Sask DLC students experience a full day of learning on the land.
Students in our Wildlife 10 and 20 course participated in a field day near Swift Current, where they gained hands-on experience with land stewardship, the principles of Leave No Trace, fire lighting, knife skills, and bison hide stretching. They also had the privilege of hearing from local Métis Elder Barb Parchman, who shared her knowledge of Red River carts and her family’s history.
Students learned about the aspects of fire lighting by gathering grass to make tinder balls and used ferro-rods and friction fire to light embers. Students each lit and maintained their own fire then safely extinguished their flames.
Students got to experience knife work by making their own batons/mallets before creating a variety of projects including feather sticks, tent pegs and worm whisperers.
The afternoon was spent preparing a fresh bison hide with the Buffalo Cultural Collective and local Lii Buffalo Métis community. The hide was stretched on a rack and the remaining flesh was scraped off. They used a variety of historical and more modern tools to scrape the other layers right down to rawhide (something that took the rest of the weekend to do!!)
Local Métis Elder Barb Parchman shared her knowledge on the Red River carts, her grandmothers' role as a cart driver, her families' original bison hide scrapers from the 1800's, and various other artifacts that the students found fascinating.
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