The gift of woodworking
Special to ICT
Thomas Howes’ traditional wooden artwork is not meant to be on the mantel of the fireplace or on the wall collecting dust.
Howes creates ornate wooden pieces, crafted from various trees throughout the Minnesota northlands that not only reflect tribal culture, but that are also fully functioning pieces. This includes a series of cradleboards, or dikinaagan, that he has been creating.
“Over the years I’ve learned to make things from the tree nation to care for my family and community,” Thomas Howes said. Howes also makes lacrosse sticks as well as knockers, clan markers for traditional burials, drum sticks, drum stand legs and snowshoes.
This type of artwork requires steam-bending sticks and slats of wood.
Howes said he got his start making cradleboards just over 13 years ago
“My wife was pregnant with twins at the time and we were visiting a birchbark canoe building project at Fond du Lac,” Howes said. There, he met Red Cliff Ojibwe band citizen Marvin Defoe, who was leading the canoe build and who nudged Howes to make his twins a set of dikinaagan.
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The dikinaagan was a team effort. With help from other tribal members finding the right types of old-growth cedar, ash tree and plane wood, as well as tapping into their bending techniques, Howes managed to create two new dikinaaginanak.
“After that I sporadically was asked to make dikinaaganan for people and even held one large workshop to teach techniques in the Fond du Lac community,” Howes said. “I grew up with a dikinaagan in our home that my parents got from a man near Grand Portage and I always found the bends beautiful so I made a clone of its shape for all the ones I make to this day.”
Thomas Howes, Eagle Clan from Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, his wife Nashay, from the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, and family live in the historic village of Fond du Lac southwest of Duluth, Minnesota. He works for the Fond du Lac Band as the Natural Resources Program Manager.
Jerry Jondreau with a dikinaagan made for his family by Thomas and Nashay Howes. (Photo: Thomas Howes)In addition to the cradleboards, Howes also makes lacrosse sticks. He has never played the game, but attended a match that included the Twin Cities Native Lacrosse team, which was visiting Fond du Lac to learn about forest management. Howes said he quickly fell in love with lacrosse.
“In our area and particularly Fond du Lac there were no players and certainly no stick makers,” he said. “I felt that it would be good for our community to revive the play of baaga’adowewin and to expedite that we needed sticks.”
Howes’ Native core values defined how he made his woodworking projects, and how he and others worked and used them in the traditional way they were to be used.