“Sewing is a huge part of healing and grounding and it's important to a lot of us,” shares Robyn McLeod. She grew up in Fort Providence and learned to sew at a young age, making purses, mukluks and moccasins. She learned to bead and about her culture and her community’s stories from the amazing women she was raised around. Elders came to her school and she had the opportunity to go out on the land to practice her culture.

“I was so lucky to be able to do all of these really cool things that I don't think a lot of people have access to in their lives growing up, being able to have that culture every day,” she reminisces. Sewing is practiced on both sides of her family and her mom’s family in particular is very artistic and creative.

Recently, McLeod achieved a lifetime goal of being part of a fashion show in Toronto. Her mom and daughter joined her. Getting there was a long time in the making. After wanting to achieve that dream for so long and getting sober five years prior, she was able to focus more on fashion, perfecting her beadwork and embroidery. She’d already completed two years of fashion school and she continued with a year of visual arts training. From there, she designed a collection and received a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. She worked hard and got everything done and then the pandemic hit. When Indigenous Fashion Arts was ready to go live in person again she applied and was accepted.

“It was just kind of surreal to have my goal accomplished. Now that it's over, I'm really proud of the work. But it's like, what am I going to do now? It's kind of a weird place to be when you accomplish all your goals in life,” McLeod muses.

Preparing for life as a designer when she was studying in fashion school, McLeod took a full course load and she was surprised by how many papers she had to write. She wrote about beadwork and Dene fashion, researching what Dene and Métis people used to wear hundreds of years ago. All of that was fresh in her mind when she graduated and started designing. Inspired by the fashion of her people and those who settled in her territories, she created based on historical photographs and what she read about what people used to love.

As a maker, McLeod creates slowly. As a pregnant mom of a toddler, she has a hard time getting things done but she does her best. “I always tell people, like, as long as you're working on your artwork 15 minutes a day, 10 minutes a day, five minutes a day, it doesn't matter, as long as you are consistently doing it every day. That's what matters. That's where you see the progress in your work,” she reflects. She takes her own advice and tries to get a little bit further each day and tries to be gentle with herself.

“I really do love making things and I love learning. I love working with elders and mentors and talking to people about sewing. I like seeing other people who are creating get excited about creating and get comfortable, making new things in new ways and using new materials and experimenting. I just think it's really cool,” she beams.

Her advice to students leaving their home community is compassionate. “It is hard to leave your community, and leave all the relationships and all the things that you've known for a long time, but it's also good to be open to new experiences and learning new skills,” she affirms. Moving to the city and being around new people was an adjustment, as was dedicating herself to learning when there were so many distractions. She saw how her successful peers would stay home and just work and when she did her visual arts program that’s what she did.

In the end, she graduated with honours and was selected to have an exhibition in Toronto at the Museum of Contemporary Art. That experience pushed her to continue doing exhibitions and creating art. “It just proved to me that I was doing the right thing… I just think if you're really serious about what you want to do, and you're passionate about what you love to do, then it's important to take that time and dedicate yourself to your education and to your future,” she says.

Growing up around addictions, McLeod had her own struggles but she was able to get sober with the help of family and her partner who encouraged her in both her recovery and in her sewing. Doing work she wasn’t as committed to when she really wanted to be creating and designing was challenging, too. While it took time to accomplish her goals, she’s grateful to be sober, doing what she loves and to be recognized for her talents.

If she could give a message to her younger self it would be to care more about herself and others. As a young person, she struggled with anxiety, depression and what she suspects is undiagnosed ADHD and she would tell herself that she didn’t care about certain things but she came to realize that she did. Given the chance to go back in time, she would reinforce the value of self and community care and encourage herself not to be so down on herself.

To manage her mental health and wellbeing, McLeod talks to a counsellor for advice and support around challenges in her life. Having a support system is something she considers really important and her family has navigated getting sober together. She also recommends turning to local wellness programming for help in maintaining sobriety.

As far as inspiration goes, McLeod looks to her family and her grandmothers who are both talented artists as well. Her one grandmother who still sews and beads at 95 amazes her. “Seeing the perfection of both my grandmother's work and their drawings and their penmanship… makes me really proud to be who I am and where I'm from,” she beams. She’s working on learning to work more quickly and more accurately in her own crafting and to learn from the hardships and challenges her grandmothers have overcome.

Sewing is a huge part of healing and grounding and Robyn McLeod is breaking new ground with her fashion and cultural art. Inspired by her family in her crafting and sobriety, she is putting into practice what she learned from them as she’s busy raising the next generation. She started sewing as a child and now she’s raising kids of her own, stitching together a future for her family based on cultural pride and traditions.

Thanks to Alison Tedford Seaweed for authoring this article.