“It's a wonderful time to be an Indigenous artist, because we're speaking out,” says Tracy Charette Fehr, a Métis artist who has lived in Winnipeg all her life. She rides her bike when she’s not immersed in creating something. She spends so much time making art she doesn’t have much time for other hobbies. She works in a heated garage so she can create year round, making textile art and ceramics. She sews, often by hand. She also does beadwork, embroidery and applique.

As the third of six girls who lost her mother early in life, her dad brought someone in to teach her practical skills like sewing. When she was finishing her Bachelor of Fine Arts, she was encouraged to do embroidery by her professor. This sparked an interest in Métis embroidery and she researched Métis history, their arts and her mom’s side of the family. She thought she would be a painter but she ended up mostly doing needlework in school.

Growing up in the North end of Winnipeg, Fehr dropped out of school in grade nine. She went back to school as a young adult at an adult education school, somewhere she finally felt like she fit in. One of the first in her family to graduate, she decided to go to the University of Winnipeg.

After ten years of struggle with anxiety, PTSD and trauma, Fehr got her first degree and started working in counselling. She wanted to go to art school but couldn’t afford to so for twenty-five years she worked in addictions counselling, informed by her own struggles. Along the way, she connected more with her Métis culture and reconnected with her mom’s side of the family. She overcame the shame she had over her heritage that came from racism.

When she was turning fifty, Fehr got back into her art after watching a show about an artist with her kids. She applied and was accepted to art school researching Métis embroidery, arts and her family. She travelled to Europe to see Indigenous artifacts and started digging more into family history. She went back to school and got her Master’s in Fine Arts, with a thesis on Metis material culture.

Her project was called Heartbeat of a Nation: 250 Years of Métis Women, based on one of her great grandmothers. She made 250 handmade ceramic bowls and they went into an exhibit at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, representing all the unnamed and forgotten women. She worked with Infinity Women, part of the Métis Federation. She gifted the bowls after the exhibit as part of a ceremony at the St Boniface Museum where each recipient gave the name of a Métis woman they wanted to honour.

Fehr went on to make a textile project embroidering all the names on a piece that is 63 feet long and five and a half feet wide. It was unveiled at the Winnipeg Art Gallery to a crowd of 300 people on Louis Riel Day. Members of the Batoche settlement participated in embroidering the names. The project will be named in ceremony in the future.

As a child, Fehr didn’t have Métis role models outside of her own family, her aunties who were always present in her life. At her first art sale in Winnipeg, she found a book written by her great uncle and learned she had a writer who went to university and was considered to be important in Manitoba and in Métis circles. She found so few stories of Métis women, inspiring her work. “That's one of the reasons why I'm doing what I'm doing, because their stories haven't been told really, just the occasional ones. That's where I'm trying to maybe create new role models,” she explains. She observed how her relatives engaged in and maintained their cultural practices. “They did all that stuff, but they didn't talk about it as being Métis. They just did it,” she recalls. She’s trying to do the same in her own family, participating in a resurgence of art and foodmaking.

In the coming years, Fehr hopes to continue working on her project. She is working with Connected North, teaching embroidery so kids in Northern communities can learn to stitch their own names and the names of people they admire, in whatever language they desire. She hopes it will spark reclamation, “to reclaim the language, to reclaim the names, because so many of us have had our names taken in one way or another, or we've been given names that don't belong to us. I'd like to see more of that,” she reflects.

Fehr hopes learning embroidery will help build confidence in students. When she was young, despite being impoverished, she had a strong sense of self-efficacy and she hopes to help instill that in youth. She finds the work meaningful. “It's important, I think, to do something that gives us meaning, whatever that might be, whether it pays a lot or not, becoming an artist is not and is never going to pay a lot of money,” she continues.

Her advice to aspiring artists is that art school isn’t necessary and that post secondary culture can be intimidating. She says, “Don't feel intimidated if you decide to go to higher education.” She suggests finding support, joining groups, and connecting with elders. She encourages studying a variety of art forms, finding your voice and having a mentor.

Her final message to inspire Indigenous youth is, “Believe in yourself. Learn from the people around you and in any part of life, we have to really look at how we want to live? What are the values we want to live by?...There are no mistakes. Every path we take will lead us to somewhere, and so there's no wrong path…Artists and any learners make mistakes all the time, but that's how you learn. It's been my biggest mistakes, really, that have taught me the most in my life… You're not a mistake. Everybody is here for a reason, and a purpose.”

After stitching herself back securely in connection to her culture through research and relationships, textile and ceramic artist Tracy Fehr has started sharing her practice with youth through Connected North. Celebrating the stories and names of Métis women, she’s creating meaningful art and opportunities for community engagement. Once she couldn’t afford art school, and now she teaches art as part of how she makes a living.

Thanks to Alison Tedford Seaweed for authoring this article.