The granddaughter of a missing and murdered Indigenous woman participated in Confederation College’s Bead-In in honour of missing and murdered Aboriginal Women during Aboriginal Awareness Week 2015.
“My grandmother was one of the missing and murdered Indigenous women and I want to remember her,” says Melissa Henderson, a Confederation College student from North Spirit Lake. “This helps me remember her in a very loving way.”
Henderson says the beading was a “nice break from school,” as she has been stressed out about school lately.
“It was fun, I got to speak with some of the other students,” Henderson says. “It just relaxed me.”
Henderson finished her beadwork project at home after the Bead-In at the Apiwin Aboriginal Student Lounge.
“It’s not as easy as I thought it would be,” Henderson says, noting she completed the beadwork in about five hours. “Definitely you need to have a lot of patience.”
Constance Nowgesic participated in the Bead-In with a group of high school students from Hammarskjold High School who were looking at their next steps in education and the career paths they wanted to follow.
“It kind of gives them a little snapshot, a little picture of what the program is,” Nowgesic says. “Also, it introduces them to Confederation College so that when they do head in this direction, they won’t have that fear of the unknown.”
Nowgesic says the Bead-In is “really relaxing” and a great way for the community to connect with what is happening with Walking With Our Sisters and the community.
“You just want to sit and continue on beading,” Nowgesic says. “It’s really relaxing.”
The participants in the Bead-In were provided with a heart-shaped piece of fabric to create an image using beads.
“When we gather together, we are treating people in kindness and love so we thought the heart was a really good representation of community and healing,” says Bead-In organizer Leanna Marshall. “People have a huge range of skill sets, so when you look at the hearts some are really complicated and fancy and bright and beautiful. Every heart is unique, every heart represents something different for that person.”
Marshall says about 35-40 Bead-Ins have been held over the past year-and-a-half in Thunder Bay and other communities across northwestern Ontario.
“It brings together the community in a real nice way,” Marshall says. “It’s also an opportunity to talk about Walking With Our Sisters. And it’s also about teaching people a skill, teaching people how to do different beading techniques. You never know who you are going to inspire. So it’s a really great way to be creative, and it’s simple and cost effective. And anyone can do it.”
Marshall’s sister Jean Marshall demonstrated the appliqué technique for keeping rows of beads in place on the fabric and the edging technique for beading along the edges of the fabric during the Bead-In.
“(Edging) just adds a little flair and it just hides the edges so it looks real nice,” Marshall says. “Once you learn the basic gist of that (technique), you can jazz it up and add more beads and it can get real fancy with different colours. It’s a really good skill to have.”
A wide range of people attended the Bead-In, including students from Dennis Franklin Cromarty First Nations High School and students and staff from Confederation College.
“It’s also open house today for Confederation College, so there’s a whole bunch of high school students and their teachers and counsellors here,” Marshall says. “There are some staff here beading as well as other students.”
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