WEBINAR:
Gifts from the Salmon: Reviving an Ancestral Skill
The making of salmon skin leather is an almost forgotten ancient skill that many coastal and river communities in the Northern Hemisphere once practiced and few still do.
Join Janey Chang, a Fish Skin Leather Revivalist and Ancestral Skills Artist, as she guides you through a virtual exploration of this old tradition, which connects her to her Chinese ancestral lineage and to the Coast Salish Lands that she calls home. She will share some of the uses of fish leather from around the world and will also demonstrate some of the steps of the process of fish skin leather tanning.
Date: Saturday, January 9, 2021
Time: 1:00pm – 2:30pm
Platform: Zoom (Information about how to connect will be sent to participants prior to the event)
Tickets: $1-$10 Sliding Scale (A service fee and GST is also applied to ticket sales.)
Janey Chang is an Artist, Maker, Outdoor Experiential Educator, Community Facilitator and Mother on a path to remembering how to be human and alive through the (re)learning of ancestral skills. She is a first generation Chinese Canadian woman living on beautiful Skwxwú7mesh and Tsleil-Waututh Territory at the foot of the mountains and close to the ocean. Her main art form is fish skin leather, where she gives new life to salmon skins that are destined for waste from the restaurant industry. Learning this ancient skill has helped to connect her to her Chinese heritage as well as to K’emk’emelay, the land she now calls home. This passion has evolved into her livelihood, and she has had the honour of teaching fish leather classes to many, including indigenous communities who have distant memories of this old ancestral skill. During the pandemic, she has taken an even deeper dive into the art of making fish skin leather and to teaching classes virtually to local and international audiences.
