Hide tanning with Oshanee

By Alyssa Kelly

Oshanee checks a hide and gives her approval (Alyssa Kelly photo)

PABLO — Agnes "Oshanee" Kenmille recently received an award on May 31, 2007 for twenty years of teaching with SKC. "I've been teaching tanning for twenty seven years now in Dayton and Arlee. The first time I had the class at home," says Oshanee. "She's not quitting, maybe she'll teach for one more year. She says she's been teaching (with SKC) longer than twenty years. She says she got jipped like four years," Allen Kenmille (Oshanee's great-great grandson) says jokingly.

As the young men tended to the fire, Oshanee sat and observed their technique. "Put some more woodchips on the fire because it's getting too big. The outside with the hair needs to be smoked longer than the other side," she would say as she taught the stages of smoking the hide. "A long time ago we didn't have a metal bucket to use (for the fire when smoking the hide). We had to dig a hole in the ground to smoke it. We still used a skirt but we put it over the hole," she recalls.

"Have you ever done this before?" Oshanee asks one of her students.

"No," he replied.

"Didn't you miss a week of this class?" she asks again.

"Yeah, I missed the first week," he says.

"You got an F then," she answers jokingly.

"She has a really joking personality. She likes to tease," Allen says.

Oshanee teaches two tanning classes a year at SKC, one in the fall and the other in the spring. The classes are taught behind the Beaverhead building and at the end of the course, the class goes to her home to smoke the hide. During this particular class, The American Indian College Fund filmed Oshanee. She has created a name for herself throughout the media for years and was not camera shy. She even shared personal jokes and stories.

"One of my students I called Whiskers; I still don't know his name. I always just called him Whiskers. Forty-seven years ago, I was teaching a class and he knocked the bucket over. He hurried up and picked up the bucket and put the hide back over to be smoke. The hide turned out black," she recalls of a man who burnt a piece of the skirt on the hide.

Oshanee receives most of her hides as donations from people that ask her to tan for them. She also receives hides from people in the community that only want the meat of the elk or deer. "For the people who ask her to tan for them, the class makes it a lot easier for her because they do the work. It always turns out good on them though because she's a good teacher," says Allen.

"I'm just a helper for her class. I never say no to her whenever she asks me to help and I've been helping her for two years now. I'm very lucky because I learn a lot from her. Every time I come here I learn something new," says Allen.

For information on Oshanee and her hide tanning classes for the fall, you can contact Salish and Kootenai College at 675-4800.