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Ojibway quillworker works in the spiritual sense

Article Origin

Author

Pamela Sexsmith Green, Sweetgrass Writer, CALGARY

Volume

5

Issue

8

Year

1999

Page 3

She likes to make their eyes light up.

Whether she's making a medicine bag for a Jackie Chan movie or weaving a sweetgrass basket for an Elder, Ojibway artist Lee Hillman enjoys striking a personal cord with the people who buy her handiwork.

While she does makes a living selling Aboriginal artwork, artifacts and crafts, there is often a spiritual aspect involved that is not for sale at any price, says Hillman.

Dreamcatchers are a good example.

"I am often asked by clients to make a dreamcatcher with an eagle feather attached. I am delighted to make it as long as they bring me the eagle feather. I figure that if they can bring me a feather then they are supposed to have it. If they canit then they are not supposed to have it," said Hillman.

Tobacco also plays an important part in the exchange of sacred artifacts.

"There are certain things that I will not sell unless there is tobacco involved in the transaction. A young woman asked me to make a rattle for her mother to use in a healing lodge on the west coast of British Columbia. I told her to bring me some tobacco and whatever she felt if was worth to her. She brought me tobacco, a lovely blanket and a deerskin pouch, I felt that she overpaid me, but it was very nice," said Hillman.

As well as spiritual considerations, Hillman also has to take provincial Fish and Wildlife regulations into account when creating cultural artifacts for some of the movie productions that many of her traditional pieces been featured in.

The order from propmaster Dean Eilertson for the film set of Reindeer Games, starring Ben Afflect and Gordon Tootoosis, currently being shot in Vancouver, included five necklaces made of antique trade and brass beads, one with a large bear claw attached.

"I had a large bearclaw but told Dean that I would not sell a bear claw, but rather make the necklace on the condition that it would be presented to Tootoosis at the end of production as a gift. I also wasnit sure about the Fish and Wildlife laws in British Columbia concerning the use and ownership of bear claws and didnit want to get into any trouble", said Hillman.

The life journey of this Ojibway woman has been one full of accidents. Meaningful accidents that have lead her in a full circle back to her own Native culture. It was a broken beading needle that got her back on track with her own spirituality and cultural identity.

My father, who had his Ojibway identity pounded out of him in the Rez, had been very reluctant to expose me to traditional spiritual values and practices. My traditional grandfather had very different views and this tug of war was joking called their non - aggression treaty. So I grew up with very little exposure from either side. Traveling in the Maritimes, I knew about smudging, had a smudging bowl and was just waking up that way when a lucky accident, the search for a new beading needle after breaking the only one in my pack, lead me to visit a Micmac reserve where I was invited to join in four days of sacred woman's ceremonies. I fasted, received alot of teachings, and had a wonderful experience that got me firmly planted on the path I should be on, all because of a broken needle," said Hillman.

Hillman made the desision to become a full time working artist after surviving a bad accident, being hit by a truck while riding her bicycle six years ago. It took two years of painstaking therapy to get her fine motor skills back on line, to recover the beadworking and quilling skills she had learned as a child.

"As a youngster I was very artistic and used to sit around the kitchen table cutting out all the pieces for those little birchbark tipis and canoes set on round disks of birchbark that you see in the trading posts in Ontario. I learned bead loomwork at eight and was introduced to quillworking at twelve by my Ojibway grandmother. She taught me the basics, from making an offering to the dead porcupine you find on the side of the road to gathering the quills by rolling the carcas in a blanket and then pulling the quills out of that blanket," said Hillman.

Her grandmother showed her how to sort, boil and dye the quills using both natural and commercial dyes. Hillman learned on her own, after getting very sick a couple of years ago, not to use aniline dyes like Rit and Tintex. Dyed quills are softened and flattened in the teeth before being woven and some commerial dyes are not meant to be ingested, she said.

Hillman learned to wrap and sew quills around a flat surface, do backstrap quill looming with sinew tied around the waist and create intricate checkerboard plaiting from her grandmother. She later added styles and techniques learned from books.

An imaginative and creative child, she is remembered for having wallpapered her grandmothers laundry room with drawings from her coloring book and the fact that she liked to hang out with the mummies in the Egyptian room of the ROM in Toronto.

Today, she works full-time as an artist and respected maker of historical artifacts and props in Calgary and likes to hang out with her family and a large contingent of artist friends from many different cultures, fulfilling a piece of advice given to her by an Elder.

She was told that she must learn to walk in both worlds, Native and non - Native, to find a balance between the past and the present in order to be an artist.

Hillman's skills as a propmaker were first showcased in the final episode of North of 60, under propsmistress Marie Ahle, who took her under her wing an nurtured her. She made a bone and antique trade bead bracelet and a beaded knife sheath for the character of Albert. She has created pieces for You Know My Name, a Turner film starring Sam Elliot, and the HBO production of The Jack Bull, which features John Cusack, John Goodman and Rodney A. Grant who played Wind - in - his - Hair in Dances With Wolves.

Hillman's skill as a quillworker were recently called into play when propmaster Jimmy Chow asked for two quilled bags for Shanghai oon, a Jackie Chan film being shot in Calgary that features Gordon Tootoosis as the Chief.

"I was asked to make a staff, a bison jaw war club and two identical quillworked bags, in case one was damaged during in action. They didnit like how the bag was photographing on the character and ordered two more bags with a small amount of beading on them, a little less elaborate than the originals. The original quilled bag ended up at Calgary's Catholic Board of Education, a hands-on educational piece so that kids could handle and feel real quillwork. Philosophically it suits and Iim really glad they took it" said Hillman.

She works closely with Kathleen Coleclough, one of the foremost experts on beadwork in Canada. Coleclough, who just finished making seventeen shields for Shanghai Noon, can zero in on what types and colors of trade beads would have been historically available during certain years in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, knowledge crucial for a genuine cultural flavor.

With a view to maintaining cultural authenticity, there's a fine balance to strike in the recreation of sacred Aboriginal artifacts for the film industry, an important decision to cross or not to cross the medicine line.

"Directors are happy that you are giving them the genuine prop, but I am reluctant to make exact copies of museum pieces. I don't want to steal someone else's art, craft or personal medicine, it's not up to me to decide," said Hillman.