SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Lois Edge is certain there is a link between traditional activities - specifically beading - and indigenous identity, lifelong learning and well-being.

Lois Edge believes traditional activities contribute to mental, physical, spiritual and emotional health and well-being. - photo courtesy of Lois Edge

"Absolutely - no ifs, ands or buts," she said.

So the doctoral candidate at the University of Alberta is researching the relationship for her PhD thesis.

Edge, 53, believes beading contributes to mental, physical, spiritual and emotional health and well-being.

"Feeling comfortable in our identity as First Nations, Metis and/or Inuit contributes to our health and well-being, as individuals and as members of a community, in my opinion," she said.

Edge, whose hometown is Fort Smith, began her research in late 2007 as part of her work to earn a PhD in educational policy studies specializing in indigenous people's education. Edge describes herself as being of Gwich'in/Cree Metis heritage. Her inspiration for the research developed over her lifetime, she said, rooted in her family background and her experiences growing up in the North.

The overseas discovery of a pair of moccasins made by her late grandmother were a starting point. In about 2002, a colleague of Edge told her about a visit to Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford University in the United Kingdom.

"She was visiting the footwear display and there was a pair of moccasins there - or it was described as a pair of moccasins - made by Mrs. Bert Edge from Fort Smith, Northwest Territories," she said, adding her friend figured that must be a relative of Lois Edge.

In fact, it was her Gwich'in grandmother, Joanne Edge. The Hudson's Bay Company donated the footwear to the museum in 1942.

Edge got in touch with the museum curator, who sent her a photograph of the moccasins, which she noted are actually wraparounds with moose hair tufting on them. The moccasins were one of the things that inspired her current research.

"I was able to incorporate the discovery of the moccasins into my doctoral research and I decided that I would look at indigenous women's participation in traditional cultural activities, such as beadwork, and the relationship of participation in those traditional cultural activities to identity formation, the formation of teacher-learner relationships and our relationships to social and cultural environments," she said.

She travelled to Oxford University in 2007 to see her grandmother's handicraft and documented the experience.

"During the time that I was visiting with the moccasins, it was as if I was visiting with my grandmother," she said. "I felt like I formed a relationship with those moccasins and I feel an obligation and responsibility to return to visit with them in the future, just as I visited many times with my grandmother."

Another part of her research was to conduct an urban aboriginal women's beading circle in Edmonton with eight or nine First Nations or Metis women, who came together over a nine-month period in 2008 to do beadwork.

"We all have pride in this type of activity and this type of work, but we had never ourselves engaged in it," she said.

Edge, who is the academic co-ordinator with Athabasca University's Centre for World Indigenous Knowledge and Research, describes herself as a novice beadworker.

"My grandmother did teach me how to attempt to do beadwork," she said. "I have to say as a child it was an exciting activity to engage in and as a teenager I really didn't have an interest. I didn't have an awareness of its importance as I do have now, later in life."

Edge also plans to do interviews in Fort Smith and Fort McPherson, where she has already made preliminary visits to set up interviews.

"It was great to go up there and tell people about the work," she said. "For the most part, people are quite excited about it, because almost everyone has someone in the family who does beadwork and everybody appreciates it.

She hopes to do those interviews in February and March.

Edge said she will be completing her research and her doctoral dissertation this year.

Although she has been studying beading, Edge believes traditional activities usually done by men, such as carving and setting nets, would have similar beneficial effects.