​The mokalipuwok (caribou) inhabited Wolastokuk for thousands of years – roughly from the time of the last ice age until the early 1900s, at which point herds were broken up or driven into other regions by a culture of overhunting and by the introduction of deadly parasites. Although Wolastokuk can no longer hold the caribou, it continues to hold caribou food -- lichens that, while common, are extremely sensitive to air pollution. In this sense, the land is lonely for the mokalipuwok and awaits their return. The land is also lonely for the people and holds everything that the people need to live good lives.

The Founders

Susan Sacobie and Gina Brooks founded Caribou Club in 2021, partnering first with Devon Middle School in an effort to get youth out onto the land. That year, students from Tyler Nason's 8th grade class learned to split and clean spruce root, to prepare and etch panels for birch bark containers, to harvest and brew wintergreen tea, and much more. Today, Caribou Club is a rapidly growing land-based educational site, known for its teaching sugary, its arts studios, its "off-grid" technology, and for its health and wellness products made from locally harvested materials, including bear grease and moose tallow. The founders of Caribou Club officially consult on Land Back initiatives with the Wolastoqey Nation in New Brunswick (WNNB) and have recently supported programming for the University of New Brunswick's Office of Experiential Education, faculty members in the Faculty of Forestry and Environmental Management and the Faculty of Education, and for the UNB Saint John Faculty of Arts. They are currently in the process of sustainably expanding their greenhouses and their food production and preservation capacities along with their accomodations capacitities. In 2024, Caribou Club was selected to participate in the JEDI Indigenous Business Incubator Program, and in the same year, Caribou Club was registered in New Brunswick as a non-profit organization. In 2024/2025, Caribou Club partnered with Indigenous Women of the Wabanaki Territories to create and offer programming around food sovereignty and basketmaking.

THE BOARD

Gina Brooks

Gina Brooks is a Wәlastәkwew storyteller and educator from Sitansisk. She resides in her traditional unceded homeland and is informed by Waponahki traditional knowledge in her artistic and educational practice. She is a former Schoodic Institute Artist in Residence and her work is featured in the core exhibit of the Abbe Museum, People of First Light. Gina sees art as an opportunity to learn and share about herself and her responsibilities through ancient stories, symbols, motifs, and language. In 2022, she was a featured speaker for Wettaqiaq Wksitqamuk Nkitahkomikumuwey, a virtual collaboration between Third Space Gallery, Eastern Circle, and Mawi'Art. In 2023, she was chosen by Theatre New Brunswick to participate in their innagural artist-led development initiative, Collaborative: Wabanakiyik Artists and TNB. In the summer of 2024, she will be a featured artist at the Dawnland Festival of Art and Ideas in Bar Harbor.

Susan Sacobie

Susan Sacobie was born in her Waponahki ancestors' homeland. She considers herself a "self-taught Indian artist," controversial in its name. Her work and life are linked strongly to the universal consciousness which invokes messages and teachings from the spiritual plane. She wishes to share her art, and the messages from within that art, and to thereby awaken humankind's consciousness. Her paintings have most recently been featured or commissioned by the New Brunswick Aboriginal Peoples Council's Looking Out For Each Other project; for an academic gathering at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery; and as the cover art for Marjoree Beaucage's book leave some for the birds. Susan is humbled to be guided by her ancestors and by the ancients, and she shares her healing vision with others through her art and through her recipes.
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Rachel Bryant

Rachel Bryant is a writer and a professor of colonial and settler colonial literary histories who lives in Menahkwesk. Her ancestors were New England Planters and Loyalists who came to Waponahkik in the 18th century. Their promises to live in good relationship with Waponahki people inform the way Rachel lives, reads, and writes, and her research program focuses on non-Indigenous responsibilities under the Peace and Friendship Treaties. Her collaborations with Gina have been formaly featured in the Journal of New Brunswick Studies, the 2022 and 2024 Arts Atlantic Symposia, and the 2023 Rough Waters Symposium. In the fall of 2024, they delivered the keynote address at the inaugural gathering of the St. Andrews Historical Society.

The Teachers

Doreen Paul

Doreen Paul is the Nutokehkikemit or Land/Forestry Teacher of Traditional Knowledge for the Wolastoqey Nation in New Brunswick. She is from Neqotkuk, where she has been Head Farmer as well as an educator in the On The Land training program. Doreen is both Wolastoqew and Passamaquoddy, a proud mother and grandmother born in Sipayik, Maine. She is a spiritual woman with a lifetime of traditional and western knowledge, a skilled basket maker, ash pounder, herbalist, fisher, trapper, and pipe carrier. She tans hides and makes medicines. 

Sheldon Polchies

Sheldon Polchies is a basketmaker and traditional land-based educator from the community of Wotstak Wolastoqiyik (pictured here harvesting basswood on a Caribou Club outing). Sheldon's "start to finish" approach to teaching is meant to instill deep, lasting knowledge of traditional processes and practices in Wabanaki youth and to inspire the confidence that youth need as they continue developing traditional skills on their own, in their communities, and in the future.   

Coming Soon

Information about the Caribou Club teachers coming soon