Tentsítewahkwe

Haudenosaunee people follow the season cycles of the earth.  Our mothers and grandmothers knew how to take what was harvested from the land to create what was needed for their families.  They gathered clay to create intricate pottery and pipes, they wove matts from bullrush and cattail, they tanned moose hides and adorned them with quillwork.  Much of this land based knowledge went to sleep as a result of colonial practices including boarding schools, forced religion and land theft.  Today we can marvel at the work of our ancestral grandmothers from behind the glass cases of museums. Sometimes generations separate us from the knowledge of how our grandmothers created these things, but there is a connection, a blood memory that we carry inside of us.   

Jessica Shenandoah is Wolf Clan from the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation and comes from a large family of knowledge keepers.  As a young girl it was normal for her to go with her mother and grandmother to pick medicines, berries and wild food plants.  She is now a mother of four, seeking to bring back the land based practices that have been lost. Jessica reaches both inside and outside Haudenosaunee territories to find those who have reconnected this knowledge, so she can bring it back to our community and the future generations.  She embodies Tentsítewahkwe, as she picks up knowledge of the old ways, these slow methods of creating and connecting in reciprocity with the earth.