Elder keeps traditions alive - The old ways are often the best

The designs are her own, the palette full of rich striking colors.

In Mary Littlewolf's warm, cozy kitchen stands a work table loaded with the tools of her trade. Beads, thread, needles, sinew and smoked leather used to make intricate craft pieces of a kind seldom seen outside of a museum collection. Elaborate yokes, collars and short-top moccasins echo Plains Cree styles from the deep past.

There are a lot of memories stitched into her beadwork, remembrances from days gone by when all Native women wore shawls over long dresses, ribbons woven into braids and scarves tied around their heads.

For this self-taught artist, who learned the basics at home with her mother, Matilda Black, sewing by the light of a crackling fire in an old log cabin deep in the bush, there was no such thing as store-bought clothing.

"When it came time for a feast or ceremony, when I was a young girl, out would come our proudest possessions. Handmade, intricately beaded and quill-worked dresses echoed styles from the days of the great-grandmothers, our own women's regalia for the Thirst dance, Ghost Dance and Round Dances of my people," said Mary.

She lived with her parents, brothers and sisters about 20 miles from Loon Lake, Sask., totally immersed in the traditional way of life. Her father, "a French half-breed named Sal Trottier," kept the family alive by hunting, gathering, fishing and trapping.

She did not go to school because there was no money for school, she explained, and was married off at the age of 16 for a bride price of one good horse, saddle and saddle blanket. She rode away to live at Onion Lake with her new husband, Philip Whitstone, leaving her childhood home behind.

"My marriage at 16 was arranged by my parents. They gave us a horse and I had to go away crying and crying. This is one thing that's not right, but I had to do it. My husband and I raised 12 children, six girls and six boys, on good Native cooking, rabbit stew, boiled potatoes, bannock, eggs, porridge and tea. I made pemmican from dried moose meat, tallow and chokecherries and served up ducks and beaver.

"Up north beavers were really big. We also cooked lots of gophers. There was nothing better for my growing boys than a pot of gopher stew. I never scolded them, gave them home cooking every day, good Native cooking, that's why they turned out so well."

Mary has strong views about creating a very healthy and traditional lifestyle for herself and her family, which includes no alcohol, coffee or tobacco.

Mary puts her sewing and weaving skills to good use, creating dance regalia for her girls, and passing on traditional ways and values to a new generation.

As a child she had watched her mother create beautiful pieces of quillwork, using store-bought commercial dyes, which were much easier to obtain in the 1920s than the traditional bark, berry and root dyes.

#But is was the ease, availability and speed of bead-working that captured Mary's imagination, along with the challenge of creating intricate, one-of-a-kind items that would put her work in a class of its own.

"My mother did quillwork and there were all kinds of colors back in those days. Not many people do quillwork these days. It takes a long time to soften and dye the quills and I like doing beadwork much better. I make everything for myself and my family with no patterns. What you see comes from my head. I remember how it was in the old days, how the men and women used to dress for the Prairie Chicken ceremonies and dance."

The intricate beaded networking on an old-style yoke or collar can take tens of thousands of beads. Mary creates her signature pieces using a palette of softer colors - delicate shades of purple, rose, cobalt blue and greens, for the woodland floral designs; and the stronger primaries, like yellow and red mixed with black and white, for the geometric patterns of the plains. She uses beadwork, not only as a surface decoration on cloth and smoked leather, bas part of the actualwoven structure of a garment.

"Women were very skilled at weaving in the old days. That is how it was back then. Up North they made big birch bark baskets laced with reeds and dried grasses, good to store dried berries, fish and meat outside all through the winter without spoiling, just like a freezer today."

At the age of 88, Mary is a very influential and well respected Elder who lives with her second husband Antoine Littlewolf in a comfortable home in Onion Lake First Nation. In his old Plains-style wrap-around moccasins and hand-sewn leather vests and coats, Antoine cuts a striking and very traditional figure at powwows, ceremonies and family gatherings. Mary said that the best thing about her life and marriage with Antoine over the last 20 years is that, the second time around, she was able to choose for herself . . . and she chose him.