WONIYA THIBEAULT

My name is Woniya Thibeault, and I am the woman behind Buckskin Revolution.

A love for the natural world has always been a part of me, as has a drive to make things with my own two hands, and a longing for earlier times and more land-based lifestyles. Discovering a community of people who practiced and taught ancestral skills when I was 19 opened up my world and inspired me to devote myself to these skills. I have been studying, practicing and teaching them since the mid 1990s. 

With both a Masters degree in Environmental Science and a hands on education in ancestral skills, I strive to combine knowledge of and love for the natural world with the physical skills of our human ancestors.

I have spent a lot time living off grid and incorporating wild foods and handmade goods into my daily life. I had a powerful test of my skills when I was selected as a participant for Season 6 of Alone on the History channel, where I spent 73 days living by myself in the arctic, hunting, gathering and trapping. The skills that allowed me to stay so long were not however, just the physical ones, but the mental, emotional and spiritual skills of long-term survival practices for connection, gratitude, curiosity, communication, positivity and reciprocity.

I teach a wide range of topics, but I call my business Buckskin Revolution not only because I love making, wearing, and teaching about brain tanned buckskin, but because of what it represents.

It is a reminder, a link to our human past. We can all trace our lineage back to ancestors who wore buckskin, or something very similar. It speaks to that place inside us that remembers what it feels like to know the world around us intimately, to shape the substance of our lives from the raw materials around us.  It reminds us what it is to be human and connected to the wild within and around us.

The Buckskin Revolution is not just making buckskin clothing, or harvesting wild foods or survival skills, it is about inspiring and enabling people to do more for themselves and to be freer, healthier, wilder, more connected human beings.