Carving Traditions with Joe Hugga Dana, Penobscot

Visual: A panning image of a museum exhibit behind a title card that reads “Joe Hugga Dana, Penobscot, Carving Traditions, Wabanaki Gallery”

Visual: A man stands in a museum with an exhibit case behind him. He has a short dark beard, long dark hair tied into a low ponytail, and glasses and wears jeans and a flannel open over a tee shirt reading “Penobscot Nation, Indian Island, Maine”. He stands with his hands clasped behind him and speaks to the camera, glancing toward the case from time to time.

Voice of Joe Hugga Dana: Hi. My name is Joe Dana from Penobscot Nation. I’m here to talk about  some of the tools we use in carving walking sticks, root clubs, and such.

I was taught from my father Stan Neptune, who, in turn, he was taught from Senabeh, who was an elder in the community. I started out carving walking sticks with just a simple bladed knife, later started using crooked knives in the process of peeling bark.

Visual: The man reaches off-camera and retrieves a small knife with a sheath, which he removes. He holds the knife in his right hand, palm up, blade held toward the center, and thumb along the curved back of the handle, miming the motion of pulling the knife toward him along a stick.

Visual: The camera cuts to close-up footage of the man’s hands as he stands in the gallery. He holds two knives, both with wooden handles and birchbark sheathes.

Voice of Joe Hugga Dana: These are some of the tools we use in the root clubs, walking sticks.

Visual: He uses his right hand to pull the smaller knife from its sheath. It has a simple wooden handle, tapered and slightly curved toward the end and a very short, metal blade, tapered toward one side at the end. He shows the handle to the camera revealing a finely-etched image of a beaver on one side and a lightning bold between two angular spirals on the back.

Voice of Joe Hugga Dana: This is just a simple, single bladed carving knife we used for, like, the chip carving details. I actually got a little design, this is the symbol I use on the back of my work, it’s just a little lightning bolt. This knife I bought, but, I made the sheaths out of birchbark.

Visual: The man returns the knife to its sheath and holds it up to the camera, revealing an etched image of a moose, pointing with the end of the other sheath.

Voice of Joe Hugga Dana: This is a winter bark, actually, and you can etch it out and make designs. This is another one I made; this is the crooked knife.

Visual: The man turns the second, larger sheathed knife to the camera, showing an etched series of double-curve patterns. He then pulls the knife from the sheath, revealing it to be the crooked knife he was holding previously. He again holds it palm-up, thumb along the curved end of the handle. He points out elements of the knife as he speaks, showing the short, narrow blade and the carved wooden handle.

Voice of Joe Hugga Dana: I totally made this out of a file. And, of course, decorative, I got, like a hawk head with abalone inlay. I love this knife, it just fits right in my hand. And I’m sure that’s the way it was with all the other crooked knives. They’re highly collectible and very important to our people.

Visual: He returns the knife to its sheath and the camera remains focused on his hands holding the sheathed knives as he speaks. He gestures with his hands, and occasionally removes the crooked knife to mimic using it, illustrating his narrative with his motions.

Voice of Joe Hugga Dana: There’s a saying that “The crooked knife is is responsible for 1001 indispensable objects,” and that can’t be any more true. You know, we’re talking, root clubs walking sticks, paddles, but more importantly, like, tools, and actually carving the vessel. One of the most important innovations, the birchbark canoe, you could almost primarily use a crooked knife from start to finish.

Visual: The camera pans back up to include the speaker’s face as he re-sheathes the knife and gestures to elements of the sheath.

Voice of Joe Hugga Dana: This, I actually incorporated some of the spruce roots we used for the birch bark canoe. But my art has, kind of, evolved from walking sticks, root clubs, [to] eventually carving paddles and even bows.

Visual: The video cuts to the man, still in the same place but no longer holding the knives. He gestures as he speaks, miming many of the actions he describes.

Voice of Joe Hugga Dana: A cool story of some of the evolution of my carving, what it’s been like: I got into the walking sticks, root clubs, a little bit of paddle making, which I basically was just self-taught going by some of the old designs. Course, I love to paddle, too.

And one day I was driving by a yard sale and looked over and thought I saw a wooden paddle. So I stop over at the yard sale and I walk right over to this table that has a bow laying on it, and I picked it right up, I flipped it over and it said “Sylvester Francis”, which is my great-grandfather. One of his bows.

And this was like… previously, up to that, I was actually carving, bows for my kids, for my boys. And, I remember one time, I was just so excited about carving a bow, it was like a full moon out, and I’m just sitting on my steps, and I’m just going to town, just, like, feeling, like, the spirit, that’s the way the spirit’s moving me. And it was so cool to, kind of, see that, pick up a bow my great-grandfather made, which I still have, you know.

Visual: The video cuts to focus on a museum display that includes an array of eight crooked knives with handles of various shapes, many wrapped with different materials.

Voice of Joe Hugga Dana: So, yeah, looking at these I can definitely tell they were made from, possibly, a file wrapped with electric tape, wire. Usually at the end of the file [you] heat it up, and turn it, and then put a hole through the piece of wood and then put the two pieces back together. So, it was cut in half, the file was then carved into it, and you heat up the end of that file, bend it down, and then that goes into, like, a hole in the slot so it can’t pull itself up. And then it’s usually wrapped with some wire.

But yeah, these crooked knives were definitely used either to carve ribs, paddles, maybe pack basket handles, everything. All kinds of tools. I mean, it’s like I said, it’s responsible for a lot of wooden objects, even on the trapping line. These are basically the utility knives of today, you know, really used for everything.

Visual: The speaker holds a rootclub carved from a sapling that had a second, smaller trunk which has been carved into the long, serrated tail of a salamander or tadpole. He holds the club vertically like it would have been when the sapling was growing and gestures first to the long handle, then to the larger, carved end. He then turns it horizontally to show the camera the carved elements on the head.

Voice of Joe Hugga Dana: Okay, so this is an example of a gray birch root system. This would be the tree, this is a root; We dig around the roots, very carefully, and you never know what the tree wants to reveal. And this particular artist decided to put in this pretty cool little guy with the frog, with the frog face.

Visual: The speaker now refers to the shallow decorative carving on the long handle of the club.

Voice of Joe Hugga Dana: But this is a beautiful example of chip carved work, and, it draws a lot of inspiration… when my father started doing research into, like, a spirit form, spirit faces in the burl. But this is a really good example of some really fine chip carved detail, it’s super, super tight. A lot of these…  It draws a lot of inspiration for us, basically, and we try to we try to copy that, sort of, or, like, draw from it. Like, my leaf pattern designs, there would be some space in there, but, like, this is just beautiful detail.

Visual: The speaker now holds a different club. This one is much stouter, with a thicker handle and large head. Shallow carving and inscribed decorations can be seen on the handle with both geometric and figurative motifs. The root ball at the head has been carved with various elements including the head of a moose (lacking antlers) and the heads of eagles carved from projecting root spurs and the face of a Native American wearing a large feathered headdress in bas-relief at a wide portion toward the handle.

Voice of Joe Hugga Dana: So this is a great example of what we have found in early, like, earlier clubs didn’t have much paint in them. This is one of my father’s, a really good example: fine chip carving, Western style headdress, which kind of appeased the tourist at the time. And, a lot of paints were thrown into it. Here he kind of went with the whole natural look, which I really like a lot. That’s his, the eel symbol on the back, Neptune 2/96. This is a beautiful club; it’s got a moose on the top, a couple of eagles, and, yeah, that’s a beautiful piece.

Visual: The speaker now holds a club with both carved and vividly painted elements. The head of the club has been carved with a projecting eagle head and a small fish as well as a bas-relief bust of a Native American man with long, black hair. The eagle and bust are both painted and the bust is backed with a painted landscape. Below this on the handle is a stack of carved faces, unpainted. Below this is a painted landscape, and then the remainder of the handle has been painted black with the pale underlying wood contrasting in the chip-carved decorations. When he turns the club, the back of the handle is fully chip-carved decorations, pale against the black paint. The back of the head features more carved and painted eagle heads and bas-relief black bear.

Voice of Joe Hugga Dana: This is got the paintings in it, and it’s just beautiful. The chip carving, black paint, the chip carving, kind of, has a nice contrast, pops out. This is a collaboration because of the eel symbol and the C, Collaboration between Claude Dennis, and my father, who, they did a lot of carving together, I guess. Claude like to do a lot of faces, a lot of relief, a lot of carvings. And he did a great job. But he, I heard he didn’t like to chip carve, so he had my father do a lot of the chip carving. And, that’s a great example of a collaborative root club, you know, with the paints in it. And this [referring to the stacked faces at the top of the handle], I can see, this is, like, an inspiration of a lot of Senabeh’s work with the totem pole incorporated into it.

Visual: A close-up of a display of rootclubs in the museum exhibit.

Voice of Joe Hugga Dana: The root clubs made in Maine by Penobscot and other Wabanaki peoples is a distinct and ongoing Native New England tradition. Root clubs have been carved and used for centuries, and continue to be valued by the Penobscot people as part of their cultural identity. Also referred to as war clubs or ceremonial clubs, they are most often formed from the root burl, root tips, and trunk of a gray or white birch tree. Faces and animal beings may be carved into the burl and protruding root stalks, while leaf patterns and symbolic Eastern Woodland designs are chip carved into the handle.

After the wars and the conflicts root clubs are transformed into ceremonial items used in dances and other ceremonies. The different kinds of clubs include spirits, snout, haunting face clubs. These contemporary root clubs express tribal identity, pride and continuity of this very unique art form of the Penobscot peoples.

Visual: The speaker now stands with hands in pockets, talking to the camera and closing his eyes to remember a past event, then gesturing to illustrate his narrative.

Voice of Joe Hugga Dana: Oh, let’s see. Yeah. I guess my father just kind of, approached me or said, “Hey,” you know,  “There’s here’s something else that was carved called a snow snake.” And at the time, we didn’t know, but it was, apparently a favorite pastime of our people. A snow snake is a stick carved out of hard hardwood, 3 to 6 feet long, with just a upturned, heavy end tapered down to, like, an arrow-like notch in the end with your finger, index finger.

Visual: A close-up of a long wooden object on display in the museum case. It is straight and tapered toward the back, with the front end slightly bent upward and carved into the face of a snake. Decorative elements have been inscribed or burned into the snake, with scales and other facial features at the head and decorative motifs along the back.

Voice of Joe Hugga Dana: And, basically the object of the game was just to slide it down the trail, a snow trail that you make with, like, dragging a 6-inch, 7-inch diameter log through the snow, which makes a nice little track for it.

Visual: An overlay video with the speaker behind. The overlay video features outdoor footage taken in the winter with a layer of snow on the ground. A person tosses a long wooden snow snake across the snow, holding it at the back end. It glides easily toward the camera, leaving a trail behind it. The overlay then disappears, and the speaker continues, gesturing.

Visual: A view of the museum exhibit, featuring a female elder in a red garmnet with a large, circular silver ornament on her chest and wearing a tall, beaded peaked cap. Her face is intent on the viewer and very powerful. A sign next to her is titled “Woodworking Traditions” and includes further text for the exhibit.

Voice of Joe Hugga Dana: The lifestyles of my ancestors honored the spirit connection to the woods and the waters. The Penobscots’ rich carving history spans generations with knowledge and innovation. These cultural connections are my motivational force behind my carvings. When we carve, we honor these connections to our ancestors.

Visual: A credits card that reads:

Featured Artist: Joe (Hugga) Dana, Penobscot

Collection Images: A. Sky Heller, Hudson Museum Registrar
Project Manager: Gretchen Faulkner, Hudson Museum Director
Video Production & Editing: Samantha Grimwood
Technical Support: Arturo Camacho

This project was funded by a University of Maine Arts Initiative Seed Grant.