Winnipeg teachers learn how to weave colourful fabric into stories

It's a length of rope that tells a story. 

Story vines are colourful pieces of art, intended to help tell a story without written words — and this week, a group of Winnipeg teachers learned how to use them to bring Indigenous culture into their classrooms.

"They actually come from Africa, where they've used vines to create stories," said Renee McGurry. She led the recent workshop for about 15 Winnipeg teachers, who got crafty at the community arts space ArtsJunktion and learned how to create story vines.

McGurry, who now works with the Treaty Commission of Manitoba, began utilizing story vines in classrooms about 10 years ago. She retired a few years ago from the St. James-Assiniboia School Division, where she was the Indigenous education co-ordinator. 

While they don't actually have their roots in Indigenous history, McGurry says they fit in well with oral traditions.

"That's how information and knowledge and teachings were passed down … orally. So I thought this was a perfect way of sharing stories like that — the great flood or the creation stories — using the vines as a way of doing that."

For the workshop, which came out of a grant from Manitoba Education, attendees were given the Cree flood and creation story.

They used all kinds of art supplies — wool, paint, drawings, beads and pompoms, for example — to create their story points and build vines between a metre and two metres long.

Then, pieces were attached along the vine to serve as cues referring to the major elements in the story, allowing the storyteller to relate the story orally from memory, finding the major story points as they run their hands down the length of the vine.

Vivian Fogarty, one of the workshop attendees, created her vine from red, gold and brown pieces of fabric that she braided together to retell the creation story.

"I am going to put the turtle to represent Turtle Island — another name for North America — and then use the other animals, the otter and the muskrat, to try and show how they are going to go down deep and in the water to try and get the earth," Fogarty said.

Anne Mott made a vine to tell the same story, putting googly eyes on the brown furry animals she made.

Mott said she wanted to learn "how to incorporate some more Indigenous perspective into art teaching, and even across curricular activity that can be used with a lot of teachers and different grades across different subject areas."

Any kind of story can be told with a vine, McGurry says.

She has her own personal story vine for her life — one that tells the story of where she was born, her school years and her children. She keeps adding to the vine as her life progresses.

"Doing workshops like this is always nice," she said. "It's sharing my knowledge, my experience, and seeing how excited they are over the fact that they can do a project like this, and it's very easy to incorporate into your classroom."