Made from offcuts of white birch, and Sugar Maple carefully gathered from our family’s sugar bush, the place where we make maple syrup. These small pieces of wood come from the magical Inaatig in our Ojibwe language or Acer saccharum in Latin, finally Sugar Maple in English. Every spring we tap hundreds of these trees when the nights are freezing but the day is above zero and the sun is shining. It’s a time of getting together, hard work, and family. It doesn’t hurt the tree and this same acreage we live on has been caretaken by our families since and before the treaties of our area were signed. It takes 40 litres of sap to make one litre of maple syrup! 

Part of caring for the trees is carefully removing some dry branches, these palettes are made from those offcuts. I have always loved the strength and feeling of them, like a living stone.