Textiles Made to Defy the Ordinary.
Our mobile Behavioral, Sensory & Environmental (BSE) Wellness & Design Studio develops adaptive tools, tactile learning experiences,
and eco-art retreats respectfully informed by early place-based handweaving traditions, relational knowledge, and ecological relationships across the
Eastern Woodlands and Wabanaki homelands. Our work is also informed by broader Northeastern American ethnography, and relational practices,
spanning the Atlantic-and-Mid-Atlantic Coastal and surrounding regions.
"We adapt early, organic, and unmediated tactile technologies and practices to transform
ancient hand-knotting traditions, theory, and place-based ecology into adaptive
relational tools, solutions, and experiences for accessible neurological wellness."
Shā'-nay (Pronounced Shaw-nee)
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As the educational stream of the Boho & Knots Macramé™ (BKM) ecosystem, Hands Before Looms™ (HBL) transforms ancient organic knot technologies found throughout the Americas, into accessible, adaptive sensory wellness tools. Guided by our Behavioral, Sensory, and Environmental (BSE) Wellness™ framework, we utilize textiles as visual and tactile anchors to support personal restoration, stabilization, and repair following complex life transitions or experiences of ambiguous loss.
HBL offerings are designed to support individuals in processing
the layered, textured intricacies of life, work, and relationships.
Our programming provides adaptive opportunities to hold space for difficult moments, explore internal tensions, and consciously reform behavioral patterns—all while also exploring accessible ways to affirm the interwoven threads and moments of resilience and joy.
Shā'-nay (Pronounced Shaw-nee) Paris
North American Textile Artist, Educator,
and Developer of the BSE Wellness Framework™,
and STEM-Adjacent Textile Learning Kits™
Contextual Background
Atlantic-Coast’s Intra-diaspora and the Northeastern Woodlands:
Our work is deeply informed by inter-continental maker traditions, ecology, and trades—including the manual practices of early artisans prior
to industrialization—reflected in
what we refer to as the
Atlantic Coast’s Intra-diaspora™ (ACI).
The scope of the ACI encompasses
the rural territories, families, and kin-networks of
the Maritime provinces in Canada and the
New England states.
These regions mainly span the geographical space known as the Northeastern Woodlands, the historical home and in some cases unceded territories of the following:
1. The Wabanaki Confederacy
2. The Wampanoag Confederacy,
3. The Narragansett and Niantic Alliance
4. The Haudenosaunee Confederacy (Six Nations)
5. The Council of Three Fires (Anishinaabeg)
6. The Huron-Wendat Confederacy
7. The Neutral and Erie Confederacies
8. The Wabash Confederacy
9. The Lenape (Delaware) Sovereignty Networks
10. The Powhatan Confederacy (Tsenacommacah)
11. The Illinois (Inoka) Confederacy
12. The Mahican (Mohican) Confederacy
The above list includes all relational and intersecting Indigenous and early
place-based, inter-continental, diverse
North American communities and allies.
Some of which experienced periods
of segregation, social restructuring and
movement, and associated renaming
due to early, continuous, and evolved
practices of hegemony.
We established the ACI reference to explicitly acknowledge families and descendants who share a deep, place-based relationship with this land but who, through changing socioeconomic landscapes, migrated across Woodlands through cross-country and inter-continental movement – sometimes
bi-directionally across what became the Canada-US border whereby separating or segregating early Indigenous nations, families, and kin.
The specific families, communities, and practices
of the ACI that draw from are mostly those found in rural and coastal areas found in eastern New Brunswick, western Nova Scotia, eastern Maine, eastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island, eastern Québec (and western Quebec for the Haudenosaunee - mostly Mohawk), the Great Lakes Region, New York State and surrounding areas,
and some mid-west areas.
The main focus of the BKM and HBL is on the geographic regions around the mainland and relational islands around the Bay of Fun,
Gulf of Maine, and interconnecting areas,
While we recognize the Northeastern Woodlands encompasses other geographical territory including that of other Confederacies, such as the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) and those interconnected with the Great Lakes, our knowledge and teachings in relation to weaving
and knot technology come from the early, diverse,
ACI cultural communities rooted in the
rural eastern shores along
The reason we created the ACI reference, and intentionally include it in our materials, is to acknowledge this specific diaspora, their distinct history, and collaborative influence as it relates
to the confederacies and regions
noted above and our work.
As such, we help recentre and preserve the related traditional, innovative, and adaptive technologies, practices, and teachings woven into those who share an unbroken, foundational ancestry, within
the respective place-based communities,
territories, and ecology – all of which
is meant for wholistic wellness.
We also acknowledge and respect the original or early ways the families and communities defined themselves in relation to their lands due
to established and existing treaties. While aim
to honour terminology and language that reflected the people who were here before
countries were formed.
While we recognize that the communities within
the geographic and cultural territories of the Northeastern Woodlands, and Eastern Woodlands more broadly, expanded over the years to welcome newcomers (permanently or temporarily),
we respectively honour the original people and
the names they used to define themselves, their ancestral homelands, communities, and people.
In our work, we include relational terms
to demonstrate active respect and to align with
the spirit of our expanding education stream.
Bound by shared lineages, portable gift economies, and deep-kin networks, the connection of communities and families continue to work together to preserve high technical and vocational skills
as master builders, designers, and land stewards – and textile artisan and eco-art educators –
who have continuously been helping to develop, master, and advance organic innovations.
Including those that support sensory wellness
and inspire our practices today.
Read more about the earliest findings of the use
of knot technology in ancient Indigenous American civilizations, and other early cultures around the world, by clicking the link below.
Lineage, Geography, and Pedagogy
As a common practice, moving in close-knit clusters of family, relatives, and trade-kin, ACI networks dispersed inter-continentally
or inter-regionally – different than other diasporas who are defined
by complex transcontinentally connectivity – traveled along established and known trade and industrial economic routes
to urban, industrious, and developing areas like
Montréal, Toronto, Boston - and other surrounding areas.
Their travel took place by early land and water travel methods –
and eventually by modern coach bus, passenger rail, and commercial airline transportation modes when they became
part of the changing social and physical landscape.
Bound by shared skillsets, portable gift economies, and relational trades, some families, related kin, and communities excelled in technical areas of skilled-trade where their expertise encompassed areas such as (but not limited to): industrial engineering and design, geology, stone cutting, masonry, surveying, typography, drafting architectural blueprints, property development as well as agricultural, horticulture, and farming. Some were in
lead or self-employment sub-contractor roles while also being exceptional land stewards.
Northeastern Woodlands Geographic Reference & Scope
Reflecting the list of Indigenous Confederacies,
Alliances, and Networks noted above
as well as the intersecting ACI. Our work mostly
focuses on the rural Atlantic coastal areas.
Organic Technologies & Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM):
In early times, prior to industrialization, textile work, such as loom-less weaving, organic fiber arts – including ancestral artisans – used knot technology to make or reinforce parts of furniture, transport, clothing, and tools – as well as other items – was valuable and paired with technical skills. Knot were also used in marine related areas to make fishing and cargo cord, to measure speed, for anchors, to reinforce sails and more. In this way, HBL acknowledges knot technology and knot theory – which is foundational for early and adaptive forms of handweaving, hand-knotting, twining and even – as STEM (Science, Technology, Engineer, and Mathematics)-adjacent.
While we recognize that education and art spaces use the term “STEAM” (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) to acknowledge the related concepts in art that align with STEM concepts, we choose to use language that doesn’t displace knot technology from being relational and applicable in the space of science. Hand knotting is one of the oldest and most organic technologies in the world – globally – and has survived and evolved over thousands of years and continues to play several roles in
our-day-to-day lives – including in health and wellness.
Sometimes without people realizing it.
Working with knots is not only a central pillar in what we offer through BKM and Hands Before Looms™, we also want to help
re-center it as a technology so it's acknowledged accordingly
in textiles and fiber arts spaces that include knot-work.
The Interactive Ecosystem
What is Included our Hands Before Looms™ educational and training framework bridges adaptive traditional practice, relational material science, and accessible learning pathways
to accommodation diverse human, organizational, and network systems.
Pathway 1:
STEM-Adjacent Textile Learning Labs & Self-Paced Kits:
Studio-grade, thoughtfully packaged physical kits designed to translate complex geometric sequencing, pattern recognition, and tactile physics into a self-paced learning journey. These labs and kits, offered in varied formats, include accessible and relational theory on sensory, textile, and cultural information.
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Pathway 2:
Trainings, Workshops, Programs, and Digital Learning & Tutorials:
A comprehensive suite of opportunities for in-person or virtual learning including 1:1 and group sessions, webinars, step-by-step instructional guides, and virtual training modules built for self-guided or collective discovery. We also have mobile offerings where "we come to you".One of our core objectives is to help ensure our textiles, related information, and experiences help make wellness more accessible.
Pathway 3:
Curated Historical Resource Libraries:
Contextual breakdowns tracing the history of early North American textile industries, mainly linked to the Atlantic Coastal areas in the northeast, alongside beautifully adapted contemporary formats that make historical hand-weaving techniques accessible for today's learners.
Knowledge Continuity, Non-Clinical Formal Qualifications & Experience
This educational stream is not a modern reimagining, but a direct, active continuation of the material practices passed down and inherited through
my own direct family lines from the ACI – particularly on side of
my mother, my grandmother, and all direct and kin
mother-figures who came before us.
Those who are often missing in genealogy records and credits despite playing key roles in how knowledge transmission happens within families
and kin communities – genetically and epi-genetically – as mothers and mother figures pass on culture and nurture the
practices that ensure continuity.
Much of the teachings and knowledge of the handweaving are embodied.
By carrying forward these specific ancestral methodologies, using organic material mostly sourced from the Eastern Woodlands, my work bridges
the historical expertise of our lineage with contemporary
behavioral health data and best practices.
My approach, frameworks, and methods were developed from my relational 25+ years of work experience in areas of behavioral health and arts, in varying capacities across several cities and towns, with people across human and social diversity spectrums. Additionally, this work is backed by
my formal qualifications in non-clinical neuro behavioral wellness,
sensory stabilization, and somatic regulation.
This framework is also backed by concentrated formal studies in
psychology, various non-textile creative mediums, and being involved
in the arts in different capacities for most of my life.
Handweaving (macramé), for me, is part of
the inheritance I received, remembered,
and get to partake in recentering.
At BKM, we want to ensure that the foundational knowledge found in the work done and passed down from our ancestors – the builders, designers, makers, artisans and educators – remains a living, breathing resource and blueprint for current and future generations – family, kin, and collaborators. While much of what they have done is still present in day-to-day life,
some have been displaced, re-named, recategorized in certain spaces
and environments due to different types of restructuring.
As a result, some of our HBL materials and offerings are designed to help
re-centre the relational foundational pieces for those who identify with the
ACI while also helping others do the same in cases where they may have become disconnected from material culture or relational traditional
practices from their ancestral homelands and communities.
In the spirit of supporting personal, professional,
and collective wellness goals – including those from cross and intersecting diasporas which includes those who are taking steps to make
connections – our work is designed to assist you along your journey.
Please feel free to reach out to us with any questions at info@bohoandknots.com.
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