Instructors

The instructors and the classes they teach are the soul of GLTAG. Our instructors bring a depth and range of skill and talent that is second to none - and rarely accesible in one place. Take a moment to look over our instructor bios - we are confident this is an event you will not want to miss!

All instructors and classes are subject to change - although it rarely happens, we simply can not control emergency situations that might prevent an instructor from participating.

Craig Perdue - Falconry

Craig is a Master Falconer and has studied under some of the most innovative falconers in the country. He has ten years of rehabilitation experience from psittacine, corvid, and raptor behavioral problems, including a stint at a zoological park. He has presented to numerous adult and children groups and has won national championships in competitive working dog sports, been deployed in SAR searches, and taught and titled for clients in different tracking techniques (including hard surface tracking). He is the principal of Shadow Speak, LLC

Website: www.shadowspeak.org

George Hedgepeth - Plant Resources, Herbal Preparations

George Hedgepeth has been passionately interested in wilderness living, primitive culture and skills, and useful plants since he was a child. George has studied and taught about wild plants, flint knapping, survival, and primitive lifeways in environments as diverse as southern swamps, the north woods, high and low desert areas, North Atlantic Islands, and the Alaska coast. George is one of the founders of the Great Lakes Primitives Gathering on Bois Blanc Island. He is also a high school teacher, working in a program for at-risk youth near Flint Michigan since 1992. He teaches social studies and survival skills programs for students between 14 and 19. We are honored to have George at GLTAG!

Website: www.briarpatchoutdoors.com

Chris Oberg - Atlatls on the Water, Improvised Hunting

Chris is back this year to share his considerable knowledge of historic atlatl systems, slings, and other traditional tools and techniques of the hunt. Chris has promoted traditional atlatl use for years and has replicated atlatls from many cultures with his vast knowledge of the historic and ethnographic record concerning traditional hunting and warfare of traditions around the world.

Chris Oberg’s Website

Mike Miller - Seine Fishnet Making and Twined Bags

As a practitioner of outdoor living skills, Mike Miller has had a lifetime of rich experience. He has spent extended seasons living off the land, often living in bark covered shelters in the north woods. Mike has been a favorite instructor for over 10 years who has shared his knowledge and skills with countless students. One of Mike’s special interests is in simple textiles. He known for his beautiful prized twined and netted bags hand woven from wildcrafted tree and plant fibers. Mike is also an experienced trapper, hide tanner, forager of wild foods, and treasure trove of north woods knowledge and lore.

Punkin Shananaquet - Anishinabe Clans and Water Teachings

Raised by a close family of Anishinabe artists, cultural leaders, and traditionalists, Punkin Shananaquet has had a lifelong value and deep understanding of her Ojibwe and Potawatomi heritage. Through her dedication to the Anishinabe community, she serves as tradition bearer, educator for Native American youth, and Indigenous rights activist. She actively practices her family's traditions of applique beadwork, regalia making and traditional dance, and is often a lead dancer at powwows across the Great Lakes Region.

George Martin - Peyote Beadwork, Corn Soup

George Martin grew up in Whitefish community of the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe Reservation at Reserve, Wisconsin. He is well known throughout the Great Lakes Region and the Midwest as a traditional dancer and has a wealth of knowledge about Anishinabe dance tradition and protocol. George practices traditional peyote stitch beadwork making ceremonial dance sticks, canes, and rattles which can be seen at powwows across the U.S. and Canada. He and wife Sidney spend much of their time traveling to Anishinabe communities far and wide to attend ceremonial functions, support cultural events and activities, and to visit with friends and relations. This year George will present peyote beading and playing traditional moccasin games.

Dave Shananaquet - Birch Bark Etching and Clan Teachings

A cultural icon who is nationally recognized for his artwork, Dave Shananaquet is most well known for his use of vibrant color, classic Woodland floral motifs, and cultural symbolism. Dave is member of the Little Traverse Bay Band of Odawa Indians, and his paintings can be found at museums, cultural centers, and casinos throughout the Great Lakes area. Growing up in the Petoskey region, Dave learned traditional skills, such as harvesting birch bark, wild foods, and plant medicines, from older members of his family. Drawing on a lifelong love of art, Dave has worked with the Great Lakes Lifeways Institute to help empower and inspire young people to express themselves through artwork. Dave's most recent work with etched winter bark includes a stunning 14' hunter canoe depicting traditional clan motifs, floral work, and scalloped edges.

Hugh Covert - Sailing and Historic Wooden Ship Construction

Captain Hugh Covert has been sailing since he was four years old and currently holds a USCG 100 Ton Near Coastal Masters license. With over four decades of experience, he has been at the helm of modern and traditional vessels - from tugboats and fishing boats to brigantines and schooners. He has navigated most of the major water bodies of North America from the Atlantic seaboard, Florida's Intracoastal waterway, the Everglades, the Bahama Islands, Chesapeake Bay, the St. Lawrence Seaway, the Great Lakes, and down the rivers to the Gulf of Mexico and Florida. He has sailed the waters of the Canadian North Channel and most of the Pacific coast to Alaska. When Capt. Hugh is not sailing one of the four sailboats that he built, he can often be found captaining one of the Tall Ships on the Great Lakes.

Website: www.shelterislandtransit.com

Bob Love - Wilderness Navigation and Weather Prediction

Bob is a skilled outdoorsman, and has served as the long-time central organizer of Michigan Flintknappers. We welcome him back to GLTAG as the ever-popular and insightful wilderness navigation and weather prediction instructor. Bob brings depth of knowledge and skills that can only come from years of experience, and we are honored to have him as an instructor.

Website: Michigan Flintknappers

Roger LaBine - Braintan Rice Dancing Moccasins, Rice Bed Outing

Roger is an elder of the Lac Vieux Desert Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, based in Watersmeet, Michigan. He has been a leader of the effort to restore the manoomin plant in the Great Lakes region, and has devoted much of his life to raising awareness of the grain's cultural, historical, and spiritual importance. Working with the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, Roger has helped establish rice restorations in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota. Few people have Roger’s depth of knowledge and respect for manoomin, and we welcome him to GLTAG!

Peter McCreedy - Cooking in Earthenware, Copper Beads

Peter is the director of the Willows Ecology Center at Chatfield School in Lapeer, MI. The Willows is the first commercial strawbale building in Michigan and incorporates numerous ecological design elements, including a passive solar orientation, solar electricity and hot water, and a living roof. Peter uses an earthen oven, swamps, gardens, a Mississippian thatch-roofed house, the river, chickens, fire, and other real world learning tools to supplement existing curricula and help people reconnect to Earth while integrating educational goals and having fun. He was awarded the Michigan Farm Bureau Agricultural Educator of the Year in 2010. Peter’s favorite possession is the homemade diving board for his pond.

Keith Knecht - Birch Bark Containers, Pine Pitch and Birch Tar Making and Use

Keith has lived in Cheboygan, MI for over 36 years and spends most of his time exploring the woods, rivers, and lakes of northern Michigan. He spent 17 years working for Mackinac State Historic Parks as the head Native American interpreter. He has been involved with reproducing items of native material culture for over 25 years, as well as presenting classroom outreach programs to students around the state.

Ferdy Goode - Building the Spruce Bark Canoe

A one week birch bark canoe building workshop in 1979 on the Lac du Flambeau Reservation in northern Wisconsin gave Ferdy inspiration and motivation that has developed into a thirty-two year career making birch bark canoes. In that thirty-two year span, Ferdy has created 67 birch bark canoes ranging in size from seven to twenty-two feet long. In addition to the full size canoes, he also crafts scale model canoes, canoe paddles, and birch bark baskets decorated with etched designs and porcupine quill embroidery. Ferdy’s delicate grace and meticulous workmanship - combined in a harmonious blend of function and art - define his Native-style creations as some of the finest.

Websites: Wordpress, Beaverbarkcanoes

Larry Horrigan - Timber Framing and Cedar Shakes

Larry has had a lifelong passion for history and woodworking. As a traditional woodworker and artist Larry’s skills range from timber framing and log home construction to bow making, crafting fine 18th century furniture, and building pre-19th century firearms. Larry has been involved in living history since 1979, and has specialized in studying the lifeways of early French explorers and voyageurs. Using only period gear he has led a number of lengthy expeditions following historic fur trade routes including a large portion of the Lake Michigan Shoreline, numerous trips across the Straits of Mackinac, the St. Mary’s River and Green Bay.

Ben Piersma - Antler Awl Handles, Wilderness Camping

Ben’s full time job is testing, researching, and selling tools and outdoor goods for life in the north woods. He uses hand tools like axes, hand-saws, and knives daily for fishing, hunting, foraging, self reliance, and primitive bushcraft. Last year’s bucksaw class was huge hit, and Ben is back this year to share his backwoods skills.

Website: Bensbackwoods.com

Margaret Noori - Anishinaabe Language

Margaret Noori / Giiwedinoodin (Anishinaabe heritage, waabzheshiinh doodem) received an MFA in Creative Writing and a PhD in English and Linguistics from the University of Minnesota. She is Director of the Comprehensive Studies Program and teaches Anishinaabe language classes and American Indian Literature at the University of Michigan. Her work focuses on the recovery and maintenance of Anishinaabe language and literature. She is a member of Miskwaasining Nagomojig (the Swamp Singers) a women’s hand drum group dedicated to community health. She and her colleague, Howard Kimewon, have created a space for language shared by academics and the native community. See the website below to learn more.

Website: www.ojibwe.net

Suzanne Pufpaff - Beaver Fur Felt, Bison Wool Textiles

Suzanne began her fiber arts journey as a child when she learned how to knit in 4-H. She began designing fiber projects by the age of 12 and has had a life long love of natural fiber arts. She later expanded her fiber interests with angora rabbits and then sheep while she learned to spin and felt. She has researched the history of felt making through the ages and has taught and demonstrated felting throughout the USA. Suzanne currently owns and operates Pufpaff's Fiber Processing where she washes, dyes, cards, felts, spins and knits for her customers and her own creations. She also teaches fiber art classes and retreats in the mill's studio.

Website: http://fibermill.yurtboutique.com/

Amy Schmidt - Symposium Emcee, Cordage and Fiber Skills

Amy started down her focused "off-the-beaten" path after finding her mother’s copy of Carla Emery’s “Encyclopedia to Country Living” 16 years ago. Since then, she has received her degree as a Natural Resource Technician, attended a Wilderness Guide Program and has worked in various plant-oriented businesses. She is devoted to sharing her passion of earth skills to any of those who want to listen, and currently teaches various nature based classes to children at Hunt Hill Audubon Sanctuary and to the public at her own Blue Hills Tipi Retreat. She enjoys her tipi time and is taught daily by her two wonderful children.

Website: Blue Hills Tipi Retreats

Daniel Bigay - Rivercane Flutes, Shell Carving

Daniel is a full time Artist, flute maker, and performer from eastern Tennessee. He is an enrolled member of the Echota Cherokee Tribe, and has been creating traditional and contemporary Native American art for over 25 years. Daniel’s flutes and gourd art have won awards at Native American fine art shows across the country and his flutes are played by many nationally known Native American recording artists. His art can be found in museums and private collections around the world, and his CD, "Bird Songs" received a nomination for best flute recording at the 2005 Indian Summer Music Awards.

Website: mountianspiritflutes.com

Daisy Kostus - Cree Skills of the Taiga

Daisy grew up in the northern Quebec bush with her James Bay Cree First Nation parents and grandparents. She is a first-language fluent Cree speaker, and her family travelled by canoe, dog sled, and snowshoes as they hunted, trapped, and gathered while constantly on the move following traditional seasonal cycles. Daisy is truly a wealth of knowledge and skills ranging from traditional cooking and medicines to snaring rabbits and what can happen if you run while wearing snowshoes... We are honored to learn from her and listen to her stories and traditional teachings.

Jerry Lebarge -Traditional Ojibwe Carved Fish Decoys

Jerry LaBarge is a Lac du Flambeau Tribal Elder and one of the leading decoy makers in the Great Lakes region. He has been carving fish decoys for several decades and learned his craft from his grandfather and other community elders. The Lac du Flambeau Ojibwe have long passed down the knowledge and skills of spearfishing and decoy carving by taking on apprentices, guiding students to develop their own techniques, and presenting the Ojibwe cultural through this traditional technique. Jerry is frequently commissioned to carve 'fish' for fellow tribal members to use and for decoy collectors from around the country.

Marilyn Kinsella - Story Telling

Marilyn tells stories “…from nursery schools to nursing homes.” Her folktales come from many cultures, but her favorite stories are those she wrote about growing up in her small, Mid-western town. Her stories are full of energy and a delicate blend of action and word imaging. As a full-time free-lance teller, she travels to where stories want to be told. Besides telling, she often leads workshops, writes, and performs puppet plays. She is a published author of the education handbook Storytelling and QAR Strategies. Marilyn’s story teling skills are truly top notch, and we know you will enjoy listening to her tales around the GLTAG fire.

Website: marilynkinsella.org

Larry Kinsella - Stone Tool Technologies

Larry has been a stone tool technologist and experimental archaeologist since 1980. He is a top-notch flintknapping instructor, and has explored many stone tool technologies such as cane drilling, stone axes, and flint micro drills just to name a few. He received the Don Crabtree award from the Society of American Archaeology in 2010, and he hosts the Devil’s Hole Knapp-in, which after 33 years is the longest continually running knapping event in the US.

Website: Flintknapper.com

Tim Carr - Blacksmithing

Tim is renown as one of the finest blacksmiths and teachers of the trade in the region, and we are excited to have him at GLTAG! Tim’s expertise brings the past to life, demonstrating blacksmithing as it was when village blacksmiths plied their trade during the French and Indian War period. He is a full-time blacksmith who has been teaching this artistic and useful trade for almost a decade, and he has served as vice-president fo MABA (the Michigan Blacksmith Association) for 14 years.

Website - blackbearforgemi.com

Rochelle Dale - Porcupine Quill Wrapping

Rochelle’s quill art is known around the Great Lakes as some of the finest. She learned her first quill techniques while living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in the 1980’s and her work is marked by historical accuracy, superb quality, and attention to detail. She joins us with her husband, Jan Zender, and they will be combining their talents at each other’s classes.

Website: zenderdale.com

Jan Zender - Fish Egg Paints on Braintan

Jan has been fascinated with traditional arts and skills since first listening to stories and learning crafts from his mother who grew up at the Red River Settlements in Manitoba. He continued to pursue these interests during 14 years spent on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. He and his wife Rochelle Dale now live on the Yellow River in Michigan’s UP in an off-grid home they built themselves. He contiues to learn and teach to this day, and is known as an accomplished siversmith, wood carver, birch bark canoe builder, quillworker, and artist.

Website: zenderdalearts.com

Earl Otchingwanigan - Cradleboards

Earl Otchingwanigan is an enrolled member of the Lake Superior L'Anse Band of Ojibwe (Keweenaw Bay Indian Community), and grew up speaking the Ojibwe language. He is a life-long carrier of cultural arts and crafts including building full size birch bark canoes, wigwams, birch bark basketry, cradleboards, and carving wood spoons. Earl’s parents were hunting and fishing guides during the 1930’s through the mid-1950’s giving an added education of hunting, fishing, trapping, and of forests and waterways. Earl’s life accomplishments and honors are far too many to list, but include the Golden Eagle Award for best documentary film in 1999 entitled Earl’s Canoe, a Smithsonian Institution FolkLife Series Film, and Professor Emeritus of Ojibwe Language, Minnesota State University at Bemidji serving 1971-2000 - just to name a couple.

Georgia Donovan - Cut Paper and Birchbark Art

Georgia creates intricate, detailed wildlife patterns in cut paper, and she is also the designer of the 2013 GLTAG T-shirt. The techniques also work with birch bark and as beading patterns. She has been teaching the art for many years, often working with community groups and elementary students, and her work is featured by galleries in several states.

Pigeon Family Baskets - Black Ash Basketry

The art of making baskets from the black ash tree has played an integral role in the Anishinabe culture for countless generations, and basketry is woven into the fabric of everyday life for Pottawatomi basket makers Steve and Kitt Pigeon and their children and grandchildren. The Pigeon family are nationally recognized for their baskets - having taught the art at tribal communities across the midwest and being featured in the 2009 documentary film Black Ash Basketry; A Story of Cultural Resilience.

Carly Shananaquet - Cooking Healthy and Traditional

Carly learned to cook from her aunties in the Petoskey area where she is an enrolled member of the Little Traverse Bay Odawa. She has nurtured a lifelong passion for cooking healthy foods with traditional ingredients like wild rice, fish, and wild meats. Carly and her team cater events for tribal functions across the Great lakes region, and she serves as the head chef at GLLI’s “Gdapnamnen” series that focuses on revitalizing and sharing native foodways. She is a Medekwe of the Three Fires Midewewin Lodge, and is also a skilled bead artist.

Bob Berg - Making and Using Stone Tools, Atlatl Dart Points

Bob is the owner of Thunderbird Atlatl, known worldwide as a premier manufacturer of atlatls, darts, and accessories. He has spent the past few years traveling the world learning “primitive” and stone tool technologies with special emphasis on hafting and using the tools to complete practical projects designed to save the world... Bob’s knowledge and experience using stone tools is second to none, and we welcome him to GLTAG!

Website: Thunderbirdatlatl.com

Todd Parker - Traditional Copper Arts

Todd Parker is an Artist who enjoys working in many mediums, but he is probably best known for his copper work. He has spent the past 25 years expanding and refining his understanding of the red metal, building on an ancient Great Lakes industry to create pieces that are as beautiful as they are useful. During his many years working in living history and education programs, he has taught about the history and techniques of copper mining, processing, artistry, and trade. He presents workshops throughout the Great Lakes region.

Cindi McIlrath - Cattail Mat Needles and Mat Making

Cindi McIlrath is a high school teacher, historian, and artist. She lives in northern Michigan with her husband and daughter, where they garden, make maple syrup, and hike the woods looking for treasures. Cindi has taught at workshops around the state, working with porcupine quills, bone, cattails, bullrush, basswood, cedar bark, and many other natural materials.

Nick Dillingham - Bark Berry Baskets and Black Ash Flowers

Nick is a basket maker and cultural artist who regularly teaches basket workshops in southwest lower Michigan. He is also a traditional fire keeper. His black ash flower class was very popular at the 2012 GLTAG, and we welcome him back for 2013.