RRC Polytech’s Manitou a bi Bii daziigae campus was abuzz April 19, with students, faculty, staff and community members coming together to connect and celebrate Indigenous culture through food, fashion and music.

The Winnipeg school’s annual RBC Reaction by Collision event — Food, Fashion, and Music — highlights the importance of entrepreneurship in Indigenous culture.

The afternoon showcased Indigenous-owned Brownees Urban Bistro and Feast Café Bistro, as well as a fashion show featuring the work of Dawn Harris, Gayle Grubin and Olivia Nasikapow. There was a panel discussion, drumming, and a performance by musical group Indian City.

“Today’s event is working with a great partner of ours in RBC (and its Future Launch scholarship program) and they have a similar interest, and that is that we can create opportunities for Indigenous learners,” said Fred Meier, president and chief executive officer RRC Polytech.

“This is a way of creating an environment and event that connects with Indigenous culture and showcases it in a very proud way through music and art and food, as well.”

On the second floor, there was a small market space of Indigenous vendors, including Alisha Kay, 32, of Brandon.

Kay, who makes and sells beaded earrings, started beading in 2021, when she was staying at her grandmother’s home at Tootinaowaziibeeng Treaty Reserve.

“I’d always seen other artists and I’ve always wanted to learn to bead, so my mom was the one who bought me the supplies and she encouraged me to do it,” Kay explained from her table in the marketplace area.

“When I would go back to my grandma’s house and work on it, my grandmother was also encouraging me because she liked that we were reconnecting to our culture.”

Kay said, growing up, she always felt out of place as an Indigenous person, but through her art she is learning to reconnect to her culture and to honour her grandmother (who has since died).

An array of dangly beaded earrings adorned her little space of the marketplace, hours upon hours of her time meticulously crafted into colourful strands of jewelry she is mindful to sell at a price fair for the buyer and herself.

Kay combines her passions and interests into her work: among the display are Sailor Moon-inspired earrings, as well as several Pride-themed earrings that represent the colours of the different flags under the LGBTTQ+ umbrella.

Down a long stairway, behind the curtain of a runway stage, Dawn Harris was hustling in a cordoned-off room, surrounded by models wearing some of the elaborate square-dancing attire she has designed. Each outfit is flashy and intricate, made from satin, sequins, ribbons and lace.

“We need another crinoline,” Harris called out, as she fastens a belt across the waist of a young woman.

It is moments before the fashion show is set to begin, and Harris and her models (many who are family members) have already done a dry run on the catwalk. She is cool under pressure.

Harris, who is from Winnipeg but a member of Ebb and Flow First Nation, has been designing outfits for 20 years, and sewing for even longer. She is a self-taught seamstress who started after her mother passed down an old sewing machine for her to practice on.

The matriarch of her family — mother of three, grandmother of 11 — dresses three generations of the Ivan Flett Memorial Dancers, a square-dancing troupe named after Harris’s husband, who died in 2012.

Three of Harris’s grandchildren (siblings Michael, Jacob and Cieanna) performed on Canada’s Got Talent last year, showcasing traditional dances of the Red River jig, mixed with modern dancing known as the hip hop jig, and wearing custom-made outfits made by Harris.

“It’s the support (from family) that keeps me going. If I didn’t have all this support, I’d be doing something else,” she said, adding after her husband died, she stopped sewing for a little more than a year.

“My grandkids, my kids, they told me, ‘Mom, you’ve got to keep going. You’ve got a gift,’ and that’s what I call it. It’s just a gift I was blessed with.”

The models walked, sashayed and jigged down the runway to fiddle music in front of an atrium full of onlookers. Her designs were showcased between the designs of Grubin and Nasikapow.

“This is fantastic,” said Gabriel Nanacowop, 43, a RRC Polytech student from Lake St. Martin First Nation, who is taking a pathway to business program and plans to go into social innovation and community development.

Nanacowop and some of his classmates made the trek down to the Exchange District building from the Notre Dame Avenue campus to take part in the celebration.

“I think it’s good for us Indigenous people to showcase our fashion and talents at events like this… I just can’t say enough, I really like it.”

In all, the celebration took about six months to plan.

“I just think that it’s really heartwarming to see the community come together, to see all the Indigenous talent,” event organizer Terri-Lynn Anderson said. “But it’s also just amazing to just be able to show what Indigenous people can do, because we are very talented.”

shelley.cook@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter @ShelleyACook