I Thee Wed: The hidden history of a fire bag

Emma Knight collections manager , indigenous collections

Indigenous women as marriage gifts for their husbands, and they are still made by Indigenous artists today. They are called fire bags because they hold all the tools for making a fire, such as flint and tinder, as well as tobacco and sometimes a small smoking pipe. This particular fire bag caught my eye because of the unusual basket, butterfly, and heart designs. The size and colour of the beads also make this fire bag unique. The beads are so small they are called microbeads. They are smaller than a size 20/0, meaning that if you lined them up end to end, there would be more than 20 in an inch. The maker used 19 different colours of beads in her work, including two different types of brass beads. This suggests she was able to access the best, highest-quality bead supplies, likely at a nearby trading post or fort.

As we prepare to move the Royal BC Museum’s collections to the new Collections and Research Building in Colwood, BC, we are busy ensuring the collection is getting the best of care. This includes both the physical care of the collections and the important stories these objects tell.

While working in the modern history collection, I came across a fire bag that had been removed from a display about the fur trade. Fire bags were made by

This beautiful fire bag sat quietly on display in the natural history gallery for more than five decades with no mention of its history. When I looked at our database records, I found a note that simply said: “Made by Susan Birnie for husband J.A. Grahame of the H.B.C. [Hudson’s Bay Company]” I was immediately intrigued—who was Susan Birnie?

Susan, also known as Susannah, was a Métis woman born on September 15, 1828, in Fort Vancouver, Wash. Her father was James Birnie, a Scottish fur trader who worked for the North West Company, and her Métis mother, Charlot Beaulieu, was born in Red River, Manitoba— current-day Winnipeg—in 1805.

On September 5, 1847, Susan married James Allan Grahame in Cathlamet, Washington. It is likely that Susan made this fire bag for her husband as a wedding gift. The beaded heart perhaps signifies Susan’s love for James. James was a prominent Hudson’s Bay Company employee, and he would have worn this fire bag to important events around the forts. Her husband’s position also likely afforded her the means to acquire the best beads and supplies. The size of the beads and complex designs indicates Susan was a highly skilled beader. It is important to reunite this history with the fire bag to give voice to Susan Birnie. Generally speaking, it is very rare that we know the identities of the makers of older Indigenous belongings in museum collections, particularly when the artists were women. By reforming this connection, we can bring forward the stories of the people tied to this fire bag in the past, present and future, and remind the world of a wife’s once-forgotten love for her husband.

Hands-on learning made possible with unique outreach kits

Imagine a large container arrives in a classroom. Inside are two beautiful, red stacking boxes. You take them out and open the top box. Nestled into protective foam you see two plaster wall fragments. Each fragment is etched with a language you don’t recognize. But why would a museum collect graffiti? Inside the second box are photographs, letters and documents to help you answer that question.

Educators who borrow outreach kits like the one described above have an opportunity to connect their students with artifacts and specimens from the Royal BC Museum, even if they can’t visit us on site.

Knowing that the real magic of museums lies in our collections, we began to build a suite of outreach kits in 2015. These kits contain a selection of materials chosen to illustrate a topic, theme or issue using reproductions from our collections and archives.

These kits can be borrowed by teachers and other educators anywhere in British Columbia and are shipped out for them to use to supplement and enhance their lessons.

The first outreach kit I worked on—the one with the beautiful red boxes and mysterious wall fragments— was in response to then-Premier Christie Clarke’s apology to Chinese Canadians for historical wrongs. With support from the former Ministry of International Trade and Minister Responsible for Asia Pacific Strategy and Multiculturalism, we were able to work with Open School BC, the Ministry of Education and the Legacy

Initiatives Advisory Council to hear from teachers about what they needed.

Working with a local educator and Dr. Tzu-I Chung, our curator of history, I selected topical images and objects of cultural significance. The exhibits team then got to work creating reproductions of the selected images, objects and documents. The kit was a success and has served as a baseline for all future outreach kits. Throughout the process, we also learned a few things with regard to best practice.

MAkE

it LOOk gOOd

By using reproductions, we aren’t putting any of the museum collection at risk. However, if the materials looked like reproductions—like a photocopied document or a cheap plastic facsimile of a wooden tool— it wouldn’t be handled with the same degree of care and wouldn’t be robust enough to go through all the hands that it sees in a year.

wORk with COMMUnit Y

In our most recent kit, Building Community: Paldi and the Legacy of South Asian Canadians in British Columbia, we were able to respond to a need from the South Asian Canadian Community and work with our partners at the South Asian Canadian wORk with EdUCAtORS

Legacy Project at the University of the Fraser Valley. They were able to find images, provide objects and suggest people that we could talk to and work with to create the resource.

Because we work with classroom teachers and teacher advisors, we are able to apply contemporary teaching practices and historical thinking concepts when creating our lesson plans and educator guides. This method allows students to not just learn history, but interact with it as well. They learn how curators and historians determine if something is historically significant, how to read a historical photograph for evidence and get experience in using primary source documents. This experience allows them to hear first-hand accounts of the past and teaches them important skills for critical thinking and future research.

Next up, we are developing some new kits we are calling Provocation Packs. Instead of using reproductions, these packs will use objects and specimens from our handling collection. We have found that teachers are interested in a flexible array of materials that they can use for their own projects. In the past, our handling collection has only been available to educators who lived locally and could pick up their loans. With these new packs, we can send the handling collection anywhere in the province. We anticipate they will be used in classrooms, by Girl Guides and Boy Scouts, artists, and in programs for seniors living in care.

Last year more than 1,600 students used outreach kits in classrooms all over British Columbia.