Barry Dana Wigwam Video Transcript

Visual: Title card featuring a smiling man with dark hair on the left and an image of the side of a birchbark wigwam on the right. Text reads “Barry Dana: Penobscot Birchbark Artist”

Visual: As the speaker begins talking, video fades to the man, wearing a green tee-shit, shorts, and no shoes, kneeling inside a museum by a large, round base making measurements and marking locations along its margin. Video then cycles rapidly through shots of various young women using crooked knives to peel and shape birch poles, close-up shots of the man’s hands also using a crooked knife on the birch poles, and the poles being placed in holes that have been drilled along the margin of the round base, forming a dome shape.

Voice of Barry Dana: Well the biggest thing for me in terms of education is the fact that I’m teaching people that we’re still here. Not only still here, but there’s many of us who are still very active in the preservation of our culture. So the beauty of coming into a museum is you see both worlds: you see behind the glass, you know, you see the artifacts that my ancestors touched, made, utilized, you know, 50 years ago, five hundred years ago, five thousand years ago, yet we’re still here, so it bridges those two worlds.

Visual: A closeup of the man’s hands peeling basswood strips, then rapid transitions through shots of the structure of the wigwam being finalized and secured.  More poles are placed, the basswood strips are used to tie them together. The man uses his feet to bend a birch pole, then weaves it through the base formed by the structural poles of the wigwam. He then uses a saw and a crooked knife to make adjustments to the poles of the structure after they’ve been placed.

Voice of Barry Dana: My goal in life has been to capture and revive some of the more intricate aspects of Penobscot lifestyle. It’s one thing to be able to make a basket and sell it so you make another basket and sell it so you keep that artform alive, but over the course of the last couple hundred years we’ve watched the erosion of our more intricate, higher, advanced society type of interacting with our past, and I’m not comfortable with that.

Visual: Panning shots of rolls of birchbark on a carpeted floor. The man and some of the young women use various tools to work with the birchbark, cutting it into shape, punching holes through the edges, and sewing it together to make large panels. The panels are sewn together with spruce root strips and then attached to the structure with basswood strips that are twisted to give them strength. Each birchbark panel, placed along the bottom edge of the wigwam structure, is about waist-height on the man.

Voice of Barry Dana: I like to see the values that my ancestors developed because of their relationship with the natural world, whether it’s animal hides, barks, trees, roots, plants, water, fishes, you know, all the animals – they had a direct relationship and we don’t have that today. Our food, our clothing, our shelter, our tools – everything is purchased, obtained by methods other than our own hands and we totally lose that connection between us and the natural world, which means we no longer have a stewardship towards its protection. Penobscots were given the opportunity, the responsibility for stewardship. You cannot understand a birch tree unless you’ve manipulated its bark. You might look at it and think “Oh how pretty it is,” but unless that resource, if you will, is viewed as a gift towards life you can’t appreciate it.

Visual: Rapid transitions between shots. Panels of birchbark being tied to the wigwam structure with basswood strips. Closeups of the man’s hands as he peels spruce roots into strips for lashings. Single panels of birchbark being attached to the upper portions of the wigwam structure. Panning shots of the inside of the wigwam as more birchbark panels are attached. Much of the work is done by the man and younger assistants together.

Voice of Barry Dana: So my ancestors, the Penobscots, the Wabanaki, and, really, tribes all across what we call Turtle Island, had this relationship. And because of the last 500 years there’s many who have lost it. And I’m not okay with that, I want to bring it back. And there’s only one way to do that. It’s not reading about it, it’s not watching a video, it’s doing it. So I have committed my life towards getting my hands dirty, cutting them if that’s what it takes, to learn what my ancestors knew about manipulating these resources into useable, life-sustaining implements. So, obviously, canoes were used for travel and today we don’t need them. So why make a canoe? What I’ve learned in making a canoe, or a wigwam, is that these things are a key to our past. So I’m able to touch into a genetic code by doing the same things my ancestors did.

Visual: The wigwam is now completely covered with panels of birchbark. The man places more birch poles over the wigwam, tucking the lower ends into the ring of woven poles at the base and attaching the upper ends together at the top so the poles hold the birchbark in place.

Voice of Barry Dana: So, I really see it as a means of our survival. If we’re going to survive as a tribe, as a human species, then we need to know what our connection is, our responsibility to the planet. And I don’t find any better route for that than my traditions.

Visual: Panning shots of the completed wigwam inside the museum.

Voice of Barry Dana: I think, in terms of understanding our connection with nature, building a wigwam, living in it, and learning how to live with your surroundings is really what… the message that the wigwam could teach us all.

Credits

Featuring: Barry Dana; Laurie Dana; Sikwani Dana

Video Documentation Provided By: ASAP

Hudson Museum: Gretchen Faulkner, Director; Cody Smith, Student Assistant; Charles Hastings, Student Assistant

The birchbark wigwam in the Hudson Museum’s Maine Indian Gallery [now the Wabanaki Gallery] was funded by grants from the Maine Arts Commission, the Maine Humanities Council, and the Renee Minsky Fund.