Heritage North Museum

INTRODUCTION

In 1998, Wellington Spence and his wife Madeleine from the Nisichawayasihk First Nation (Nelson House), built a traditional caribou hide and birch bark tipi as a permanent exhibit for Heritage North Museum. The city had a population of 15,000 at the time, and remains a service centre for the local mining industry and surrounding First Nations communities.

Elder Wellington Spence, born in 1922, lived in his grandmother's tipi until the age of ten. According to Mr. Spence, some people used hide tipis as permanent dwellings in Northern Manitoba until the 1940's. Afterwards, the use of tipis declined due to a number of social, economic, and political factors.

In traditional Cree culture, men hunted, women cared for the home, and history was preserved by oral transmission. As a result, Wellington never actually built a tipi with his grandmother, but he remembered details of her home and consulted other elders on their recollection of tipi life. The combined knowledge resulted in the construction of an authentic tipi, which is on display at the Heritage North Museum.

The focus of these videos is to document tipi life and construction methodologies as remembered by Wellington and friends.

All videos are narrated in Cree

Videos courtesy Leonard Thevenot