Lakehead University helps build community research through hide-tanning – Anishinabek News
March 13, 2026
THUNDER BAY — A group of hide tanners and researchers shared their hide tanning journeys during Lakehead University’s Weweni Zhichge: Building Community Research Together Through Hide-Tanning Panel Discussion on Feb. 26 at the CASES Building Atrium. The Weweni Zhichge: Building Community Research Together Through Hide-Tanning project was recognized with one of two Indigenous Partnership Research Awards later in the day at Lakehead University’s 21st Annual Research Excellence Awards.
“How I came to hide-tanning, I was hired to teach and research in Indigenous law, Anishinaabe law at the law school and I was spending a lot of time sitting in my office … figuring out how I was going to do my research,” says Larissa Speak, an assistant professor at Lakehead University’s Bora Laskin Faculty of Law and Fort William citizen. “But I very quickly realized that wasn’t really going to work; I needed to be in community and I needed to be engaged in land-based practices in order to do my job properly. I did a bit of work at the sugar bush and just doing some other things like that, but then I saw Fort William had advertised a Spring Hide Camp.”
