About Mara CUr

I am a dog lover, herbalist, history nerd, and hide tanner. 

I am currently pursuing a Masters of Environmental Education and Communication at Royal Roads University.  I tree plant in the spring, collect hides in the fall, and teach hide tanning at every opportunity in between.

I grew up in rural Saskatchewan, on Treaty 4 territory, and am a settler to these lands.  I was orphaned when I was a toddler and then raised in a ‘high demand’ (cultish) community, which separated me from much of my blood family.  Both my orphanage and my family’s struggles propelled me to seek European animist ways and folk culture as a means of reconnection and belonging. Of these, hide tanning has called to me the most.  Most of my ancestors are from Scotland and Hungary, and it is these from traditions that I teach.  Some of my way-back ancestors were Indigenous from Treaty 4 territory, at a time when there were mixed Scots/Gaelic-Indigenous communities in Saskatchewan.  The disconnect and suppression of this in my family helps shape my understanding of settler-colonialism and my learning about decolonization.

I connected to hide tanning in 2009 and it transformed my life. I felt a deep pull towards this craft and longed for more information on it, which was very hard to come by. I found my first mentor, Katie Russell, in 2011. Katie offered free deer skinning to hunters so that she could tan the hides. She was beginning to teach others, and I joined her in Montana with some friends for a season of deer skinning and hide tanning. Nestled in a little stone house in the Tobacco Root mountain range, with a fire going in the woodstove nonstop, I learned everything I could. I returned to Montana the year after, and I continue to go there to collect hides for Fern + Roe each season, gratefully doing so on the territory of the Shoshone Nation.

Over the years I deepened my journey of healing trauma and felt a kinship to hide tanning as a container for this slow and nonlinear journey. In the times that no other act could ground me in my body, hide tanning was always there. The lessons contained in its embodied transformativeness are both metaphorical and literal. We bring forward new life after death when we tan hides, and in doing so we learn much about the animals and ourselves. Art and craft connect us to our somatic memories and our ancestries, and through this, we have the ability to create new ways of being with ourselves and each other.

These days I am based on Vancouver Island and Fern + Roe is part of the Patricia Bay Healing Centre, at Tseycum on the Saanich Peninsula. Online offerings are a major part of the tannery now, initiated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Handmade textiles and sheepskin rugs are new to the tannery, and these are offered in a monthly drop. As natural hide tanning reaches more and more people, I am facilitating others’ teaching practice through mentorship. Tools and preserved hides are now available to other tanners and there are two Fern + Roe apprenticeships happening at this time.

In my continued learning, I am indebted to many. My gratitude goes out to:

• Emily Bartle, with whom I’ve learned and lived in deer season for a decade;

• Kris and Kobe, my sweet Montana deer fam;

• Peregrine Somerville, who taught me fishskin tanning + initiated an understanding of trauma healing through skill practice;

• Stephen Edholm, my first bark-tanned leather teacher;

• Kevin Nielsen, who taught me oil-tanning and connected me and many others to the work of Lotta Rahme;

• Tracy Williams, who has taught me to practice hide tanning and all crafts in the right relationship;

• Betania Ridenour, who introduced me to mixed methods tanning and changed the way I work with sheepskins;

• Lotta Rahme, who has taught me almost every technical thing I know!

• Dennis Lanigan, who helped me grow my knowledge of bark-tanning;

• Joy Joseph-McCullough, who has shared teachings on community-based craft and welcomed me as a teacher in her community;

• Char Joseph, who has led by example in holding space for others;

• Peter Ananin, who introduced me to traditional Scottish hide tanning;

• Janey Chang, who continues to broaden my knowledge of fish skin leather and inspires me daily.

• Also thanks to the random farmers who blogged on the internet in the mid-2000s as you shared your mineral tanning recipes; I wish I could see you now.

• And many thanks to those who have learned from me; I continue to learn so much from those whom I teach.

Lastly, the deepest gratitude goes to the animals, who provide a sense of home and meaning and whose lives I strive to honour.