This story is a collaboration between Concordia University’s journalism department, Kahnawake Survival School and CBC Montreal.
For Tekaronhiahkhwa Standup, beading is more than a pastime.
“It’s my connection to my culture. It’s my connection to our traditional arts — and it’s my job,” she laughed.
Standup, a beadwork artist, owns Traditions, a shop in Kahnawà:ke, the Kanien’kehá:ka community south of Montreal.
She sells her own traditional artwork, other Indigenous artists’ work and art supplies.
In business for the past five years, Standup, 39, started beading around the age of 18.
“It was more just like fooling around with stuff,” she said.
She started learning her techniques through trial and error and eventually took classes with Merit Cross, a professional beadwork artist in Kahnawà:ke.
“She helped me learn different things like how to make moccasins and stuff like that. And then beyond that, it was just myself,” said Standup.
Now, she’s passing down the knowledge she’s gained by offering beading classes of her own at her shop after hours.
“I just thought it was important to kind of help boost our beadwork so that more people can learn and continue doing it,” said Standup.
Standup offers paint nights, beading and craft classes at her store after hours. (Submitted by Tekaronhiahkhwa Standup)
Standup got her start as an art teacher at Kateri School in the community, but she soon tired of the “whole hustle and bustle of the job.”
She quit and opened Traditions a few months later, selling things like moccasins, medallions, ribbon skirts and shirts, jewelry and whatever else artists may bring in the shop.
Standup’s friend Takwenha:wi Diabo, another beadwork artist based in Kahnawà:ke, started selling some of her pieces at the shop when it first opened.
Diabo had been selling her work online but moved some of it to Standup’s shop “to get things going for her store,” she said.
Diabo says she enjoys selling her work there because she avoids having to deal with aspects of customer service, such as waiting on payments or for people to pick up their items.
“That makes it a lot easier and worth it because I don’t want to have to deal with anybody,” laughed Diabo.
Standup sells items including moccasins, medallions, ribbon skirts and shirts, jewelry and whatever else artists may bring in the shop. (Submitted by Tekaronhiahkhwa Standup)
When the artists bring in their pieces with their prices, Standup adds a commission for the shop and ensures that all the artists get their fair share.
On top of promoting Indigenous artists’ work and helping preserve the traditional art form of beading through her classes, Standup also offers painting classes to children and co-hosts a beading podcast with Leith Mahkewa, another beadwork artist based in Kahnawà:ke.
The podcast is called The Beading Table, where Standup and Mahkewa talk about beadwork “and all the stuff that you would talk about if you’re sitting at the table with other women,” said Standup.
It’s just another tool Standup is using to encourage more community members to learn how to create different cultural art.
Meanwhile, Traditions is currently undergoing renovations to better accommodate Standup’s classes, creating more work space so she can begin offering beading classes during the day.
“I want to focus a little bit more on our beadwork … and trying to get more stuff in the shop,” she said.
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
