian couple in Alaska.
"I took a pair of beaver mittens I had made and used them to paddle my canoe in cold weather. They both just started grinning when they saw them. The old man went in and got another pair of beaver mittens, and he told me that his wife had given them to him on their wedding day 50 years before," Miller said.
"They were still perfect. She told me, 'I do old way. White man's leather no good. Hair fall out and leather rot.' And they're right," Miller said. "Brain-tanned leather is just so much denser and supple that you can hardly compare them."
At Outdoorama, Miller will carve canoe paddles and use the hide and tendons from deer to show how Native Americans fashioned clothing and tools.
He knows that a lot of people will want to see how he can make a fire in a few seconds by twirling a piece of cattail stem on a block of wood and using the ensuing hot coals to light tinder, adding, "My hands will be raw by the end of that day.
"If people want to try it, they can. I like them to ask first, but there's no 'Don't Touch' signs in my booth, I think it helps people understand the things we do if they handle the things we make," he said.
Miller can be reached online at www.jmwillowwinds.com or by calling 989-736-3487.