Welcome to the first entry of the Medicine Bear Arts blog I wanted to honour the woman who gave life to me.

I want to begin by thanking each of you who took the time to visit this site, support the work, and follow this journey. This blog is more than just updates or stories it’s a reflection of where I’ve come from, who shaped me, and how I’ve been able to reclaim a life that was nearly lost.

So it only feels right that the first person I honour here is my mother Pat Bruderer, known to many across Turtle Island and beyond as Half Moon Woman.

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Survival—Through Her and Because of Her

If it weren’t for my mom’s love, belief, and refusal to give up on me, I wouldn’t be here. I’m not speaking figuratively. I was in the grips of a world that swallows far too many of our people gang life, addiction, violence. I was lost, and I didn’t think I’d find a way back. But my mom saw something in me that I had forgotten was there. She opened her door. She spoke life into me. And she helped me reconnect with something deeper: identity, purpose, spirit and a reintroduction to my culture.

She didn’t just save me she showed me what it means to heal and carry forward.

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Who Is Half Moon Woman?

Pat Bruderer is a birch bark biting artist, cultural educator, social justice warrior, and trailblazer in Indigenous resurgence. She is a member of the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation (PBCN), born in Churchill, Manitoba, and now residing in Winnipeg Manitoba were she continues her social justice and advocacy work.

A self-taught master of birch bark biting an art form practiced by First Nations across Turtle Island my mother revitalized and protected this sacred tradition at a time when it was nearly lost. Using only her teeth, she folds and bites thin layers of birch bark to reveal stunning, symmetrical images with animals that echo ancestral teachings and stories.

Traditionally, these bark bitings were used as:

- Storytelling templates

- Blueprints for quillwork, beadwork, and embroidery

- Visual records for teachings, maps, and sacred knowledge

- Even as "projectors" under firelight and sun to teach children

Each piece she creates is an intricate expression of culture, spirit, and memory. And as she says, “Birch bark bitings are like people. They are beautiful and special in their own way and there’s no two alike.” 

A Life of Teaching, Giving, and Walking with the People

Over the last 4 decades, Half Moon Woman has exhibited her work around the world in museums and private collections in Canada, the U.S., Switzerland, France, Germany and Italy.

 But her deepest impact has been in the communities she walks with.

She’s been a pillar in schools from Yellowknife to Vernon to northern Manitoba, teaching the next generation not just how to make art but how to remember. Her pieces incorporate the  elements of earth, wind, water, and fire and reflect deep ceremonial insight. Her work helps restore spatial reasoning, historical context, and cultural pride in students, blending traditional teachings with education systems that have too often erased our ways.

My mom didn’t stop at teaching. She opened her home to kids who had nowhere else to go. Children devastated by the impacts of colonization, the foster system, and residential school fallout. She raised not just me, but many. She did so without fanfare. With food. With laughter. With art. With medicine.

From Generational Trauma to Generational Healing

She’s also been a fierce advocate for restorative justice. I watched her help people find ways out of the legal system offering cultural guidance and support to those criminalized for surviving colonization. Her whole life has been one of ceremony, sacrifice, and strength.

And all of that is what pulled me out of the abyss.

In 2006, I was given the chance to live with her again. It was that moment returning home that began my transformation into the artist, father, and teacher I strive to be today. My carving journey started there. My healing journey started there. My purpose was born there.

Final Thoughts: Why This Blog Exists

This blog exists because she breathed life into me. Because her hands on birch bark preserved teachings nearly erased. Because her love gave me another chance.

I walk this path building Medicine Bear Arts, working with youth, creating jewelry, visiting communities because I come from a woman who walked it first.

To those who know her, you already understand the depth of what she carries. To those meeting her for the first time through these words: may you feel the medicine in her art and the fire in her story.

For more information on my mom please visit her website. www.halfmoonwoman.com

With endless gratitude,
– Jadeon Rathgeber (Medicine Bear)