Artist Christine Toulouse shares how picking up this Indigenous practice during the pandemic helped her mourn her mother’s loss, and why she’s now teaching others how to weave porcupine quills through birch bark.
Christine Toulouse remembers holding a warm cup of tea as her mother and grandmother first taught her how to pluck a porcupine.
The trio sat on the front porch of her mother’s home in Sagamok Anishnawbek, in northern Ontario, where Toulouse watched as they skilfully removed the quills without pulling out clumps of fur from the dead animal.
A neighbour had picked it up from the side of the road for them after Toulouse’s mother made requests for materials in the First Nations community.
“I’ve always been a little bit messier of an artist, so when I harvest quills I get everything and then I’ll sort it later,” said Toulouse, recalling how impressed she was by their …