Where I Learned to Weave

These writings are reflections on growing up in the Kwakwaka’wakw community of Alert Bay, where I also learned to weave. After we moved away, I returned each summer with my family for the commercial salmon fishing season. One year (2007) I brought around a typewriter with me everywhere I went, including on the fishing boat and into the forest. When I look back on the writing from this time I value it so much. Because, I feel like at that time I was the kind of person that the weaving wanted to give itself to, or trusted itself with.

I feel like the weaving took root in my heart as a worthy place to flourish in, and lately I find myself wondering if I’m still that person. It offered so much, but to translate this skill from another time into the capitalist structure we