In the early summer of 2024, the Wolastoqewi Elder and traditional artist Gina Brooks invited the literary scholar Rachel Bryant to make paper from a lichen commonly known as old man’s beard. Gina wanted the paper to line the lid of a nineteenth-century Waponahki basket that she was restoring after receiving it as a gift from Rachel. And she wanted to share this basket with public audiences: first, with the audience of an imminent keynote address about the Peace and Friendship Treaty of 1761 that the pair were preparing for the inaugural gathering of the St. Andrews Historical Society; and then, a few weeks later, the basket would comprise half of a creative exhibition that Gina and Rachel had conceptualized for an arts symposium in Moncton.1

The restored basket stands 12 inches tall and is 14 inches in diameter. To line the inside walls, Gina used two pieces of birch bark from smaller trees, sewn together, to replace what would have likely once been a single piece of bark. For the inside bottom of the basket, she etched Wolastoqey totems from the 1725 Peace and Friendship Treaty into a third piece of bark.2 Splits in the sides of the basket – which revealed a thick, green plastic lining when Rachel first retrieved it from an auction house – were mended with spruce root, and some previous mending, done with both root and string, was left intact as a memory of previous restoration efforts. The lid was partially lined with a print (on linen paper) of a small portion of the 1761 Peace and Friendship Treaty showcasing later Wolastoqey treaty signatures.
The Moncton arts symposium exhibition was titled calling on the mokalipuwok, or calling on the caribou, and it featured two baskets that Gina created to remember and renew the relationship between her land, Wolastokuk, and the caribou herds that inhabited Wolastokuk for thousands of years – roughly from the time of the last ice age up until the 1930s.3 The nineteenth-century basket was included to connect audiences to a time in New Brunswick when caribou were here; it also documents histories of environmental change. It’s huge in diameter – as Gina says, you just don’t see baskets like this anymore because artists can no longer find birch trees that are this large – and so while this piece could be restored by Gina through the application of her knowledge, it could never be reproduced, both because of its size and because of what Gina describes as the decreasing flexibility of Gluscap’s first gift to the Wolastoqiyik: the birch bark.4
Gina: “I stitched this basket back up. It was so beat up when you brought it to me. It was almost like treaty. So I just took my time with it. I found the bark and put two pieces together. Underneath are the Maliseet treaty signatures from the 1725 treaty, and on top [in the lid] is the old man’s beard. The little red dot on the 1761 treaty is the wax seal we made from a trade coin. So this basket is a whole understanding about sharing and exchange – and it’s about building relationships with people. Even when there’s been conflict, even when it’s all falling apart, look at what we did with this basket, look what I can do. And if we can do this, anybody can.”

With this restoration, Gina wanted to renew a memory of this land as it was back then, a land that could hold caribou. She told Rachel that although Wolastokuk no longer holds caribou, it continues to hold caribou food – these common lichens that remain sensitive to air quality, including twenty-first-century pollution.5 In this sense, she explained, the land is lonely for the caribou and longs for their return.
Gina: “Years ago I was walking on the land feeling severely depressed. I was walking on the land, and I could see old man’s beard in every tree. So I spoke to it. ‘Wen kila?’ Who are you? Help me. ‘Wen kila?’ Tell me who you are in my language. I kept asking. It’s like how Gluscap changed the animals to let them know they were people – that’s the same perspective that I have when I’m on the land. And I learned that the old man’s beard was the caribou’s food.6
Gina invited Rachel to make paper from these lichens to support the basket’s restoration, and once Rachel had finished, Gina invited her to line the lid of the basket with the paper so that they would both be participants in this process of renewing and carrying the promise of this land to its caribou.

Rachel: “I had such a hard time making this paper because old man’s beard contains no cellulose. I eventually blended the lichen with a small amount of rag pulp, but even once I had a product that seemed workable, the material was always damp. The sheets would dry in the sun, but a few days later, they’d be damp again! I was so frustrated until I remembered what you’d taught me about the caribou food – that it’s sensitive to air pollution, that it absorbs everything from the air. And I live in the fog belt in Menahkwesk – so maybe the paper was just being itself by absorbing all that moisture from the air. Maybe it was reminding me of the importance of keeping the air clean. Maybe it was teaching me.”
The title of the restored basket is lakotowakən, a word that, in the Wolastoqey latuwewakon, means “a tool for making relation” – literally a brotherly, sisterly, or family relation.7 Lakotowakən is often discussed as the Wolastoqey word for treaty, and when Gina and Rachel shared this basket and its story with audiences in Eqpahak, Menahkwesk, Qonasqamkuk, and Siknikt, they encouraged others to hold it in their hands and to understand it in this context – as a tool for making and renewing relations.
Rachel: “We’ve been talking to people about this basket in terms of renewal. I bought it for $40 in an auction. It was in awful shape! Someone had ripped out the inside and lined it with green plastic. And when I saw it and thought of you, when I bought it, when I drove to pick it up and then drove to Eqpahak to give it to you, it was a renewal of our friendship. The 1761 treaty that’s inside the lid – that was a renewal treaty, a renewal of the terms of the 1752 and the 1725 treaties. And when you patched this basket, you had to go to the land and pull on the right root and pick the right bark and renew all of that understanding you have with the land.”

Gina: “I patched this basket because it’s older than all of us. It’s over 100 years old. And you brought it to me and said, ‘Here, Grandmother.’ And it was all beat up. What do I do with this basket? So, I restore it, and the stories come alive in it. And it tells me how important the land is and to tell the people that they have to stop spraying [glyphosate] because the trees are dying. That means we’re dying.”
lakotowakən will be on display in Eqpahak (Fredericton) through July 25, 2025, as part of a group exhibition titled IN DEEP, curated by Amy Ash and centred around the narratives and impacts of resource extraction.
[1] This blog post is interspersed with dialogue borrowed from previous presentations that Gina and Rachel have given on this basket restoration – particularly from Gina Brooks, Tara Francis, Susan Sacobie, Cassandra McLaughlin, and Rachel Bryant, “The Feather Has Two Sides: Contexts for Convergence with Waponahki Art and Artists,” Arts Atlantic Symposium, Moncton New Brunswick, October 2024.
[2] Andrea Bear Nicholas describes the Wolastoqey tradition of “personal totems” inscribed on treaties as follows: “A personal totem usually represented an animal with whom a person held a close relationship. The English word totem actually comes from the Wabanaki word ntotem meaning ‘my relative (but not actually a blood relation but rather such as a special animal or an in-law)’” (32). Andrea Bear Nicholas, “Wəlastəkokewiyik eyoltihtitpən Ekwpahak təkkiw 1781/ Maliseets in the Fredericton Area to 1781,” Journal of New Brunswick Studies 14, no. 1 (2022): 5-46. https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/JNBS/article/view/32885
[3] See Gerry Parker, Beyond the Trodden Path: Sport and Adventure in Early New Brunswick (Sackville: Gerry Parker, 2010).
[4] Gina expands on this discussion of birch bark as one of the first gifts that was given to the Wolastoqiyik in Gina Brooks and Rachel Bryant, “wikhikhotuwok and the Re-Storying of Menahkwesk: Telling History Through Treaty,” Journal of New Brunswick Studies 16, no. 1 (2024): 74. https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/JNBS/article/view/34323
[5] In the 1870s, Charles C. Ward described hunting caribou (or what his text refers to as “megahlip”) with Waponahki guides in Charlotte County, noting, “The ‘old men’s beard’ referred to by Sebatis is the long, trailing moss which hangs from the trees and bushes, and is a favourite food of the caribou” (242-43). “Caribou-Hunting,” Scribners Monthly: An Illustrated Magazine for the People, vol. XVII (New York: Scibner & Co., 1879), 234-247.
[6] This is a reference to Gabe Acquin’s discussion of his people’s Gluscap stories: “Glooscap . . . had all the animals, even to the toad. He made them all believe they were human beings” (195). Edward Jack, “Maliseet Legends,” The Journal of American Folklore 8, no. 30 (1895): 193-208.
[7] Woliwon to Andrea Bear Nicholas for sharing her knowledge with others about the meaning of this word.