Teen brings business back to First Nation

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This article was published 16/05/2018 (3020 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When he heard a reporter introduce himself to young Émilie McKinney at her booth at the Vision Quest trade show, burly Swan Lake First Nation band councillor Craig Soldier nodded silently to McKinney and drew a chair up to allow the reporter to sit and talk.

“We are all very proud of Émilie,” Soldier said.

McKinney, 17, is the founder, along with her mother, Natalie Foidart, of the only Canadian company making accessories for the elaborate regalia worn in the burgeoning Indigenous powwow dance circuit in North America.

McKinney, poised and articulate, is a widely travelled dancer herself who will be competing in this weekend’s Manito Ahbee’s International Pow Wow. She’s done hoop dance performances as far away as Sweden, Denmark and Cuba.

Each outfit — and the best dancers will have five or 10 different ones — needs three or four hundred two-inch cone-shaped “jingles”

“The jingle dress is a sacred object. It signifies healing,” McKinney said. “I found it silly that we should have this sacred object that represents healing but all the jingles are stamped “Made in Taiwan.” I saw a problem there.”

About two years ago, she and her mother formed Anishinaabe Bimishimo Corp. (which translates loosely as First Nation person dancing) and leased a building in Somerset, just a few minutes away from Swan Lake First Nation, and started making silver, copper and bronze coloured jingles.

They acquired equipment like a decoiler and a press, and they even hired an engineering firm to make an automated roller since there was no one else in the country making them and there was no equipment to do it.

“We actually invented these machines,” she said.

Business is booming and they are shipping across the country, into the U.S. and even have had orders from the U.K. and France.

Not only are they almost half the cost of the foreign made ones, Emilie said the other dancers want to support local and are happy to buy accessories from one of their own.

McKinney is nominated in the youth entrepreneurship category for next week’s Startup Canada Awards, which is likely just the start of the accolades she’s going to receive.

“I’m not doing this so I can make money to buy $500 shoes,” she said. “Our five-year plan is to start making more products, including different coloured jingles, and to bring the business into the community, to create jobs and help the community.”

Soldier said the band would love the business to be on reserve, but it did not have a building that suited their requirements. But he said they are very supportive, including paying for Anishinaabe Bimishimo’s booth at Vision Quest right beside the band’s booth that promotes its Forest Hills cabin rental and RV park near Spruce Woods Provincial Park.

McKinney is the perfect example of the kind of enterprise and inspiration that the Vision Quest conference and trade show wants to encourage.

When it was first held in 1997, it was just going to be one-off event. Now in its 22nd year, it is twice the size it once was, with a sold-out trade show with more than 90 booths and an engaged delegate group of about 1,000 people that has many youth participants.

It is organized by five so-called Aboriginal Financial Institutions — Cedar Lake Community Futures Development Corporation, Dakota Ojibway ­Community Futures Development Corporation, Kitayan Community Futures Development Corporation, Community Futures North Central Development and Southeast Community Futures Development Corporation.

Kim Bullard, the chairperson of the Vision Quest organizing committee and the general manager of the Dakota Ojibway group, said the goal is to promote Indigenous business and community economic development, create opportunities for youth and to showcase positive role models, business owners, operators and artists.

“Our youth are a growing population,” she said. “We have to provide them as many opportunities as we can. They are our future leaders. There are lots of leaders here to look up to and be inspired and motivated by.”

She may not even know it herself, but Émilie McKinney is one of those future leaders.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca