What kind of earrings would my mother have wanted? What shapes would’ve drawn her eyes; what colours would she have gravitated toward? I’ve made dozens of fringe earrings as gifts for friends and family over the past two years. Each one was easy to map out, to think of the person wearing them and know, instinctively, what colours to choose, what pattern, that would complement them.
Bursts of oranges and deep reds contrasted with black and gold, an ode to fall.
Delicate but bright crystal pastels, arranged like an inverted rainbow.
Blocky patterns in teal, lime green, lilac, and navy blue, kitschy and fun.
A pair of Métis sash fringe, which I love so much that I make a second pair for myself.
Book look patterns of lighthouses and spreading ivy and wildflowers.
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My mother, a Métis woman adopted in the 1960s by an immigrant family, never owned a pair of Indigenous-made earrings, but I know she craved them. For years, I also coveted beaded earrings from afar, feeling like they were perhaps not quite right for me. Part of me thought, no big deal, anyone can wear them (so said many of the Indigenous artists, as I overheard them talking to potential customers), they are artworks meant to be loved and worn and shared with the world. Another part felt like it was not so simple for me. Something about wearing them announced to the world, to Indigenous peoples around me, what kind of Indigenous person I was, what kind of Indigenous person I was trying to be. It felt like I needed to earn the space to wear them as if they were just earrings when I knew they meant so much more.
While this internal dialectic was ongoing, I would stare longingly at photos of them on online stores or at markets here in Winnipeg, wondering how I might style my hair to best show off their beauty. Should I gather it back in a ponytail, allowing the earrings to dangle downward unencumbered, or was tucking strands back behind my ears a more subtle showcasing that also allowed a stark contrast with the backdrop of my dark hair?
***
Shortly after being awarded a postdoctoral position at the University of Manitoba on Métis women’s writing, I purchased my first pair of flat stitch earrings to celebrate. I ordered from a Lunaapeew, Bear Clan artist on Instagram, in her signature floral pattern with the colours of the Métis sash. When she saw them, my mother ran her fingers gently over the quills and beads, admiring the details.
It’s amazing that people can make something like this. They’re so beautiful. I’ll think of them as mine as well, she laughed, I can wear them whenever you don’t.
I quickly shut the box lid closed, while exaggeratedly pulling them close to my chest and out of her reach, feigning fear that she might try to take what was mine. We both laughed. Two months later, she was diagnosed with cancer. She never wore the earrings or mentioned them again.
***
Spread out across the table, in several baskets and small storage bins, there are hundreds of little plastic bags filled with glass beads of every colour. Some glitter like gems under the fluorescent lights, others are matte or transparent. I learn the other types, opaque, pearl, terra, silverlined, metallic, luster, rainbow, frost, baroque, I could go on. It’s impossible to choose, they are all so intoxicating, and the combinations are endless, the mixing of finishes and colours. I am drawn to high contrasts: dark colour bases against neons or sparkling golds. Each time I think I am set, something in my periphery catches my attention, and I have to start over again.
My beading obsession has become unsustainable—I’ve spent thousands of dollars on my ever-growing collection, fringes in multiple colours and designs, strawberry flat-stitch earrings, daisy chains, poppies, Métis flag pins, Sailor Moon inspired danglers—so I decide to try and make my own. It is two years after that first pair of earrings, my mother is gone, and the world is slowly opening after several waves of COVID. I want to reconnect, in more ways than one.
A favourite local Métis artist of mine, whose last name is the same as my mother’s birth family—we are probably distant cousins, she half jokes when I tell her this later—offers workshops at a bead store in Winnipeg . I register without overthinking it and four weeks later show up to the craft room with high expectations for cultural connection, maybe even healing.
Within minutes of trying to create the base row that very first time at the table, all my secret dreams of being a natural beading artist fall apart. I am quickly defeated and feel like I may cry. The thread is twisting in my inexperienced hands, occasionally knotting so tightly that I need to cut more thread and start over. It is humbling, devastatingly so, in a way that I haven’t felt since I was a small child with hands too slow and uncooperative to finesse my shoelaces into a neat bow. My face flushes in frustration and shame. Because it is more than just lack of know-how, inexperience. It is unfamiliarity. It is tangled thread and falling to the ground pieces and a foreignness that is more than the small but heavy things in my hands. Without saying anything, I get up and leave the workshop room, desperate for space, more air, to be outside. The cold breeze hits the back of my slick neck, sending shivers throughout my body. I lean against the brick wall, hinged at the middle and bracing at my thighs, taking deep breaths until they even out.
Then I go back.
Over the next four hours, I swear so often that the woman beside me in her mid-fifties turns her body ever so slightly away from me as if the act will ward off my crassness. I later learn that some beadwork artists won’t swear in front of their beads; the act is too sacred, and swearing isn’t respectful to the process or the materials. My foreignness disconnects me once more. I am not this kind of beader, definitely not in this workshop as I tell the beads to fuck off or my thread that it’s an asshole. I poke myself with a needle so many times that I grow accustomed to the sharp stab of pain, expecting it will happen each time I shove the needle between the stacks of beads that slowly, miraculously, begin to take shape.
***
Despite this shaky start, I become hooked, consumed, overwhelmed, spending hours online scouring for information to become better.
Which bead for Indigenous earrings?
Best thread for beadwork.
What is thread conditioner?
Needle sizes explained.
Why is beading so hard?!
When that gets tiresome or unhelpful, I switch to social media accounts, searching and deep diving hashtags: #beadwork #beadart #beadedearrings #nativebeadwork #nativeart #indigenousbeadwork #indigenousartist. Soon, nearly half my following content is Indigenous creators and beadwork artists.
My small inventory of beading supplies—a dozen tubes of beads, a bead mat, a handful of needles, and one spool of thread—doubles, then triples, before becoming a source of contention within my household. Where will I store them all? How much is this costing? You should have just stuck with buying beading after all. These things aren’t said out loud, but I imagine them in my husband’s voice as I find ways to store and organize my stache. Instead, he praises my work with more care and love than I can for myself. The errors in my stitches he doesn’t notice or at least doesn’t mention. His words are all, that’s amazing, you’re so talented, it looks beautiful, keep going.
***
One day, not long after I’ve emptied my mother’s house, I come back to imagining the beaded earrings she would’ve liked. She was not the type to let someone else pick anything for her. I dream her carefully looking through my bead collection, narrowing down which colours she likes, and scrolling through images for hours to find a pattern that would suit her just so. She would probably want me to take her to the local store I buy from, the one downtown off Portage pick out special ones just for her, and I would oblige.
I, too, know the joy of sifting through bead shapes and colours, the satisfaction of the perfect colour combination unfolding in your hands.
Celiese Lypka (she/her) is an Associate Professor in the English Department at the University of Winnipeg. Her scholarship focuses on the critical study of feelings as they intersect with issues of race and gender. Her nonfiction essay “Recommended Acts for End-of-Life Care” was shortlisted for The Malahat Review’s Constance Rooke Creative Non-Fiction Prize in 2023. She has been an artist-in-residence at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and a participant at the Tin House Summer Workshop. She is also a beadwork artist and cultural practitioner. Celiese is a Red River Métis citizen and thankful to be living in her homeland of Treaty One territory.