Helping Communities Connect to their Culture with Artist Janey Chang
If you are familiar with 7 Seas, you know we have 2 core values. Our commitment to sustainability and desire to share the passion we have for our products with the community. When local artist Janey Chang shared the story of her fish skin leather art and how she’s using this skill to help local communities, we were thrilled to be able to support her mission by providing fish skins to her at no cost.
Janey Chang
Janey Chang is an Artist, Land Based Educator, Fish Skin Tanner + Revivalist. Her main art form and livelihood is working with fish skin leather. She gives new life to salmon skins that are a byproduct of the seafood industry. Janey makes frequent trips to rural Indigenous communities and teaches its members the forgotten, ancient skill of fish skin tanning.
“Fish skin tanning is a very old skill that many communities have lost and forgotten. Due to the impacts of colonization and modernization,” explains Janey. “For me personally, fish skin tanning has led me on an exploration of my own Chinese cultural heritage. Which I have been very disconnected from.”
Fish skin tanning
Fish skin tanning was once a way of life for many communities along the waterways of the northern hemisphere. Including the Ainu in Japan, the Hezhe in China, the Nanai, Evenki and Nivkhi in Russia, the Saami in Scandinavia, and the Inuit in Greenland and parts of Canada. Janey had the honour of teaching fish skin tanning classes in-person and virtually to thousands of humans in 17 countries. Many of these classes include many Indigenous communities who have distant memories of this old ancestral skill.
“Partnering with 7 Seas has enabled me to connect Indigenous People to skills that help them to remember their culture and the land and waters that they inhabit.”, says Janey. Who was visiting Nunavik earlier this year to teach fish skin tanning a Women’s Inuit Heritage Camp in Nunavik.
“The supply of fish skins I access through 7 Seas makes it possible to reach a wider audience and to [help them] experience fish skin tanning.…I am so grateful to 7 Seas for supporting the work that I do. It has a huge ripple effect with the hundreds of people I have taught!”
We’re so grateful to have been a part of the huge impact Janey is making on the communities around us.