Saskatchewan business creating pieces of history

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When Kathy and Jeff Coleclough first started their company Kakwa (Cree for porcupine) in 1993, their goal was to create authentic Aboriginal jewelry-"Real bone and glass, none of that plastic stuff," Kathy said. Today, the company is known not only for its jewelry but also for its accurate reproductions of ancient Aboriginal artifacts and counts the Smithsonian Institute's National Museum of the American Indian and DreamWorks among its many clients.

Both Kathy and Jeff are Ojibway, though Kathy is also part Danish. "So it's Indian and Viking. That's a nice combination," she said. Jeff is originally from Ontario and Kathy from Manitoba, but they now call Saskatche, an home.

Kathy started out making Native-inspired jewelry for herself and her husband, but when she began to get requests from people who saw her jewelry and wanted her to make pieces for them, she and Jeff decided to try to make a business out of it.

The couple was living in Calgary at the time, so they approached the Glenbow Museum, which started selling their jewelry in its gift shop.

"And it kind of took off from there," Kathy said.

Neither of the Kakwa team have training in their chosen profession, Kathy explained.

"My background's actually graphic arts and sign painting and my husband's trained as a chef, so it's not exactly something we went to school for," she said. "There's not a lot of schooling out there for this type of thing."

The company began branching out into making replicas after staff at Fort Calgary asked if they could do a repair on one of its artifacts. When they saw the job the couple did on the repair, they asked if they could create an entire replica for them, and have been a regular client ever since. Now Kakwa has about 70 museums from across Canada on their client list, including the Royal Saskatchewan Museum and the Canadian Museum of Civilization. They've also recently added another prestigious name to that list-the new National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C, which ordered 60 artifact replicas for its education program.

"The business has kind of expanded in four directions, which I thought was very appropriate,"Kathy said. Kakwa has a line of jewelry it produces for gift shops and retail sales, creates replicas for museums and historic sites, creates and delivers educational programs, and produces authentic reproductions for movies.

Authenticity is important when creating the replica items, Kathy explained.

"We actually go out of our way to make items using traditional methods," she said. "So Jeff does the hide tanning ... he does it with stone and bone tools, like the actual bone fleshers from a bison leg, and he tans it the old way, brain tan, smoke tan, the whole nine yards."

The same authenticity goes into the tools Kakwa makes out of stone, bone and antler.

Ensuring the items are as authentic as possible has meant a fair amount of research. Kathy and Jeff do a lot of reading, and have amassed a collection of hundreds of books to help guide them in their work. They've also received quite a bit of guidance from Elders.

"We've been extremely lucky that whenever we've needed to learn something an Elder has kind of showed up," Kathy said. "We were very lucky when we moved to Calgary that we met quite a few really nice Elders that took us under their wing and showed us some stuff. And the best way to learn is to talk to the old people."

In some cases where there are not books on a subject and no Elders to guide them, figuring out how to reproduce an item authentically comes down to a process of reverse engineering, Kathy said.

"Like we do a Paleolithic stone chip atlatl. Most people use the South American style or the Inuit style, which would not have been powerful enough to bring down a giant bison or mammoth. So Jeff actually took the size of the point for that age and reverse engineered and built an atlatl that would function. And that's sometimes what you ave to do for these things," she said.

"Some of it's literally trial and error. And when it works you think, 'OK, well, that's likely.' These are the materials, like you'd have sinew and hide glue. And if this works that's likely the easiest method, you know. Sometimes the simplest method is what would have been used."

Kakwa has been working in the movie biz since 1999 and has just completed work on its 17th production. The first big feature the company worked on was Shanghai Noon. The latest in the list is Into the West, a 12-hour miniseries being produced by DreamWorks Television and Turner Network Television and shot on the Stoney First Nation outside of Calgary.

Kathy was also hired on as a Native advisory to the art department for the miniseries. It was her job to co-ordinate hair, make-up, wardrobe and props to make sure everything was historically accurate. She also worked to create the feathers needed for costumes by hand-painting white turkey feathers to look like eagle feathers.

"So that was kind of neat. And they had to send down an introduction letter to L.A. and all that. So the advantage of that is some of the L.A. people are now knowing who we are. So it could hopefully lead to more things."

While Kakwa may be making a name for itself in Hollywood, it's also earning kudos among the province's educators. The company has an Aboriginal resource kit on the First Nations SchoolNet Web site that lists the products it has available for classroom use.

"We have samples of brain tan and smoke tan, and even a bag with some wampum shells, just because that way the kids can actually touch it, rather than going and looking behind glass, wearing white gloves," Kathy said. The resource kit has been approved as an authorized resource for schools in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and the company has been receiving a number of calls from schools in Saskatchewan that want Kathy and Jeff to come and do presentations.

"We've even had a couple of them ren school buses and bring tours down here. We've had a few different classes come her for field trips. It kind of shakes up the town," Kathy said.

While there aren't any more movie projects in the works in the near future, Kathy and Jeff are still managing to keep very busy with school presentations, and are working to create items that will be used by interpreters within Saskatchewan's provincial parks.

For more information about Kakwa, visit the company Web site at www.kakwa.ca.