The Great Lakes Traditional Arts Gathering on Drummond Island in Michigan proved to be a fascinating and great learning experience for those attending.

We were privileged to be part of this interesting gathering this past weekend. One of the highlights of the weekend was constructing and completing a spruce bark canoe. The canoe took its maiden voyage on Sunday. It was an amazing process.

Thunderbird Atlatl shared our stone tool making knowledge, our popular hafting resin and topped the weekend with an excursion out into the water with an atlatl fishing expedition!

With much help, we put together two sets of canoes to set up fishing vessels with platforms. The project is to tie two canoes together and set up a platform for a person to stand on to harpoon fish from the end of the canoe. On the more traditional of the two setups, we used birch bark torches. We didn’t see any fish on this trip out but learned a lot and had a great experience. Pictures are below. Our next trip out will be to the Pennsic War! We are looking forward to playing Aztec Atlatl Battle.