An Indigenous community member should be invited into the learning space to help students harvest cattails and weave cattail mats.
Instructions:
A gift of the earth that provides for the spiritual, emotional, physical, and mental wellbeing of both the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe locally is cattails.
Spotlight on Language:
- Anishinaabemowin: Apakweyashk.
- Kanyen’ke:ha: Aotáhsa
- As an introduction to cattails, and their cultural significance, students read a traditional Anishinaabe story about cattails: http://ojibweproject.weebly.com/naumlnabushu-and-the-dancing-bullrushes-line-by-line.html
- Students (with and advanced reading level) can then read page 225 to 232 in Robin Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass for an overview of the gifts that a cattail marsh provides.
Kimmerer, R. W. (2013). Braiding sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions.
- As a summary and to learn more about local Indigenous perspectives on cattails students can review Overview of the Gifts of Cattails.pdf. This information can also be found in Gifts of Cattails Graphic.pdf.
Activity: The Supermarket of the Swamp
- Student will complete a wetland shopping list found in the Basket Wetland Shopping List Activity.pdf. They will do this by explaining which part of the cattail can be used to provide particular gifts.
Activity: Weaving
- Another gift cattails provide local Indigenous community members is that they offer a great material for weaving. Linda Black Elk from Oceti Sakowin Territory shares that cattails are waterproof so mats could be used to waterproof the roof of a wigwam or provide a waterproof surface to lay on.
- Teachers can show students a video segment available on the QUILLS website featuring Mandy Wilson, a community member from Shabot Obaadjiwan First Nation, demonstrating how to harvest cattails. Watch the video here.
- Alternatively, this video featuring Caleb Musgrave from Canadian Bushcraft also focuses on how to harvest cattails: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNXEiyBzKvs
- At Elbow Lake, with assistance from an Indigenous community member, students can harvest cattails and create their own cattail mat. Students can also follow instructions in the video clip embedded on the QUILLS website.
- Next, students watch a video featuring Mandy Wilson, a community member from Shabot Obaadjiwan First Nation, made available on the QUILLS website, showing students how to weave a cattail mat. (Instructions also included in Cattail Mat Weaving.pdf.)
- With the assistance of an Indigenous community member students can practice making their own mats.
- At school, if cattails are unavailable, students can use alternate materials ie: grass or recycled strips of paper.
