How Porcupine Quills Become Art | Dillon Bickell

Dillon Bickell is an Anishinaabe quill worker from Chippewas of Rama First Nation, and one of only a handful of people in his community still practising this craft. In this conversation, he walks us through the entire process, from harvesting birch bark and sourcing porcupine quills to creating intricate designs held together by nothing but friction.

Dillon talks about blood memory, the connection he feels to a grandmother he never met, and why he’s driven to document and teach an art form that was nearly lost. He shares how he’s pushing quill work into new territory with pop culture designs, commissioned medallions, and plans for a children’s book that could give the next generation something he never had growing up.

Please note that this transcript was made through a software and it may not be entirely accurate.

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You’re listening to the Behind the Village podcast, where we invite you to join us on a journey to understand how to live a life worth living.

00;00;11;03 – 00;00;32;18
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My guest today is Dillon Bickell, a local indigenous Quill worker that is determined to document, teach, and preserve this craft for generations to come. I have to admit, when I first started researching quilling, I thought it was the designs made of paper. Little did I know what quilling actually was or what it entailed.

00;00;32;21 – 00;01;00;20
Unknown
Aaniin boozhoo Dillon Bickell ndizhnikaaz Rama donjibaa, Orillia dindaa Migizi doodem. Aaniin, my name is Dylan Bickell. I live in Aurelia, but I’m from Chippewas of Rama, and I am deeply clan. And I’m a coworker. So what that is, it’s porcupine quills and birch bark. They’re embedded in there, and it’s an art form that’s been, practice for many, many, many years, by my people.

00;01;00;22 – 00;01;15;08
Unknown
historically, much like a lot of our culture, it was a verbal and, traditional story passed down from generation to generation, family to family. You’d have different knowledge keepers and people that would share that knowledge.

00;01;15;10 – 00;01;30;11
Unknown
So most of what I’ve learned is from other teachers. Other knowledge keepers. And a lot of it’s self-taught as well, because there isn’t unfortunately, the resources like there is for other art forms or other other just even written documentation about it.

00;01;30;14 – 00;01;53;08
Unknown
during Covid, when we’re all stuck inside, everyone was looking for a hobby, and, one of the ones I had found there was, Community crafting circle. And this is October 2021. And it was come try cool work and just just come practice like, learn about it. There’s a guy named Kyle, so they kind of teaching it, and he was a killer himself.

00;01;53;11 – 00;02;11;20
Unknown
So me and Eric, six other community members were there practicing quilting for the first time, and we were placing our quills, and, you know, one at a time, practicing different patterns and different things. And everyone else in the class was maybe on their fifth or sixth Quill. And as already, I’d already laid down over a dozen, and it was on like my 15th, 16th.

00;02;11;20 – 00;02;35;18
Unknown
And they’re like, Holy, how are you doing that? So easy. And it just clicked. And I think there’s a strong blood memory connection with that. Mentioning being passed down from generation to generation. My grandma, Lila Ingersoll, was a killer. Unfortunately, I never got to meet her because she passed when my mom was really young. I think when I picked up those quills for the first time, I guess five years ago come this fall.

00;02;35;23 – 00;02;57;14
Unknown
Surprised? This long time. I just felt connected to her, and it it was just easy. If I can explain that. Yeah. Talk to me about, the blood connection a little bit. So I knew from my mom that my grandma was a killer. And that’s kind of what she did for for money. She would make cool pieces throughout the week.

00;02;57;17 – 00;03;18;19
Unknown
A guy would come by, there is a white guy, on, like, a Friday. He would buy their stuff for really cheap, but to them it was a lot of money and that would be their money for the weekend. And so I know there’s pieces of her work all throughout Muskoka, all through southern Ontario, and knowing my grandma died, that my mom never was taught.

00;03;18;22 – 00;03;42;28
Unknown
And so there was a disconnect there, but they were still that blood memory is a term that hidden kind of talent or trait, and I just needed to kind of unlock it. And so although I didn’t get to meet my grandma, I feel like I, I can think of her and connect with her, on a different level, when I’m working with those quilts and kind of imagining how she would have done certain things helps me in my process to.

00;03;43;01 – 00;04;03;23
Unknown
Do you have some of her work? I do actually. So when I first got into it, my mum dug around in the closet, you know, in the shoe box in the back corner and found some of her mom’s stuff, like my grandma’s. And so she gifted me that. And they’re able to quilt boxes of hers, with a nice floral on top, like a flower.

00;04;03;26 – 00;04;23;10
Unknown
I have this beautiful, it’s like a flat piece, probably size of a piece of paper of these little bunnies, little white and brown bunnies. And the interesting thing about that one is it’s back. So the back of the crow recall you need a backing as well as the front of the birch bark, but the backing is cardboard.

00;04;23;13 – 00;04;42;04
Unknown
And they were well off. Right. So they used whatever resources they had. And it just happened to be a piece of cardboard. Whereas when I call I like to use birch bark or, you know, using deer hide and loose hide or other different types of, of material. So I really like the bunny piece because there’s some story to that too.

00;04;42;07 – 00;05;00;15
Unknown
And then she also made some little tiny canoes, little teepees, and just other like, more decorative picture frame type stuff. But her quill boxes are from the 80s, so they’re they’re older than I am and they’re in remarkable shape given how old they are. These beautiful

00;05;00;18 – 00;05;06;19
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So let’s get into it. Let’s learn about this art form and everything that goes into it.

00;05;06;21 – 00;05;32;18
Unknown
as I mentioned, co-work is porcupine quills and birch bark. So the first primary material, I guess, would be the birch bark, which is we gloss in Ojibway. All the birch bark that I use is harvested locally. It’s something I actually have to go out into the into the wild to go find. You can’t just go up to Home Depot or Michaels or anywhere to find that,

00;05;32;19 – 00;05;47;14
Unknown
the time to harvest Birch is, kind of the peak of summer, when it’s the hottest, Canada Day ish, you know, late June, early July, and you can find a tree and you literally strike it down, a line with

00;05;47;14 – 00;06;06;25
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a knife, and it’ll peel off in the summer. This is one big piece, like a big sheet. Just kind of like it’s it’s moniker of Paper Birch. And I’m only taking about quarter of an inch thickness of birch bark. And so one good size tree, when I’m only using a couple inches at a time, gets me enough work for the year kind of thing.

00;06;06;29 – 00;06;14;12
Unknown
The next material is even harder to find. Is the porcupine quills like the birch. You can’t just buy those online, unfortunately.

00;06;14;14 – 00;06;15;10
Unknown
the porcupine,

00;06;15;17 – 00;06;24;10
Unknown
being the second largest rodent in North America with no real natural predators, it unfortunately gets hit on the road a lot.

00;06;24;13 – 00;06;28;09
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And so a lot of my quills come from roadkill

00;06;28;11 – 00;06;50;09
Unknown
I’m the guy now in the community that people text or call or send a DM to say, hey, there’s a porcupine on the side of the road, near or wherever. And so I have things in my car, to harvest that on the road if I need to, like gloves, pliers, box, some newspapers, that kind of thing, or I’ll take it and bring it home and harvest it there.

00;06;50;11 – 00;07;02;21
Unknown
I have my tobacco with me to make an offering, and what I like about Colebrook is, even if the the porcupine is passed on, you’re still utilizing and honoring it and and creating something with those quills.

00;07;02;24 – 00;07;22;01
Unknown
the next step is cleaning them. So you have to, you know, like dawn soap or other kind of grease fighting dish. So you have to give them a warm bath, get all the grease, the dirt, the grime, sort out all the different hairs, and then you’re finally able to start working with your quills and your birch bark.

00;07;22;04 – 00;07;41;04
Unknown
So it’s process. In some pieces it’s you have dozens, if not 2020 five hours worth of work just before you can even sit down on and start creating something. Wow. Pretty. You mentioned with the birch, you know, you can kind of harvested and then you’re okay for about a year or so, depending on the size you’re able to get or the quills.

00;07;41;04 – 00;07;59;23
Unknown
Do they last like do they have an expiration where you can’t use them anymore or they they do in a way. I say to people, treat them like newspaper, so don’t let them get wet and keep them out of the sun. But they will last for quite a while because they’re just kind of like a plastic straw.

00;07;59;28 – 00;08;33;15
Unknown
They’re they are brittle and can snap when they’re not being used or working with. But most quills, like the average porcupine, has 30,000 quills. So if you get a porcupine or two a year, again, not all those quills are always usable, but they do last a while. And I have numerous boxes around the house of different quills from different animals that I like to try to keep together because they’re often just like how we’re different, you know, different skin tones, hair type sword, porcupines that some of the curls are thicker, some of them are a little bit different color.

00;08;33;17 – 00;08;37;28
Unknown
So it’s nice to keep those specific harvested quills together.

00;08;38;01 – 00;08;47;12
Unknown
when you first start out, like I said, that’s another issue with quilting is it is hard to start. Over the years I’ve been gifted a lot of different materials, and people know that I do this now.

00;08;47;12 – 00;09;06;17
Unknown
So they’re they’re offering those helpful hints of of where to find them. But I do have a decent call. It supplies, if you will, where each year I kind of focus a bit on my harvesting, and then I can focus on crafting later in the year throughout the winter months. Like right now, where you can’t go out and harvest because there’s everything’s asleep.

00;09;06;17 – 00;09;14;12
Unknown
So, it is cyclical in that and there’s obviously teachings and, a certain, I don’t know.

00;09;14;14 – 00;09;29;03
Unknown
I guess not the teaching, but like a beauty and and understanding that would, you know, such a fast paced 2026 capitalistic world we live into this. There is a cycle and you can’t rush these things and that it’s a good reminder of the old ways.

00;09;29;04 – 00;09;54;06
Unknown
So that makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. I wanted to ask about you mentioned it tobacco offering. What is that and what does that entail. So salmon or tobacco. It’s one of our sacred medicines and was the first medicine gifted to, to Ojibwe people by people. And what it does is it’s a way of offering thanks and with connecting to spirits and to all creation.

00;09;54;08 – 00;10;02;23
Unknown
And so when I’m harvesting bark or when I see a porcupine that’s passed on, I’m giving thanks and I’m offering and I’m

00;10;02;28 – 00;10;26;12
Unknown
telling that that creature that that bark, what my intentions are. And I come from a good place and I have a kind spirit, and I’m going to use you in a way that’s this kind. And it’s our kind of way of giving thanks and ceremony that is key to kind of all of what we do and knowing, you know, walking and living that good life and just giving thanks.

00;10;26;15 – 00;10;33;28
Unknown
In terms of what I like to create, a lot of my designs are not typical for what you’d see with Quill work.

00;10;34;01 – 00;11;00;18
Unknown
Well, as I mentioned, my grandmother’s flowers in the bunnies. Lots of nature, lots of floral like vegetation patterns, animals. I like to do more modern co-working, but sort of been calling it, pop culture. So I’ve done one of my my, my favorite pieces is Grogu, your Baby Yoda. For The Mandalorian, it’s only like 2.5in tall, but I managed to get him holding the little soup cup.

00;11;00;20 – 00;11;25;18
Unknown
Oh, sorry robe. And like the whole the greens and everything. I’ve done Black Panther from Marvel. I’ve done Mario pieces with the Star and Blue, the ghost and a few other different things. What else have I done? Pop culture as I’ve done, like a tattoo style, you know, like American vintage style cool snake, which I really like.

00;11;25;20 – 00;11;49;06
Unknown
And just other things you don’t see even in you see Quill work. So, yeah, you could do lots of flowers. I’ve done lots of those. I’ve done different animals. I’ve done fish and bear and those type of more traditional things. But I like pushing the art form to show you can create something modern, something that our ancestors would have never even dreamed of in quills.

00;11;49;06 – 00;11;57;11
Unknown
Because it’s such a it’s it’s just the material, right? The canvas is quite endless for what you could create. So that’s the fun part.

00;11;57;14 – 00;12;13;29
Unknown
And then how do you create them? Like how what how does it all come together. You’ve got quills. You’ve got birch bark or a backing. Yeah. So a lot of like my process that I would get is design and I would imprint it onto the bark.

00;12;14;01 – 00;12;45;28
Unknown
So oftentimes it’s say it’s a flower. I would sketch that I a piece of paper, and then I would put that paper on the bark and trace over it. And that leaves just a faint in person on the bark itself, because you don’t really want to draw on the part because it would stay there. And then you start crawling and basically you’re puncturing holes in the bark for those quills to kind of slide through, and then they fold over, almost like if you were to picture a staple, that’s the finished product where it goes in, you fold over the other side and they pull it flat, and that’s all it is.

00;12;46;01 – 00;13;02;11
Unknown
It’s just friction. There’s no other material, there’s no glue, there’s no hidden fasteners. It’s all just the friction of pulling that quill through a tiny hole in the bark that holds it in place. And you just do that over and over and over until you fill in your, your design.

00;13;02;11 – 00;13;09;16
Unknown
I think with my tattoo style snake, it’s one of the larger pieces I’ve made. I counted all the growth just for fun.

00;13;09;18 – 00;13;38;22
Unknown
SAT there and one, 2345678. I did that 768 times. Oh, wow. And there was red quills, black quills, yellow quills, all which are dyed, which is another step in the process of getting prepared with your materials. Yeah. Some of those pieces are huge. Literally hundreds, if not thousands of quills. Wow. The just, you know, the amount of time and that.

00;13;38;22 – 00;13;58;27
Unknown
Yeah. So it’s not even like the harvesting part that’s just, you know, if you were to if you were to lay a quill and I showed you a few times, I bet you you could do one per minute, which is really slow. But you can imagine I can probably do one every if I really wanted to, 10 or 15 seconds.

00;13;59;04 – 00;14;18;21
Unknown
So I’m doing 3 or 4 a minute. If you were to take 700 quills at three a minute, you’re still talking 5 or 6 hours straight. If you were to keep that pace, plus all the time to get harvest materials, clean the quills, dye the quills, prep the bark, prep your pattern, work on the dang thing,

00;14;18;21 – 00;14;22;19
Unknown
So you could have a piece that’s ten, 12, 15 hours in.

00;14;22;22 – 00;14;44;03
Unknown
But to me, coil boxes are the pinnacle of the art form. They are three dimensional, you know, jewelry sized boxes. It’s not bigger, but I do a lot of earrings, medallions or other different wearable type stuff, with all different designs. I’ve done a few different sports teams, some frame pieces, you know, the 40 Niners football or strong Maple Leafs or other different Bluejays.

00;14;44;04 – 00;15;03;19
Unknown
I did a really cool Blue Jays medallion, raffled it off. And the winner actually, she wore it to the World Series games just this past season, which is kind of cool that she’s taking a selfie at the Rogers Center wearing my cool work at the World Series. That’s so cool. That’s pretty cool. They didn’t win, so maybe it wasn’t good luck.

00;15;03;19 – 00;15;07;02
Unknown
But this is neat to see. Like out in the wild. Yeah,

00;15;07;10 – 00;15;33;21
Unknown
there’s been a couple pieces. One in particular. I’m thinking of that was a little more meaningful, as a commission piece, for a friend. He wanted a medallion of his clan animal. So he was sturgeon clan fish. He gave me his his spirit colors, five different colors. So in the beadwork, I alternated, you know, the purple, the white, the yellow.

00;15;33;21 – 00;16;00;21
Unknown
Like those colors in the pattern. So that was very personal to him. And then that one is a piece that I was gifted some salt cured lake trout fish skin. And it was the consistency of like, leather, like hard, hard leather. So it was workable for me as the backings. So I called the sturgeon on the front, edged it with his spear colors and beads, and I backed it with the lake trail.

00;16;00;23 – 00;16;10;07
Unknown
So while it wasn’t sturgeon skin, but it was fish, so he’s fish clan with the medallion back with fish skin that would sit on his breast. So

00;16;10;07 – 00;16;19;12
Unknown
told him about it, that I wanted to do that. He was like, that’s I’ve never seen that. Like that’s amazing. Yeah, yeah, it’s cool like that. That’s that’s you. Right? That’s your people.

00;16;19;12 – 00;16;24;25
Unknown
That’s your clan. So he was beyond excited to get that. And I was really happy to create the forum.

00;16;25;01 – 00;16;51;15
Unknown
Is there anything in particular that drew you to Quill work over other forms of artistry for you? Yes and no. I think, I’m not much of a painter or illustrator, draw, graphic artist or anything like that. I’ve tried beading and I did use beads in in some of my work, but I find them very frustrating and I’m not very good at it.

00;16;51;17 – 00;17;11;24
Unknown
It was when I picked up the quills and just that natural, like riding a bike that you’ve never ridden before. It just clicked. And so that was one reason that I found it easy and not a lot of people. Quill, in the community, you can probably count on two hands or less the amount of practice quill workers.

00;17;11;27 – 00;17;27;18
Unknown
And we’re a community of almost 2200 people, and even on social media and in other places, you see a lot of prolific painters, woodland style artists, a lot of different other feeders, but there’s not a lot of color. So part of me taking up

00;17;27;23 – 00;17;35;29
Unknown
Quill and by doing and the social media presence I have, is also just for sharing that knowledge and creating those resources that I wish I had when I started.

00;17;36;05 – 00;17;36;27
Unknown
So it’s kind of like

00;17;37;03 – 00;17;51;18
Unknown
what drives me still today is, is keeping the art form going and knowing I couldn’t ask my grandma, but hopefully if I have grandkids one day they’ll be able to ask me and three mend that broken chain, I think super important.

00;17;51;24 – 00;18;07;15
Unknown
I’m hopeful to have, I guess, a picture book, a children’s story, about quilling, specifically kind of the first steps of harvesting following a young, young Anishinaabe boy, gathering those materials for his northwest.

00;18;07;15 – 00;18;09;07
Unknown
His grandma.

00;18;09;10 – 00;18;20;26
Unknown
I have dreams to of making like a coffee table book, like a thick, nice, glossy, very high quality pictures of color from all over, and even interviewing and asking other people in the community because there’s there’s lots of old

00;18;20;26 – 00;18;34;11
Unknown
stories of people remembering, oh yeah, my great, great whatever used to color. My aunt used to do this, and I remember them sitting around talking in the language, laughing and working on their quote, like those cool stories that just need to be shared.

00;18;34;13 – 00;19;03;15
Unknown
like I didn’t start cooking till I was 27 years old. My son Henry’s 19 months old. As soon as he’s capable and able, if he wants to, he can quilt. So when he’s 4 or 5, six, he’ll have a 20 year head start on me, which is crazy to think about. Yes. But just having the those resources and showing the kids and going to the classroom next month, when I went to school and Ramah, we never learned about that.

00;19;03;15 – 00;19;27;20
Unknown
We didn’t have anyone come in and show us and like, it was just such a foreign concept of something so intimately our culture that it was so no one knew how to get it. And now that we have some opportunities to kind of push through and fix that, because it was, for many reasons, taken away and broken, I think that’s a huge part of what I want to just tell people is it’s okay to try.

00;19;27;20 – 00;19;55;14
Unknown
It’s okay to mess up. You could try calling and hate it. And a lot of people do because it’s very frustrating and time consuming. You have to be very particular impatient with it. But I find it almost meditative and healing working with those materials. Thank you, my grandma. And just pushing the art form. And then, you know, if I get a commission piece here or there, that only just helps, you know, fund buying more, more dye or other different beads and stuff, right?

00;19;55;14 – 00;20;01;07
Unknown
So to me, it’s not a business. It’s more just an extension of of what I like to do as a hobby.

00;20;01;09 – 00;20;14;11
Unknown
yeah, it’s it’s like I mentioned, there’s only half a dozen quilters left in our community. Wow. And to Quill you need good hands. You need good eyesight. So as you get older it’s something that you just can’t do anymore.

00;20;14;11 – 00;20;37;03
Unknown
So I want to do it for as long as I can, and try to teach as many people as I can go and create resources. And, and a legacy is kind of a big word to say, but treat that history of is known for painters and baseball players and musicians. And I want it to be known for quilters again.

00;20;37;05 – 00;20;55;23
Unknown
I appreciate the insight on the history of Quill work. The ties to the community and culture, the erasure of it over time. I’m inspired by Dylan’s drive to educate others and continue to build resources for generations to come. I can’t wait to see where he takes the craft from here.

00;20;55;26 – 00;21;15;15
Unknown
Thank you for listening to the entire episode. All the links and info you heard in this conversation will be featured in the show notes on our website. If you’d like to know more about anything we mentioned in this episode, make sure to check Villager Magazine Talks Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you’re listening from.

00;21;15;17 – 00;21;24;09
Unknown
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