Beading: When I hear that, I’m not too sure what I think of as my mind goes in two different directions. The first direction my mind goes is to the bracelets I made as a kid, with the most obnoxious beads, which, sorry little me, turned out to be hideous. The other direction my mind goes is to the beading videos that filled my TikTok feed in early 2022 after I looked up “bracelet making” (Taylor Swift’s version). However, my feed was filled with gorgeous Indigenous designs, earrings, bracelets, lanyards, necklaces, and everything you could imagine, I saw it beaded on my For You Page.
When Noelle Pepin came into our class on November 13th, I was curious and excited to see what we would learn that day. Noelle first took us through a presentation about beading, the significance behind beading, and how she got into doing beaded tweets. As I was listening, I realized again just how little I knew about Indigenous traditional forms of art, such as beading. It showed me that I want to learn more about these traditional forms of art and have a better understanding.
After the presentation ended, it was our turn to bead. We were able to choose a five to eight-word phrase that meant something to us when we were given binary code to bead it onto our string. We chose two separate colours to represent the ones and zeros, and then we were let off on our own. Let me say that the beginning was not easy, I ended up doing it backward, accidentally spelling a couple of letters wrong, and I had to restart. That initial period of failure taught me something pretty quickly: beading is not something that you just rush through, it is something you take your time with, especially if you want to make it look nice. So I restarted, and I was so happy with the outcome of it. I made the beaded phrase for my brother for his birthday, and when I gave it to him the following week, he loved it.
I think what stood out to me was that you can make something meaningful, like a saying you share with a sibling or a quote you love, and make it into something beautiful for yourself, that you can take with you wherever you go.
