North House Folk School

Boots are essential footwear and most people know very little about how they're made! Learn about how layers of leather come together to make these mysterious shrouds. Terminology, pattern making, basic tools and different construction methods will be discussed!

Come and share a good ol fashion fika with us while we share a little bit of our story and answer your coffee related questions!

Check out a demonstration of the tools and techniques used in making shrink boxes (Krympburkar) by hand.

Learn how Emma made a table-top work-holding station that is portable and customizable. Get inspired to plan your own project, whether you are new to woodworking or looking to simplify your set up.

Come have a up close encounter with a denizen of the North more common than a moose: the tandem axle plow truck. Loaded with 10 yards of salted sand, these 30-ton beasts of burden are equipped with hydraulic wings and blades to keep 300 miles of wilderness county roads open year-round. Hop up in the cab and check out the view from behind the wheel in this interactive show and tell.

Here's a fun project for kids of all ages: learn to make felted balls with a little wool, water, and effort. Perfect for this season of decorating!

Join Libby, North House's Grants Manager, to take your snowflake snipping skills a cut above the rest! Paper and scissors will be provided in this activity for all ages.

Learn the basics of hand-sewn leather work: how to sew, wet molding, setting rivets, cutting and patterning pieces, and the tools you'll need to get started with leather.

Leave your sparkly bass boat at home. This session is all about a minimalist approach to wilderness lake and stream trout fishing. Lindsay has been pursuing wilderness trout on camping trips for the last 30 years and may have a useful trick or two up his sleeve.

If your favorite sweater or woolen good has unwanted ventilation (ahem, a hole), it's probably fixable. Bring it down for advice and if you're lucky, a little help and supplies that will make those holes a distant memory.

Learn how to fix holes and rips in big canvas items without the need for a machine.

In 2001, Polar Explorer, Lonnie Dupre and his partner John Hoelscher circumnavigated Greenland. It took them five years to complete the project, traveling the northern half by dog-team and the southern half by kayak. A circumnavigation of Greenland had never been completed before and has not been repeated since. In 2022, Lonnie returned to Greenland for the first time since his circumnavigation. His aim - to assemble a dog team, train them and travel with them, alongside Inuit hunters throughout northwest Greenland. AMKA, meaning “one with a friendly spirit” in Inuktun, is the story of this return to Greenland.

This 40 minute film looks into the relationship and connection between Polar Explorers, Inuit Hunters and the Greenlandic Sled Dog. The focus of this story is not a final destination or successful completion of a specific objective on a map. Instead, it endeavors to illuminate how traveling in the Arctic by dog team is a deeply connecting force, no matter what culture or country one started from. AMKA shares the profound and lasting impact such experiences have on a person’s soul and celebrates the integrity of a culture amidst change.

Language: English Film content advisory: Brief hunting/slaughter scenes.

Immediately following the film showing join Lonnie Dupre for a Q&A This film and Q&A will also happen Saturday, November 18 at 1:30pm

Since 2017, Memphis Rox climbing gym has brought the camaraderie of climbing to a Memphis inner-city neighborhood. In the winter of 2020, legendary climber Conrad Anker invited a crew from Memphis Rox to tackle ice climbing outside Bozeman, Montana. For some of the Black climbers, including filmmaker Malik Martin, the expedition was their first trip outside Memphis. The restorative values of outdoor recreation have never been so needed as they are today—a subject Black Ice addresses head on.

Language: English Content Advisory: Mature themes, language

Apayauq follows Inupiaq dog musher Apayauq Reitan as she becomes the first out trans woman to complete the Iditarod, a 1,000 mile sled dog race across some of the toughest and most inhospitable terrain in Alaska. Along the way Apayauq reflects on the challenges she has faced coming out as trans, her journey to doing so, and what it means to complete the Iditarod as a woman. In an era when countless attacks are being launched against trans people nationwide, Apayauq works to create further empathy and understanding.

Language: English Content Advisory: Mature themes, some strong language

After becoming the first person to ski the Seven Summits, team athlete Kit DesLauriers found herself searching for purpose beyond herself. And through an epic adventure of athleticism, survival, and conservation, she found it. Beyond the Summit explores her two weeks of traversing the arctic on skis, telling the story of a diminishing snowpack in one of the most pristine wilderness areas in the world—the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Language: English

The Fight for Greenland offers a unique insight into the heated debate about independence, language, and identity that rages in modern-day Greenland. What does the future hold for Greenland? Should Greenland become a sovereign state or on the contrary strengthen its ties to Denmark? The film follows four strong-willed and dynamic young Greenlanders that disagree on which direction their country should follow, but all are fighting for a better Greenland.

Languages: English, Greenlandic and Danish with English subtitles Content Advisory: Mature themes including suicide, language

In northernmost Sweden and Norway, a conflict over land and borders seems insoluble. Simon and Beatrice Marainen and their three kids belong to an indigenous Sami semi-nomadic community of reindeer herders that has traditionally moved freely across northern Scandinavia following the natural movement of their herds. But nationalism, bureaucracy and politics threaten this traditional way of life.

Languages: Sámi, Norwegian, and Swedish with English subtitles

In 2001, Polar Explorer, Lonnie Dupre and his partner John Hoelscher circumnavigated Greenland. It took them five years to complete the project, traveling the northern half by dog-team and the southern half by kayak. A circumnavigation of Greenland had never been completed before and has not been repeated since.

In 2022, Lonnie returned to Greenland for the first time since his circumnavigation. His aim - to assemble a dog team, train them and travel with them, alongside Inuit hunters throughout northwest Greenland. AMKA, meaning “one with a friendly spirit” in Inuktun, is the story of this return to Greenland. This 40 minute film looks into the relationship and connection between Polar Explorers, Inuit Hunters and the Greenlandic Sled Dog. The focus of this story is not a final destination or successful completion of a specific objective on a map. Instead, it endeavors to illuminate how traveling in the Arctic by dog team is a deeply connecting force, no matter what culture or country one started from. AMKA shares the profound and lasting impact such experiences have on a person’s soul and celebrates the integrity of a culture amidst change.

Language: English

Film content advisory: Brief hunting/slaughter scenes

Immediately following the film showing join Lonnie Dupre for a Q&A

Northern Nights, Starry Skies is a visually stunning celebration of our spectacular starry skies above the world’s largest designated Dark Sky Sanctuary. Ojibwe, Dakota cultural astronomers and other experts share the wonders of the heavens. The documentary, which was co-produced with Hamline University’s Center for Global Environmental Education, also illuminates ways we can reduce the negative impacts of light pollution.

Language: English

Immediately following the film, join Caroline Torkildson, dark sky advocate, for a Q&A

Full Circle is an unblinking examination of the challenges of Spinal Cord Injury, and a celebration of the growth that such tragedy can catalyze.

The film follows Trevor on a path towards post-traumatic growth in parallel with Barry, 50 years later. Their stories mirror each other, connected through time and space by common locations and motifs; injuries in the Colorado backcountry, rehab at Craig Hospital, fame in Jackson Hole; but also through their shared resiliency and refusal to let their zeal for life be limited by their injuries.

Barry shows that growth after spinal cord injury is possible for everyone, not just adaptive athletes. And yet his legacy paves the way for Trevor’s superhuman feats.

Six years after his accident, Trevor returns to the site of his accident in the Colorado backcountry with the goal of landing the world’s first double backflip on a sit-ski—the culmination of his own personal growth and reinvention.

Language: English

Content Advisory: Mature themes, language

A group of Indigenous Handgames players based in the Yukon travelled to four separate communities in the Delta region of the Northwest Territories (Inuvik, Aklavik, Fort McPherson and Tsiigehtchic) teaching Handgames to citizens. In addition to the history and culture being taught, selflessness and humility were major lessons in this ancient game. In the end, each community submitted a team to a Delta-wide tournament in Inuvik.

Language: English

Set in the remote village of Yakutat, Alaska, With the Tide follows Tlingit youth as they explore their relationship to the ocean, themselves, and the expanse of isolated wilderness they call home. The story documents the formation and growth of the Yakutat Surf Club and explores how surfing can increase wellness and encourage valuing nature in a community that is constantly facing layers of adversity and the challenges of geographic isolation.

Language: English

Charlotte is a young Abenaki artist who makes baskets from black ash. She carries on her shoulders the heritage of all the generations that preceded her, which pushes her to surpass herself in her passion for basketry. Abaznoda means “basket” in the Abenaki language.

Language: French with English subtitles

A young Anishinaabe woman struggles with her identity in the big city. Though at first she finds it difficult to express herself, after a short series of events she realizes that she can still be Native while in a city. In fact, itʼs her responsibility to herself, her ancestors, and Creation. With this realization, she finds her strength.

Languages: English and Anishinaabemowin with English subtitles.

Josh Crooks is a promising teen hockey star in a sport where Black players like him are chronically underrepresented. Ice Breakers reveals the buried history of a pioneering Black hockey league in Atlantic Canada, as Crooks discovers that his unshakable passion is tied to a rich and remarkable heritage.

Language: English

The Colour of Ink uncovers the medium’s mystery and power through the eyes of Jason Logan, a visionary Toronto inkmaker. Working with ingredients foraged in the wild—weeds, berries, bark, flowers, rocks, rust—he makes ink from just about anything. Jason sends custom-made inks to an eclectic range of artists around the world, from a New Yorker cartoonist to a Japanese calligrapher. As the inks take on a life of their own, his playful alchemy paints a story of color that reconnects us to the earth and returns us to a childlike sense of wonder.

Language: English

Historjá is a poetic and strikingly told story of world renowned Sami artist Britta Marakatt-Labba. Her art describes the Sami culture, today and historically, and the reindeer husbandry threatened by the global climate crisis. For decades she has woven together the indigenous Sámi peoples’ political struggles and magical mythological world-view in her large-scale embroidered art. Now she, her family, and her people face an existential battle as climate change threatens their traditional way of life as reindeer herders on the Arctic tundra.

Language: Swedish and Sámi, English subtitles