What native tribes use birch bark canoe?

Not all Algonquian tribes lived near watercourses so not all built any kind of canoe. Many Algonquian-speaking tribes such as the Powhatan built only dugout canoes from tree trunks, using controlled fires and stone or shell scrapers.

A few of the eastern woodlands tribes, mainly in the north-east region, built beautiful canoes using wooden frames covered with birch bark sealed with resin and gum. They included the Ojibwe, Mi'kmaq, Maliseet, Naskapi, eastern Cree, Algonkin and central Cree. Each tribe made their canoes in a distinctive tribal shape.

As for why they made these canoes, the answer is simply that they made best use of available resources and the resulting canoes were the very best type of craft for transport by water. Iroquois canoes, both dugouts and those covered with elm bark, are considered very inferior in quality to birch bark canoes.