The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Celebrating Indigenous Culture Through Fashion

Episode Date: October 1, 2024

History and art have major influences on fashion, but when does it go too far? Indigenous multidisciplinary artist Brit Ellis and Indigenous Fashion Arts creator Sage Paul discuss an ongoing Canadian debate on how we define Indigenous art and fashion as being culturally appropriated or celebrated. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

At home and within my community, we're just indigenous, you know, we're just native. In school, usually people are expecting to see things that are very stereotypical. And what's very stereotypical is typically Plains Indians. I do find that that is quite often my experience as an indigenous designer and maker that you end up in spaces where you end up in a an educational role in addition to the work that you're doing. My name is Britt Ellis, I'm also known as Blue Hummingbird. I'm a mixed indigenous woman. I'm Haudenosaunee Onondaga and French and Irish. And I'm a beadwork artist, tattoo artist, multidisciplinary artist living in Toronto. I started beading in college at George Brown College at the Native Center that they have

there. They had a drop-in beading group, so they would promote different activities every week to the student body. I took some materials home and I've been beading ever since. My name is Sage Paul and I am Dennis Uthlene. I call myself urban indigenous, urban Dennis Uthlene. I'm born and raised here in Toronto and I grew up in Gabriel Dumont,

which is native housing in Scarborough. I currently run the Indigenous Fashion Arts. It's a non-profit organization that supports Indigenous fashion, Indigenous designers. Our big event is the Indigenous Fashion Arts Festival, which takes place every two years. Each year, there's over a hundred artists that we're representing, so creating that space for our community to be able to celebrate our work. to be able to celebrate our work. Bead work traditionally for indigenous people has always been a form of communication,

an identifier of your specific nation, a period of time. One of our elders, Orrin Lyons actually, had said in the future, how will they know us and they'll recognize us from our dress, so our specific styles and our bead work. So that's always been the future, how will they know us and they'll recognize us from our dress, so our specific styles and our beadwork. So that's always been the case and I feel like, especially when a majority of Indigenous people do live off reserve in urban centers, seeing another person with Indigenous style beadwork can instantly provide a little bit of calm, a little quick sense

of community, a quick opportunity to connect. So it can also describe and portray our different stories. Our teachings generally, there's 13 moons in a year and each represents a different part of the year, part of the cycle. So incorporating those teachings as well into the phases of the year, part of the cycle, so incorporating those teachings as well into the phases of the moon pieces that I create. It's like a snapshot of a certain space and time, and it can communicate stories very specific to the owner

because with beadwork, I feel it's an incredible medium where you can translate just about anything. So it can be very individual to the person while still being a very clear, visual, cute other indigenous people. When I went into the fashion industry and you know I volunteered at Toronto Fashion Week, which doesn't exist anymore anyway, right? So I tried to volunteer there and it was very exclusive, it was very hard to get any kind of access to how I could participate in that space.

So in 2016 is when I, I had just finished a big project with IKEA Canada and it was really amazing to get to produce a collection, have that visibility. And after that project, I was like, okay, I want to create a fashion week. That's when I was like, I really want to do this. And I was so fortunate that one of my mentors and role models, Carrie Swanson, came up to

me out of powwow. She said, Sage, what are you working on? And she knew I just finished Ikea, she'd been watching the work I was doing in fashion, so I guess she was inspired by it and excited at the idea of potentially working together, and she is a very high level executive in indigenous arts. So for her to approach me was a big deal. And I was like, but I wanna do this Fashion Week thing. She's like, okay, let's do it.

And so it just kind of went from there, is like, okay, let's start it as a collective, an artist collective, just out of passion and need and so in 2016 is when we really started getting the ball like rolling thinking about what is this gonna look like and we had dozens of designers there who were presented it was on the water so getting to be by the water it's just really meaningful water is such an important part of, I mean, water's life. And so it was really grounding for us as Indigenous people to get to launch the

festival in a space that was so close to the land, because so much of, I mean, all fashion comes from the land. So I think it was a nice reminder to have that right there beside us. Growing up outside of community, it was being around people that, everyone looks very different, but we all see something familiar and in common with each other, and we've had similar experiences. So being able to share those and connect over those, and also being a person that was reconnecting

at the time, my very early 20s, it was a really incredible conduit for that and meeting different people that would help me along that journey of reconnection, building that confidence to do that. Your dramatic eyes fool me once, but fool me twice. So just something super fun. It's lined with home-tanned hide, and it's fully beaded all the way around. So sometimes I do incorporate traditional Haudenosaunee imagery, but that's not something that shows up in most of my work, because most of my work is more modern imagery. I do really enjoy pop culture as a whole, drag

specifically, different music, so I do tend to work in those sorts of images and again sort of like putting them together in a traditional manner. A lot of my work is spent assessing what the needs are of our communities. I can look at one myself, well of course myself, so I'm always thinking like if I was, you know, I'm in fashion and I wanna be able to be a costume designer, what do I need access to? Who do I need access to?

What kind of resources, finances do I need access to? And so then that just, it's about building relationships. I think as an indigenous person and because of the way that I learned the techniques, the crafts, the stories and the methodology behind it, those are the traditional aspects and pieces to it. There's other cultures that have beadwork, long histories of beadwork and their processes and stories are all very different in addition to using traditional materials whenever I

can and traditional ways of living like cutting down, packaging, all those other things that are part of our traditional way of life. Indigenous cultural appropriation looks like a lot of things until relatively recently, authentic and genuine representation of Indigenous people in film and media and print. It's something that folks can kind of look up on their own, but the history of Indigenous people in film and print is very sorted.

There were not a lot of Indigenous people playing Indigenous characters, writing Indigenous roles and things like that. I would like to see Indigenous people profiting from our work so that we can be equal, I guess, players in the greater economic landscape that exists. I wish that we had the resources and the basic necessities that we need. So I think when those needs are met is when we will stop having these conversations around cultural appropriation. Because when we have so little next to nothing, the fact that other people are profiting off of us when I have family members and we are just scraping by.

So sometimes it can be hard because some of the third party individuals that are copying our designs can be very, not very transparent about it, but that's one thing that you can generally find in indigenous designers is a great deal of transparency. Because of the 60s scoop, because of different governmental policies, there are a lot of us that are mixed, there are a lot of us that are diasporic on our own lands and because of that I personally and I respect this and other artists that are very transparent about where they come from, about their process, about their families, and the process of making their art. That would be the best way to avoid appropriation is to look for those specific things folks are talking about, we're open about it, and then wearing that work proudly and taking

on also a bit of that educational piece on yourself so that when folks admire your work, you can say, oh, actually this is such and such artist, this is their process and how they make this. Actually took nine hours to make these, they're hand stitched, each bead is selected individually by hand, and the process with which we make them makes them an heirloom you can pass on. It's so important to reframe the value

of indigenous-made work. In colonialism, our work was stolen and then it's sold for much cheaper. You know, Billswold West, you know, these kinds of old-school ideas of what an Indian is and really put on display so it becomes a tourist activity as opposed to one that is cultural or expression. And that continues today. If you come to our fashion week, is where you see that the earrings

that they're trying to copy are hundreds of dollars. But also like our idea around value, very different. You know, we look at value in terms of the story that's connected with the work. We can look at the value in terms of where it comes from. Maybe there's ceremonial practices that are connected to a piece of beadwork or an item of clothing.

I was a French designer who ripped off this Inuit jacket. So it was this beautiful Inuit parka. And they got called out immediately because it was almost an exact replica of this family's parka. Of course, the story that is a part of that parka was not a part of this designer's narrative that they put in that collection.

But when you go talk to that family, it actually stems, it comes from a really deep place. So there was a medicine man who had a dream or a premonition about this garment that was meant to protect its wearer. And it's completely different from just seeing it on the runway. In times when I was growing up and felt not enough

because I was mixed and because I was away from community and as I've come back to community and reconnected just really really understanding that that was the intent of the Canadian government. That was the intent was to completely erase our cultures and our communities to literally physically take us out of them and assimilate us into Canadian culture and that every part of this reconnection is like a very political act on behalf of ancestors future and past for each of us. Most of the designers I work with,

indigenous designers that I work with, their values are centered around teachings that we were raised with. Only take what you need, you teachings that we were raised with. Only take what you need. You can measure your wealth by how much you're able to give and so that you know that definitely changes the whole idea of like how we're making fashion. We're making fashion with materials that come from the land often when we're not using materials that are coming

like directly from our lands, like you know, fur or leather or woven textiles that are made from plant materials from this land. And so I think there's a lot more depth and meaning when it comes to indigenous fashion than it does for commercial fashion. I think that including us in these conversations will help to fight appropriation, and I think it will just make fashion better overall.