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Passing along traditional art skills Paul Bickford Northern News Services Published Monday, April 16, 2012
"It is important to keep it alive and that's what I keep thinking all of the time," Mandeville said of traditional crafts. Some young people come to Mandeville's home to learn in programs sponsored at different times by Deninu School or Deninu Ku'e First Nation. "At a young age, if they learn it, they're not going to forget, like I never forgot," she said. She also sews with some adults. "And I like that because they all have their own style and they have new ideas that I could pick up." Mandeville sells many of her creations, which she numbers in the hundreds over the years. "It's a hobby, but I have so many orders," she said, noting she is especially busy around spring carnival, Christmas and Easter. She makes a wide assortment of traditional items, including moccasins, mukluks, slippers, dresses, coats, purses, bags, sealskin card holders and much more, many of them featuring intricate beading. Her favourite thing to make is moccasin slippers. "I guess after you made so many, it's just like nothing. I could sew and watch TV while I'm putting a pair together." She uses material such as moose hide, stroud, duffel and furs. Mandeville, 64, has grown into the role of an elder over the past 16 years or so, basically since she returned to Fort Resolution in 1995. "About the last 16 years I've been getting a lot of orders," she said. "There used to be a lot of elders here that did a lot of sewing, like my stepmother, my aunt and my cousins. Some of them have passed on and some of them can't sew anymore because of their eyes. So I sort of took over that role it seems like." She learned how to make traditional crafts when she was young from her grandmother and stepmother. "So I've been sewing for years," she said. Mandeville left Fort Resolution when she was 16. She lived in Alberta for more than three decades and returned to her home community to work as co-ordinator of the Fort Resolution drug and alcohol program in the 1990s. She then worked as senior counsellor at the Nats'ejee K'eh Treatment Centre on the Hay River Reserve from 1997-1999. Mandeville is a cancer survivor of 13 years, and her artwork helped in her recovery, she said. "It's relaxing. It's a healing time for me," she said. She believes crafts can also be good for the well-being of others. "It gives you time to reflect on what's happening in your life," she said. One of the things Mandeville can make is traditional wedding dresses, and she would like to create more of them. However, the only one she has made is the ultra suede dress she wore to her own 2002 wedding in Fort Resolution. Traditional wedding dresses are common in Behchoko and other places, she noted. "But not Res." Mandeville has altered a lot of wedding dresses over the past 10 years if they are ordered and arrive in Fort Resolution too big or too small for brides-to-be. She has also made traditional dresses for graduations. Mandeville, a member of Deninu Ku'e First Nation, said it was special to wear a traditional dress when she was married at St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church. "I wore it with pride," she said, noting she was not allowed to wear traditional clothes at residential school when she was a child.
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