Manitoba Museum workshop explores Indigenous dentalium adornment

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Before teaching her store astatine the Manitoba Museum, Harmony Lynxleg painstakingly measured and filed down capable dentalium for each her students.

“It takes a batch of preparation,” she said. “When I archetypal started, I deliberation to shave down 1 brace of earrings took maine similar 2 hours.”

As her pupils prime a acceptable of shells to enactment with, Lynxleg lays retired the remainder of the materials; strings of beads, rolls of sinew, and pieces of moose hide. She’s teaching them to marque their ain dentalium earrings, a mean she’s been moving with for the past year.

“I archetypal discovered it erstwhile I was connected the powwow trail, erstwhile I archetypal started dancing erstwhile I was astir 16 years old. And I was conscionable astonished by it due to the fact that you could archer that it took a batch of work.”

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“I bash tons of different assorted forms of art, similar beading and sewing, but I’ve ever drawn backmost towards it.”

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Dentalium is simply a benignant of mollusk ammunition that was utilized by North American Indigenous peoples for thousands of years arsenic currency and to decorate covering and jewelry. It is harvested successful coastal waters, and was traded crossed the continent. The bladed shells are hollow and tapered astatine 1 end.

The Manitoba Museum has a tiny postulation of dentalium pieces. A cape covered successful dentalium sits successful the gallery, and earrings and hairsbreadth ties are stored successful the museum’s Hudson’s Bay Collection. The earrings and hairsbreadth ties are implicit 100 years old, says Museum Head of Indigenous Programming and Development Tashina Houle-Schlup, who brought retired the stored pieces for Lynxleg’s store participants to see.

“It was similar a awesome of presumption due to the fact that they were truthful costly and hard to get,” she said. “There person been dentalium that person been recovered astir the Forks, truthful close present successful Winnipeg, and that is rather a distance. I conscionable deliberation of those husbands that brought backmost a batch of them, trading them, for their wives oregon daughters to screen their dresses with. It was…to amusement however valued they were successful their community.”

Many of the steps successful making the earrings astatine the store are easier than they were erstwhile the items successful the postulation were crafted; Lynxleg buys the dentalium from suppliers, and the sinew comes acceptable to usage connected a spool. But it’s not mislaid connected her the magnitude of enactment and clip the creation signifier takes.

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“I deliberation it’s besides a large practice of self-love erstwhile you marque it for yourself, due to the fact that it’s hard to get it. It’s expensive. It takes a batch of work. Just from harvesting it, to preparing it, to putting it together. You request a batch of patience.”

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