Indigenizing the home: Winnipeg designers draw from Anishinaabe culture, language to create modern home decor

After failing to find items that reflected their identities, Anishinaabe designers in Winnipeg have taken it upon themselves to create the modern home goods they were looking for.

“It’s time to start sharing our own narrative, and making sure that it’s told correctly and by the right people,” Destiny Seymour, founder of Indigo Arrows, told CBC.

The interior designer has worked at an architectural firm in Winnipeg for over a decade, noticing a lack of options for home goods made by Indigenous people in the province.

“I couldn’t find textiles and products that represented local Indigenous people and culture from this territory in Manitoba,” she said, adding that the home decor she did find represented Indigenous nations from British Columbia and the southwestern United States.

“I wanted fabrics that I could put onto furniture that was from here, and they didn’t exist, so I started making them on my own. That’s how Indigo Arrows started.”

Seymour creates items such as linens, quilts and tea towels with unique patterns that originate from ancient pottery and bone tools made in the province. She gained the inspiration from the Manitoba Museum’s stored collection of Anishinaabe pottery from the region.

“It’s basically like our early home decor,” she said.

Many of the patterns in her work have been given names in Anishinaabemowin, which was done in collaboration with her father Valdie, elder-in-residence at the University of Manitoba’s faculty of architecture.

“I really admire her and the work that she does,” Valdie told CBC.

Anishinaabemowin words have creation stories behind them, he said, and it’s exciting to watch his daughter share the language through her work. “Each of her products that she names in our language can actually be a teaching.”

Her products have acted as teaching tools since Seymour shares the stories behind the patterns in her work, and she said non-Indigenous people have been curious to know and appreciate the history behind each pattern.

“They’ll order my fabrics or my products using our language and it does make me feel really proud,” she said. “They’re speaking Anishinaabemowin without really knowing it.”

Seymour is glad she took the risk in starting her business back in 2016. Her products often sell out quickly, and she is just beginning to keep up with orders.

“I’m just very grateful that I did take the chance and start this company, because it keeps me very busy.”

Prints create inclusive spaces

Jenna Valiquette was moving into a new apartment last year and trying to spruce up her workspace as a youth facilitator when she also noticed a lack of modern, Indigenous home goods in Manitoba.

“I wanted to find something that was Indigenous and included culture, language and all of the teachings that I thought were so imperative for my youth,” she told CBC. “But also something that was trendy, minimalist.”

Finding only traditional or protest art — things she already had on her walls — Valiquette took it upon herself to create what she was looking for and learned graphic design through YouTube videos.

The member of Poplar River First Nation started her own business last October, Eagle Woman Prints, creating contemporary art prints based in her Ojibwe culture and language.

One of her most popular prints includes the Anishinaabemowin phrase mino bimaadiziwin, which refers to the Ojibwe concept of “the good life.”

Response to the prints have been so good that Valiquette was able to quit her second job. She said numerous educators have purchased her prints to make their classrooms more inclusive.

“I didn’t set out to make this art for anyone else but myself, but the fact that it’s impacting other people — it’s been so cool.”

Brittany Grisdale, a member of Brokenhead Ojibway Nation, didn’t feel that the places she grew up in reflected her heritage.

“I didn’t see a lot of my Indigenous identity within the spaces that I was in,” she told CBC.

Grisdale’s business, Black WolfDog Productions, was created alongside her older brother Russell. Together, they handcraft Indigenous designs for the home and office, incorporating a passion for language revitalization, ceremony and activism.

Their doormats feature phrases like biindigen, which means “enter” in Anishinaabemowin, and awas, a saying which means “go away” in Ininimowin.

Grisdale said they have expanded beyond doormats to make other items such as tapestry, water bottles and medicine containers, which display messages like “Every Child Matters” and “This is Indigenous land.”

She said slang is also a key aspect of their work. “We think humour is such an important teaching within the community and within our culture.”

There’s not enough Indigenized home decor being created locally, she said, and customers often remark that they’re happy to find home goods which represent them and their Indigenous pride.

But Grisdale said her business means more than making sales, and it’s also about the issues she’s raising awareness of and the conversations that her pieces inspire.

“I hope that I’m able to make someone feel good about their identity.”