Summary

• In Simpcw First Nation, women are continuing traditions practiced by generations of women before them, including animal-hide tanning. 
• Tiffany Bowser and Roberta Haller are Secwe̓pemc women who grew up immersed in their culture and now teach others who want to learn through community workshops.
• While women have always tanned deer hide in B.C.’s interior, a smaller number practice the skill today, making the workshops hosted by Bowser and Haller a powerful assertion of Indigenous Rights.

Working with animal hides can be a messy process — and children in Tiffany Bowser’s community of Simpcw First Nation “absolutely love it.”

“They love scraping the hide. They love stretching it,” she shares.

“I don’t know why, but brain water is one of their favourite things,” she adds, laughing. “I’m like okay, just don’t get it in your mouth.”

Bowser hosts hide-tanning workshops in her First Nation, come-and-go style, so people with different needs can attend. Her workshops are also hosted during the school day, so children and youth from the Secwe̓pemc community — located north of Kamloops — are able to participate.

From hunting the animal, to skinning and tanning the hide, it is a lengthy, expensive and labour-intensive process that many people struggle to make time for. And finding people who carry the knowledge about how to properly tan an animal hide is becoming rare.

Despite those challenges, the tradition lives on in the Simpcw First Nation. In Secwe̓pemc culture, women are typically tasked with preparing animal hides — a responsibility that Bowser takes seriously.

“There’s not too many people on the reserve who know how to tan a hide,” Roberta Haller, who also teaches hide tanning in the community, says. “I feel very proud that I’m one of them.”

“I’ve been hunting since I was about three years old,” Bowser told The Narwhal.

“Some of my earliest memories are sitting on my dad’s shoulders, packing a handful of gophers around and fishing. It’s just something I grew up doing.”

This year, she hosted a 10-day workshop, calling her mentor Haller over the phone for advice each day. Haller was mentored by the late Virginia Donald, her aunt, who was known in the area for her tanned deer hides. 

“I’m probably pretty biased, but she was one of the best hide tanners out there. Her deer hides came out white and perfect,” Bowser says. 

Following the tradition of women who came before and taught them, Bowser and Haller support one another, teaching the next generation of hide tanners in their community how it’s done.

Hide tanning process and usage

While methods to prepare animal hides vary from person to person and community to community, Bowser and Haller follow the methods passed down to them from generations of Secwe̓pemc women. 

After harvesting and skinning the animal, Haller explains, the hide gets soaked in water. After it’s soaked, the hair is cut and scraped off the hide before it’s carefully placed on a frame. 

This part can be tricky: experienced tanners know where to cut holes to properly stretch the hide on the frame, without ruining it by piercing in the wrong places. 

Once on the frame, the hide is pounded and stretched, over a gentle heat source. “Not too hot, so it doesn’t try out too fast,” she says. 

After that, the hide is taken off of the rack and smoked, which adds colour, prevents stiffness and makes the fabric not water-resistant, but washable.

The next step is the brain water. 

“We take the brains from the deer and then we dissolve it in warm water so it becomes a milky liquid, in there we soak the hide again. As we’re soaking, we’re stretching it out again … then you put it back on the frame, pound it out again and start the whole process over again,” Haller says. All of this takes days, weeks or months, depending on the animal size, and what outcome the tanner is going for.

But if the steps aren’t completed properly, the whole process must be started over. Smaller game animals can take weeks to complete, while larger animals like moose can take up to a year. 

It takes time, commitment, muscles and know-how to make it all happen.

Passing the tradition through generations

Haller started working with animal hide in her 30s, wanting to pass the tradition onto her children. And since tanning was so intensive, she wanted to help her mentor Virginia continue the practice as she aged, while learning the practice from her. 

“Auntie Virginia didn’t like to take any shortcuts,” Haller tells The Narwhal. That meant skipping modern tools including pressure washers and trimmers to remove animal hair during the tanning process, which weren’t available back in her day.

“She just liked to do it the way she was taught, she didn’t try any other way. She knew one way would work, and that’s how she taught me, and that’s what we still do.”

Since learning from her auntie, Haller has mentored Bowser and anyone else who wants to learn at the community workshops in Simpcw First Nation. Though they focus on involving youth, anyone from the general community is also welcome to attend, as long as they are respectful of the animal hide.

One of those community participants is Fred Fortier, a Simpcw member who has attended many hide-tanning workshops hosted by Bowser and Haller. 

Fortier grew up connected to the land. After recovering from cancer five years ago, animal hide workshops have become a more accessible way for him to practice culture, although he still goes hunting sometimes. 

Visiting, speaking Secwepemctsín, sharing meals, telling hunting stories and laughing together at the workshops are “just a lot of fun,” Fortier says. 

Watching his grandchildren participate in the workshops is exciting. “I think that’s a really important component, our kids wanting to learn and not feeling ashamed to learn our cultural ways … for them to keep their head up and be proud,” he says.

He encourages hunters in the nation to keep the hide, bones and brains in mind when harvesting deer to be in alignment with Secwe̓pemc culture. 

“We have a lot of women in our community who have stepped forward to teach people our cultural ways,” he says. 

“For those people like Tiffany and Roberta, and all of the women who have stepped forward … I think they are the backbone of our community.”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.