Beading has always been a constant in Eva Dabutch’s life.
Introduced to it as a child growing up in Mississauga First Nation, a small Anishnaabe community just outside of Blind River, Ont., Dabutch has taken her love of the art form and created her own beading and crafting supply business in Sault Ste. Marie — Trailblazing Beads — both as a side hustle and a personal mission to generate positive change within Indigenous Peoples by promoting traditional beading and crafting as tools of healing.
“My mom had a closet full of big containers of beads, and she would just let us go in there and do beadwork. I’d be spilling them all over the place and mixing up her containers, I’d be cutting big holes in her leather,” Dabutch recalled, laughing. “She never got really mad at us. She just encouraged that crafting.”
Trailblazing Beads has been in business since opening on Gore Street in 2016. Knowing all along that the location was temporary, Dabutch would eventually relocate her business to a larger storefront on March Street in October 2020.
That move, Dabutch says, has afforded her the opportunity to expand her business by adding different types of fabric with Indigenous prints, ribbons and various crafting supplies used to create Indigenous art and powwow regalia.
“That’s a big part of my mission, is having the supplies available so people can participate in their culture and that includes attending pow wows, and you need material and fabric and notions (a term used in the beading community to describe materials like thread, pins, needles, etc.) to make your regalia,” she said.
Dabutch says there's been a large demand for the various fabrics with Indigenous prints since the expansion.
“I just kept collecting and buying more, and the community was really excited about having a good selection of fabrics to choose from,” she said.
The relocation to March Street also allowed Trailblazing Beads to offer more space to local Indigenous artists to sell their beadwork and other creations on consignment, which is also a nod to Dabutch’s own upbringing; her mother, Bernadine, created a beading business named Trailblazing Woman with some of her friends in Mississauga First Nation when Dabutch was just a child.
“I think that’s really important to me, because growing up that’s the way my mom made income for our family, extra income. She would put her stuff on consignment at Serpent River Trading Post, so we would go there once a month — she would sell a lot of beadwork and earrings, so I always grew up with making income that way for our family,” recalled Dabutch. “We would go to powwows, she would set up a booth and sell her artwork — and that was part of our livelihood for our family.”
A registered social worker specializing in mental health, Dabutch says beading is very much in line with recommendations made by mental health experts over the years to address and heal trauma — in the case of Indigenous Peoples, trauma that has been passed down from generation to generation due to colonialism and the lasting impacts of the residential school system.
The Anishinaabe/Lakota entrepreneur feels beading can help people living with trauma to be more mindful, grounded and present overall.
“They’re coping with these symptoms of trauma with addiction and medications, but there is a more holistic way to deal with the trauma — and that’s through our traditional practices,” said Dabutch. “Beading is really grounding; you’re focusing, it’s repetitive. Beading activates the right side of the brain, which is responsible for creativity and emotions.”
Dabutch says that a lot of her customers also use beading and crafting as a form of relapse prevention.
“The teaching is that the spirit is not within your body and it takes a little bit for it to return once you stop using — so people don’t want to use that because you’re putting a piece of yourself in that beadwork as you’re beading,” she said. “You want good energies as you’re beading, because people can be using this beadwork in ceremony, when they’re going to pow wows. So you don’t want anything [negative] attached to that beadwork.”
Trailblazing Beads will host a number of beading classes throughout the new year, beginning with classes dedicated to making miniature headdresses in January and red dress pins in February.
Dabutch says she's doing this in hopes of eventually spawning a beading community in Sault Ste. Marie.
“A lot of our customers ask for beading classes,” said Dabutch. “I’m going to be facilitating some, but my hope is to bring in other artists who specialize in other beading techniques or beading styles.”
Trailblazing Beads has also launched a new website, enabling customers to purchase beading supplies and beading kits online. The new site also includes a page dedicated to beading tutorials, complete with PDF instructions and how-to videos showing customers how to create their own beadwork projects using the store's pre-made beading kits.
