In Focus: Artist Rory Wakemup Hosts Tipi Construction Workshop for Students

Rail River Folk School in Bemidji is now home to a new tipi after students from Brainerd and Mille Lacs schools made the trip for Indigenous artist Rory Wakemup’s tipi-building workshop last month.

“It’s like a good entry-level, surface-level 101 of tipis,” said artist Rory Wakemup. “You know, how to treat them and how to make them. But I don’t put any prayers in these tipis, so if something does happen or goes wrong, they’re not ceremonial items.”

The group did everything from creating the frame and tying the top together with specific types of knots to learning how to properly create a door. The week-long project was sponsored by the Indigenous Environmental Network and Watermark Art Center’s Miikanan Gallery.

When picking the canvas, things were done intentionally. Everything, from the color to the handprints, was chosen for a specific reason.

“That’s the color of the boarding school, the movement to get that information and the kids back from boarding schools that are buried on their properties,” explained Wakemup. “Anishinaabe Academy in Minneapolis laid the tipi out in their auditorium when the kids came in and put their handprints on them.”

For the kids, the project was just as much about the physical building of the structure as it was connecting with Indigenous culture.

“No one really knows how to do them, and it’s important for the younger kids knowing how to do some stuff that our elders have done before,” said Alivia, an Indigenous Education Club President.

“It’s important that we bridge our culture into our daily lives,” said Brainerd Public Schools Indigenous Education Coordinator Shayla Budrow. “Too often our culture gets hidden and is not showcased to our children and they can’t see themselves within the schools. So that’s why our program is so important, because we want our children to feel comfortable to be themselves.”

In holding the workshop, the hope was that the impact will last much longer than just the week.

“Memories for kids for a lifetime, it’s nice,” said Wakemup. “Maybe not all of them will remember this forever, but it’s stuff that I remembered as a kid in schools, like I’ll remember more about the experiences, like field trips like this than I do any day in class.”