The Last Mooseskin Boat
1982 · 28m · Canada
Directed by Raymond Yakeleya
Genres: documentary, historical
Tones: contemplative, tender
Gabe Etchinelle builds a traditional mooseskin boat of the kind Shotah Dene families once used to carry people and cargo down mountain rivers to trading posts.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 40-year-old NFB doc about a guy building a boat sounds like the opposite of subversive, but Yakeleya's refusal to sentimentalize or explain the Shotah Dene practice—just *showing* the hands, the river, the knowledge transfer—is quietly radical in how it rejects the usual ethnographic performance.
This is essential archival cinema: a formally restrained portrait of craft tradition that situates itself in the lineage of Quebecois documentary rigor, where observation itself becomes a form of respect—the kind of measured, deliberate work that defines the NFB's curatorial legacy.
The choice to hold on Etchinelle's hands in real time, letting muscle memory and technique speak instead of voice-over explanation, transforms what could be a craft demonstration into something almost ceremonial—that decision alone is why this modest 28 minutes feels weightless and essential.