\u201cI love working with my hands and its very healing to be a part of it because we don\u2019t just tan and dye,\u201d she says of the process. \u201cWe also share a lot with each other. So, it\u2019s like a two-week-long therapy using our hands.\u201d
Her experience with fish leather began back in October 2022 when she attended a Grief and Healing Workshop in Montreal. Vancouver-based artist and educator Janey Chang was there to teach fish skin tanning as part of the healing component. Arsaniq fully embraced the process and now shadows Janey when she teaches in Nunavik. The workshops are offered as part of the Ilurqusitigut | \u1403\u14d7\u1550\u1581\u14ef\u144e\u148d\u1466 program, an initiative of Kativik Ilisarniliriniq (KI) Adult Education and Vocational Training department. The program is a cultural initiative focused on community and collaborative resources and support, with the main goal of strengthening Inuit values, language, and culture. It can even be used for high school credit. Janey says Arsaniq helps with communication as she speaks Inuktitut and has incorporated some of her tattooing alongside the tanning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u201cIt\u2019s just such a beautiful blend of two different skills. Hopefully one day she\u2019ll be teaching (the fish skin tanning) as well, but we really work well together in just sort of providing different facets of the experience,\u201d Janey says. \u201cThat\u2019s another beautiful piece of it.\u201d Creating the leather isn\u2019t easy and can take up to a week. The fish must be skinned, scraped, and well washed before a decision is made about which tannins are used to turn it into leather. For the workshops Janey brings frozen salmon skins that come as waste from a fish processing plant in Vancouver. She recalls that for the first workshops the shipped skins didn\u2019t make it to Nunavik in time, so she says, \u201cit was BYOF (Bring Your Own Fish).\u201d Now she travels with fish skins in her luggage, which can elicit strange looks from airport security, but ensures she has skins to work with. Over the last year, the fish skin tanning workshop was offered in communities on both the Hudson and Ungava coasts, including Akulivik, Puvirnituq, Kuujjuaq and, in October 2023, Kangiqsujuaq. Arsaniq says while there are no immediate plans for future workshops, she is looking forward to more learning and teaching, and the chance to offer healing and connection through hand work to even more Nunavik communities soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Learning to make fish leather offers healing and connection Arsaniq Deer says working with her hands is a form of healing. Well-known as a traditional tattoo [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":17775,"menu_order":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"taqralik-issues":[434,126],"class_list":["post-17430","taqralikonline","type-taqralikonline","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","taqralik-issues-434","taqralik-issues-winter"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.makivvik.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/taqralikonline\/17430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.makivvik.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/taqralikonline"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.makivvik.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/taqralikonline"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.makivvik.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/taqralikonline\/17430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17453,"href":"https:\/\/www.makivvik.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/taqralikonline\/17430\/revisions\/17453"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.makivvik.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.makivvik.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"taqralik-issues","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.makivvik.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/taqralik-issues?post=17430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Fish leather isn\u2019t well known in the North, and while Arsaniq says she has heard of it being used in Nunavut in the form of a fish skin pouch, she and Janey are introducing it to Nunavik.
\u201cInuit have always been creative, and this would be another addition to it, and they\u2019ve already started creating beautiful things.\u201d
Relearning lost traditional practices from elsewhere can mean more than acquiring a new skill. Mary Saunders, KI\u2019s Pedagogical Consultant, says cultural practices and tradition serve many purposes. \u201cOften these traditions not only help define a community, but they also create a community,\u201d she says. \u201cThey also have healing properties in that they help us make connections within ourselves, to feel a sense of belonging and to strengthen one\u2019s sense of identity and purpose.\u201d
Janey and Arsaniq have been welcomed into the communities they have visited, although sometimes it takes a while for people to become engaged. \u201cSo much of my work is about building relationships. The fish skin tanning is sort of secondary, it\u2019s the relationships first,\u201d Janey says. She has no pre-determined agenda for teaching, she simply bring the fish skins and supplies and lets the class unfold based on where students want to go with it.
\u201cFor me, it\u2019s putting it back in the hands of fish people – people who rely on fish for food and survival of culture. It is so meaningful for me to be able to share fish skin tanning with Inuit.\u201d She admits that her work motivates her on a personal level \u201cespecially when I witness them on their journey of learning more about who they are, what they\u2019ve lost, and the land they come from through the experience of working with their hands. For me, it makes me question even more who I am and where my ancestors come from.\u201d
When in the North she tries to use local tannins and fats, like beluga fat, fish roe, and locally harvested willow. \u201cThe fish are the connector because we\u2019re fish people working with different fish and then just exploring different tannins from different land bases.\u201d
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She also brings dyes from other parts of the world in powder form, like hibiscus, onion skins, cochineal bugs, and indigo so workshop participants can explore colouring the leather. The Nunavik courses have been too short to spend much time exploring local dye sources like berries, willow, and lichens yet, but the colouring is the part of the process that Arsaniq says she likes the most.
\u201cI think I love dyeing it all sorts of beautiful colours and they\u2019re all natural dyes. That\u2019s my favourite part, and the fish vertebrae that we can clean and use as jewelry.\u201d Along with jewelry made from the leather and vertebrae, she has also made slippers, but the options are endless, limited only by the participants\u2019 imaginations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.makivvik.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/04_Credit-Kativik-Ilisarniliriniq-Mary-Saunders-copy.jpeg?resize=768%2C1024&ssl=1\")