A visit with the Mayor

We went for a visit with Your Worship, Wayne Taipale, at his house one evening and ended up learning all sorts of stuff about the tools we used/use and many other great things...

A railroad track is the only way to get our community by land. We have no highway connecting us to the rest of the country. Long ago, many people lived in little communities along the railroad tracks. Our grandmother and her family grew up at 'mileage 162'. We found out our Mayor grew up 9 miles from them! He spent his life growing up in the bush too! He has had many teachers from here along the way and he shared a little of what he was taught with us.

We got thousands of years of history in a few hours ! :D

We began with fossils of animals that would have lived here when this area was a tropical zone!

Wayne telling us about a shell that was found in our area and what time period in the earth's history this would be from.	This is a fossil of a trilobite; it would have lived in our area when we were a tropical zone.

Then we moved on to our traditional tools. We still use some of these tools today because for their purposes they are still better than knives for example.

I think we all know what this is used for...	These are commercial hides but we used the hides and furs of everything in our area for clothing, accessories, blankets, tipis, etc.	We don't know what to call this. Does anyone know a name for this in english? It is the coming of age thing representing the stages of life and all you have come through LOL
No. Very specific important rocks.. can you tell what these are for?	Duplicated with materials just laying around readily accessible - ingenious way of cutting hide	A very useful one - can you tell what this is for?
This occurs naturally somewhere - do you know where this needle comes from?	There is a very sharp blade in this picture - do you know where?	These are bones that were/are used as scrapers for cleaning hides (the end pieces of them - we don't know why they were cut but the one on the far left can be used as is) - our grandmother and great-grandmother used these - they work better than knives do. Mom had her grandfather make her mini hide scraping implements for a science fair project when she was 9 (barbie sized).

Then we moved on to the appearance of settlers. Wayne talked about Henry Hudson and Thomas James and the start of the fur trade in our area around 1673... the trading post in Moose Factory, the name Moose Factory and many other things.

There is a horseshoe and a couple of tools in this picture. Do you know what the tools are?	Wayne had these tools dated by a museum and we can't remember the dates - we will ask him and post later.

We also learned about the beaver. Not just about it physically but how the beaver predicts what kind of winter it will be. It was very interesting and made a lot of sense.

		a beaver's teeth never stop growing

	a beaver tooth necklace

Young Warriors of Turtle Island

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A Visit with the Mayor

Wayne telling us about a shell that was found in our area and what time period in the earth's history this would be from.

This is a fossil of a trilobite; it would have lived in our area when we were a tropical zone.

I think we all know what this is used for...

These are commercial hides but we used the hides and furs of everything in our area for clothing, accessories, blankets, tipis, etc.

We don't know what to call this. Does anyone know a name for this in english? It is the coming of age thing representing the stages of life and all you have come through LOL

No. Very specific important rocks.. can you tell what these are for?

Duplicated with materials just laying around readily accessible - ingenious way of cutting hide

A very useful one - can you tell what this is for?

This occurs naturally somewhere - do you know where this needle comes from?

There is a very sharp blade in this picture - do you know where?

There is a horseshoe and a couple of tools in this picture. Do you know what the tools are?

Wayne had these tools dated by a museum and we can't remember the dates - we will ask him and post later.

a beaver's teeth never stop growing

a beaver tooth necklace