Meet Saga Kwandibens

We were lucky to catch up with Saga Kwandibens recently and have shared our conversation below.

Saga, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?

I come from a really long heritage of residential school survivors. My closest relative My now late grandmother, Elsie Kwandibens

I believe that it is my job To keep my culture alive for my generation and my daughters Given that our grandmother survived residential schools, it’s the least we can do

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I’m a multidisciplinary artist, my specialize and a few artistry skills being, handmade indigenous jewelry, tattoo art as well as indigenous dance.

I also come from a family of artists Every one of my family members has their own specialty Most commonly beadwork and sewing. We are all self developed in our skills

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

I definitely feel like my daughter has a really big impact on what I do. When I first started, I was pregnant with her. Unemployed And really financially stressed on how to make my parenthood journeys successful

I always held deeply in my heart, my grandmother’s wise words “ As long as you have a skill, you will never go hungry as it is bread on the table”

When I was pregnant was really when I started to take things seriously seriously with my Tattooing And newly started beadwork.

A really powerful moment for me was when I had created this beaded medallion and decided to raffle it and raised over 1500$ in ticketed sales. For me that was when I decided to take beating seriously and started to evolve on making small sales like earrings and necklaces. I then started wanting to embrace traditional materials such as antlers and quillwork. Being an urban indigenous using landbased materials was a very important aspect of my brand. To honour the natural beauty around us.

What is the number one obstacle or challenge you are currently facing and what are you doing to try to resolve or overcome this challenge?

Beadwork:
I definitely feel like some non-indigenous People don’t understand the work that goes into these handmade items. Everything is handmade and produced by myself. The most common obstacle I face at in person markets would be the devaluing of my work.

While I understand that this does become a teaching aspect for me in terms of educating all people on the hard work of accessing certain materials time and labour. I am hoping that this very message reaches people of all ethnicities And helps them keep an open mind When they see an Indigenous artist Selling their handmade work.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Beadworkbysaga.com
• Instagram: Beadworkbysaga, inkedbyindigenous

Image Credits

For the photo with my daughter & I in our jingle dresses, @ Christopher whal

Photo in the red fancy shawl;
Taken by indigenous affairs

Tattoo portrait taken by
@ native youth resource centre