A workshop series helping people reconnect with their Indigenous roots took a critical step with participants learning to sew and design their own regalia moccasins.
The workshops, part of Red Earth Medicine’s Reclaiming our Rites to Ceremony workshops, were held in Rock Creek on Saturday and Sunday. The centerpiece included deer hides participants helped tan two weeks prior to make the moccasins. Elder Jo White guided the participants through the steps, from tracing their feet and measuring their ankles and calves with paper, drawing out designs on the hides with chalk, cutting, sewing and choosing beadwork designs. The whole process, including mistakes, was a lesson in traditional values and identity, such as perfection is an illusion, there is no waste, and designs reflected the wearer’s entire being.
Photos by Karen McKinley
