After reading your interesting article about birchbark canoe building, The Art of the Craft, I thought that others would like to see, in practice, how it was done. Apparently, César Newashish, in 1971, was one of the few people practicing the art. This documentary shows how a canoe is built the old way. César Newashish, a 67-year-old Atikamekw of the Manawan Reserve north of Montreal, uses only birchbark, cedar splints, spruce roots and gum. Building a canoe solely from the materials that the forest provides may become a lost art, even among the Indigenous peoples whose traditional craft it is. The film is without commentary, but text frames appear on the screen in Cree, French and English. The National Film Board has many films about nature that might interest your readers.
– Roger Herz-Fischler, Ottawa