Top: Ojibwe and Abenaki birch bark scrolls. Used to hold ancestral stories and spirits, considered living beings themselves. Sometimes employed in Midewiwin, the Grand Medicine Lodge, a secretive teachings based religion amongst the New England native tribes.
Bottom: Basque Arboglyphs, a tradition among Basque-American sheepherders most commonly practiced between 1850's and 1930's. Found in Idaho, California, Oregon, and Nevada; these trees allow for Basque descendants to track the movement of their ancestors across the west in a time very little formal documentation of this group exist. Sheepherders once used these symbols to mark rest stops and shelter- and they could contain anything from poetry, local wildlife, images of prostitutes, or homages to Euskal Herria (which many had been forced to flee due to right wing violence).
