BIGFORK, Minn. - In his dilapidated workshop steeped in cedar sawdust and family history, Ray Boessel frets over his role in keeping a centuries-old craft alive. The craft is building birchbark canoes ...

There's no room for a car in the Kesselhon garage. Instead, the space is taken up by cedar strip canoes in various stages of construction. Forms for more hang from the rafters. Welcome to the Lakeside ...

Wayne Valliere picks up a long, thin spruce root — lovingly soaked, stretched and whittled into ribbonlike smoothness. Normally, he would be using the root to sew a traditional Ojibwe canoe, but, for ...