Making things Wednesday

This weekend we started work on some moccasins.  We started with felt to make the pattern making easier this first time.  I got one beeded and the beeding went quite quickly on the felt.  I used the pattern suggested by Joquin Lonelodge in this video and freehanded the beeding.  The girls are going to do their own beeding.

I liked the symbolism of this activity, creating our own foot coverings, those things that connect us to the earth.  It was nice to beed something small and have that immediate feedback of a quick project.

Recently I had the opportunity to hear a presentation by a curator at the Museum of Civilization, who spoke about the symbolism of indian/metis clothing in the context of the residential schools and the coming of the church.

I had heard previously that the flower motifs were taken up as the metis were impressed with the european style, however the presenter spoke to the pressures by the priest to use "civilized" motifs.  He spoke to how you could see where many of the traditional patterns and symbols had been worked into the flowers so that an outside observer would just see a pretty flower while the integrity of the symbolism was maintained.

He spoke of the many residential school survivers who mention losing their moccasins when they got to the schools.  He outlined how indian clothing was designed with protections in the symbols and in the very proccesses of creating the items.  So not only were the children losing their clothes and a link to home, they were also losing the very protections families had built into the clothes. 

And I like making things.  I like to teach the girls that they can make stuff and they don't have to buy it all the time.  I like to think of all the layers of ancestors sewing their moccasins before us and about how we are adding another link in that chain.