Amber Sandy

Instructor for Hide Tanning Immersion

Amber Sandy is Anishinaabe and a member of Neyaashiinigmiing, Chippewas of Nawash First Nation. She is an artist with a focus on leather work, beadwork, tufting and furs. Amber is a hide tanner and uses moose, deer and fish skins to make leather by hand. As the coordinator of Indigenous Knowledge and Science Outreach for SciXchange at Ryerson University, she is an enthusiastic advocate of land based education! Her work focuses on integrating Indigenous and western science in her approach to conservation, environmental science and education. It is her passion to strive for increased access to traditional land based practices, art and otherwise, for Indigenous people.

Carman MacKay

Guest instructor, Drum making instructor, and instructor for Hide Tanning Immersion

Carman is a self-determined artist, educator, and cultural resource for communities and school districts throughout Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley. Belonging to the Matsqui and Musqueam First Nations, Carman has lived in many other communities across North America as he embarked on his healing journey. It was through this process that Carman started to walk down a path of self-discovery as he sat down, took time, and learned from Elders, which deepened an intimate connection with the Earth, his mother. As a result, Carman has spent years of time focused on the interconnection of life in. the physical and spiritual worlds.

Carman is deeply passionate when he is able to share Indigenous life skills, understandings, and perspectives to the abundance of learners who have arrived in the Coast Salish Territory. As a teacher, Carman honours the responsibility in sharing both traditional and contemporary cultural practices. Carman happily instructs and shares lessons on drum making, visual and functional arts, woodwork, and Indigenous cultural education.

Janey Chang

Guest instructor

Janey Chang is an Artist, Maker, Outdoor Experiential Educator and Guide, Community Facilitator and Mother on a path to remembering how to be human through the (re)learning of ancestral skills. She is a first generation Chinese Canadian woman living on beautiful Skwxwú7mesh and Tsleil-Waututh Territory at the foot of the mountains and close to the ocean.

Janey interweaves personal stories and encourages self-reflection in her experiential classes. Currently, she teaches earth and ancestral skills at a weekly outdoor program to 4-7 year old Squamish Nation children as well as in classrooms across the Lower Mainland. She can be found at janeychang.ca.

June Pardue

Guest instructor, and instructor for Hide Tanning Immersion

Elder June Pardue has been creating Alutiiq and Inupiaq art since she was a teenager, and she now has nine grandchildren and four great-grands. June offers classes in rural Alaska, where teaches Alutiiq basket making, beading, skin sewing, and regalia making.She also has early autumn classes to teach how to harvest stinging nettles and fireweed for cordage making. She also teaches online at her famous fish skin tanning Zoom classes

Shauna Mikomi

Instructor for Hide Tanning Immersion

Shauna Mikomi is a hide tanner, wild foods forager, and student. She began her skills journey travelling across the continent to learn place-based skills from peers and mentors. She is an alumnus of the Living Wild program in the Methow Valley, WA, USA and has been deepening her relationship to place ever since. Shauna specializes in Buffalo hide tanning and lives close by a beloved herd at the Rocky Mountain Buffalo Ranch, in Golden, BC on Ktunaxa and Secwepemc territories