Fond du Lac photographer and retired wildland fire fighter Vern Northrup has a new photography exhibit in Duluth, Minnesota. It’s called Ishkode, the Ojibwe word for fire.
Transcript
Fond du Lac photographer and retired wildland fire fighter Vern Northrup has a new photography exhibit in Duluth.
It’s called Ishkode [ish-koh-tay] - the Ojibwe word for fire.
The show features photos Northrup took at a fire on Stockton Island last October.
It was the first managed burn on the island in nearly 100 years.
Vern Northrup says Natives in the region used to burn small patches of land regularly.
NORTHRUP I remember watching my relatives burning for different things - burning for strawberries, burning for blueberries, burning around the rice lakes to help give more nutrients into the rice lakes. Burning for a just an opening in the woods so that you could hunt there because animals gravitate toward those little openings.
Those fires were outlawed by white settlers in the early 1900’s and only became legal again about 30 years ago.
Northrup says this managed burn on Stockton Island was especially meaningful to him.
NORTHRUP: They asked me to light the first spark. That was a great honor. They did a ceremony and they asked for help in having a good burn and hoping that nobody gets hurt.
He says according to Ojibwe teachings, fire is a spirit.
NORTHRUP: A spirit that’s older than all of us. I’s like the spirit of the rock, or the ground or the spirit of the moon or the spirit of the sun. They are all way older than us.
With this exhibit Vern Northrup wants to highlight suicide awareness.
He says 17 wildland fire fighters took their own lives last year.
That is an especially high number of suicides.
One of those lost was his own grandson.
NORTHRUP: So I’m going to dedicate this show to my grandson. He was a firefighter. I love him and miss him. And I’ll never understand why he hurt himself but this show is for him.
The show is on display at the American Indian Community Housing Organization in Duluth through February 8th.
For Minnesota Native News, I’m Melissa Townsend.