“Love what you're doing… Beading is a passion for me,” encourages Marlene Tsun. Her traditional name is Brown Buffalo Woman and she is a member of Turtle Clan. She grew up in Toronto until she was 17 because her mother didn’t want to raise her family on reserve due to fears of residential schools. She’s been living in Kiashke Zaaging for 27 years now and she loves living in the country, venturing into the city only to do her shopping. 

Tsun learned to bead from her grandmother when she was seventeen and had her first child. She’s been beading ever since other than an 8 year period when she was in an upheaval. She considers it an artform and she has been beading full time since she was twenty-five. She sold at powwows and arts and craft shows and she didn’t have many people influencing and inspiring her at the time. 

When Tsun was forty, she started doing outreach and selling art for her ex-husband, taking it to art galleries and promoting herself at the same time. She was also involved with the Ontario Native Women’s Association, selling beadwork at conferences, presenting beadwork workshops and making connections. She was shy at first  but her confidence soared and people started collecting her work and commissioning pieces. 

Her advice for youth wanting to leave their reserve to further their career is, “Try not to get too discouraged, because a lot of people might think, ‘Well, I do beautiful things’, just like me. I think I do beautiful things, but you're going to hold on to those things sometimes for quite a long time before they sell.” She has two six foot by two foot totes full of inventory she’s been working on all winter and she knows that they won’t all sell right away. 

“If you go off reserve and you start beading like crazy or sewing like crazy and you're not making sales, people think, ‘well, nobody likes my stuff.’ That's not true. It's not that they don't like it….you have to find the market, and the markets are really hard to find. Even though you go to an Indigenous craft art and craft show, there are going to be 100 other ones that are at that same show, and they're all your competition.... there's a big competitive market out there....” she counsels.

“Just be strong. Look for some support. Make sure you have lots of support out there, because you're going to cry... I've cried. I got depressed because in the early part of my career, I was selling everything that I was making eventually, but I wasn't making what I thought I should be making… You can fool yourself thinking, ‘Oh, I'm so good, and everybody's going to want my stuff.’ And then when they don't, you get depressed. Make sure you have some support, because depression is a real thing,” Tsun confides. 

When it comes to motivation, Tsun was driven by the love of beading. “I fell in love with it, and I wanted to share my culture, share my passion, share my talents,” she recalls. When people buy her work, she feels so complimented. “When I start getting a little discouraged, and I still do, I just have to remember all of the people who have loved and appreciated and bought my work so, and I know they'll come again, and others will follow in suit,” she continues. 

There’s a lot that goes into making sales, from long days sitting at powwows waiting for customers to come, the cost of gas to get to events, inventory costs, the costs of food, booth fees, and hotel costs for multi-day shows out of town. Some booths cost as much as $500, making it difficult to break even selling earrings. Tsun also has to bring money to have as a float for change for customers. One of her most valuable assets is her Square reader so she can take debit and credit cards from customers who don’t carry cash. 

If Tsun could share a message with her younger self it would be about the importance of outreach, something she didn’t know. She thought she would go and sell her merchandise without realizing she needed to connect with people. She also wished she knew about all the inventory she would have to hold onto, she thought she would sell everything she made. 

Safety is another thing she wished she had been more conscious of, going to powwows and shows by herself. Tsun would have told herself, “Make sure you're safe, because there's a lot of people out there who are not nice, and they will try to take advantage of you, whether it be to steal your money, steal your product.” She also would have liked to have been told to talk to lots of people and about the value of connection. She further recommends keeping a vision book of ideas for future projects. 

Loving what she’s doing and pursuing her passion of beading, Marlene Tsun has been beading for most of her adult life. It took time for her to build her confidence and to learn how to turn a profit but she’s been able to bead full time after learning the artform from her grandmother. Creating beaded works of art and selling them at markets, powwows and craft fairs, she shares her culture, passion and talents with pride.

Thanks to Alison Tedford Seaweed for authoring this article.