“Our culture is always waiting for us,” shares Shannon Tara Kalic, a Métis woman from Winnipeg and a member of the Otter clan and the Champagne and Legal families. Métis and French on her mother’s side, Polish and Ukrainian on her father’s, she grew up in a white settler neighbourhood just outside Winnipeg. She began connecting with urban Indigenous communities and her Métis heritage more in university.

Kalic has found her experience to be not uncommon, thinking of others she’s heard from who also felt the pull towards culture in young adulthood. She recommends learning about the history of Canada to better understand one’s own community and relationships with settlers better.

Professionally, Kalic is a beadworker and workshop facilitator. Her business is called Waabishki Miigwan Creations and her business name means ‘white feather’ in Anishnaabemowin. It is connected to her spirit name, to the language of her ceremony family and she also has Anishinaabe connections in her family. She started beading in 2016 and began her business in the beginning of the pandemic. She joined some online beading workshops and found community, connection and a way to keep her hands busy. At first, she beaded part time alongside her full time job. A year ago, she went full time in her business, facilitating beading and educational workshops. Her goal is to dismantle stereotypes, address racism and try to improve the world overall. She makes earrings, necklaces and hats and she’s completely in love with beading.  

While Kalic loves what she does, it wasn’t what she planned to do originally. Since childhood, she’s been obsessed with dinosaurs and even got a paleontology degree. Going on digs for dinosaur bones and working in museums, she continued her studies and got a Master of Museum of Education. This program opened more doors to connection with culture and with other urban Indigenous people. Seeing beadwork in museums and connecting with cultural centres run by communities, she ended up connecting more to beading and her own culture.

When it comes to her advice for Indigenous youth looking to leave their home communities for their education or to explore, Kalic recalls her own experience of wanting to leave home to find adventure and see new things. Looking to find her people in university, she found connection through the Indigenous Student Council. She recommends finding your community when you are away from home. She notes they might not be the first people you encounter and it’s okay to keep looking until you find people who are supportive and heading in the same direction. Being away also made her appreciate her home more, so she came back to Winnipeg to be with family and further her reconnection journey.

If Kalic could share a message with her younger self it would be that it’s okay to change your mind if you find your dreams aren’t what you thought they would be. As a younger person, she was focused on becoming a paleontologist and now she sees how she uses the skills and passion she had back then in her current work. She also enjoys watching dinosaur movies like Jurassic Park. She sees herself as a multi-faceted person, a nerdy woman who loves dinosaurs and also the side of her that loves to dress up, who loves fashion and culture. “We can be so many things at the same time,” she advises.

As far as finding balance and supporting her wellness, she’s found that being reflective, talking things out within her community. She also likes to journal and write, sorting things out in her mind on paper. Seeking therapy is also something she considers useful where possible, finding someone with an outside perspective to help find solutions and understand the world and one’s own behaviour better. Meditation, staying active, eating healthy and resting are also key to wellness from her perspective. She sees mental, physical, emotional and spiritual health as connected and areas that require attention to take care of oneself. Beading helps her slow down from the fast-paced world, too.

In closing she shares a warm message for Indigenous youth, “Your community, your people are out there. Keep searching. You have a reason for being here and you’re loved.”  

She went from digging dinosaur bones to digging deep into her culture and falling in love with beadwork. Feeling the tug towards connection to her culture, Shannon Tara Kalic found her way to where she belongs. Sharing her knowledge and talents through workshops and her creations, she is working towards making the world a better place with common understanding.

Thanks to Alison Tedford Seaweed for authoring this article.