Collective Spirit Podcast
First Peoples Fund presents the Collective Spirit® podcast. The Collective Spirit moves each of us to stand up and make a difference, to pass on ancestral knowledge, and simply extend a hand of generosity. The Collective Spirit podcast features Native artists and culture bearers who discuss the power of Indigenous art and culture. The Collective Spirit® podcast is produced by First Peoples Fund, whose mission is to honor and support Indigenous artists and culture bearers through grant-making initiatives, culturally rooted programming, and training & mentorship. Learn more at www.firstpeoplesfund.org
Collective Spirit Podcast
S2E5: Kelly O'Bennick (Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes)
Join us as we learn from 2023 Cultural Capital Fellow Kelly Rose O'Bennick (Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes), a multi-talented artist doing just that with her passion for traditional moccasin making. Drawing from her sobriety journey, Kelly is on a mission to reintroduce traditional attire into everyday life, fostering cultural pride and connection. Delve into her journey and discover the significance of moccasins as a symbol of cultural roots.
When you take that first step, it's with your feet. In order to ground yourself, you have to have a good foundation, and your foundation starts at your feet, so that's why I wanted to learn how to make moccasins.
Speaker 2:The CollectivSpirit Podcast. The CollectivSpirit moves each of us to stand up and make a difference, to pass on ancestral knowledge and simply extend a hand of generosity. The CollectivSpirit Podcast features Native artists and culture bearers who discuss the power of indigenous art and culture.
Speaker 1:My name is Kili Rose Obenek. I'm an enrolled member of the Confederates Salish and Kootenai tribes. I reside on the Flathead Indian Reservation here in Montana. I currently work for my tribes as a GIS analyst and have been for the last 10 years my art and my medium. What I do is kind of like a little bit of everything.
Speaker 1:During COVID I really got into beading and there really wasn't really much else to do because we were sheltering in place or the whole world was sheltering in place. So I picked up buying beads, really got into beading, kind of probably went overboard with buying beads, but I was told you can never have enough beads. So I live with that motto. I do a lot of beading and that's what I got chosen for. The First People's Fund was beading moccasins. I wanted to be moccasins for my community and show them how to be moccasins.
Speaker 1:So I was born in Plains Montana. I wasn't raised on the reservation growing up. So when I moved back here, that's when I started hanging out with my grandma and I started asking questions about our family history, where we come from, who we are as Indian people. My kids go to an all language immersion school down in Arleigh here on our reservation in Cusum and they're actively learning the language and that's where I learned a lot of my language from is listening to my kids and asking my girls questions. And then they get frustrated with me because I'm a mom and I'm supposed to know but I don't have all the answers. I'm still actively learning our culture and our language as we go on a daily basis myself. So that's where a lot of my cultural background comes from is just living here on the reservation, asking questions that you're not supposed to ask, but someone's got to ask them. If we're going to keep our traditions and cultures alive, we got to know the reasons why we do things. So I've gotten, I believe, 12, maybe 13 years. I think I'm going on 13 years of sobriety, of being drug and alcohol free.
Speaker 1:My husband's aunt, dorothy we called her D-Dubb she used to wear moccasins all over the place, I mean everywhere. All the time. She hated shoes, she hated boots. She always wore moccasins and they weren't fancy moccasins, they were just she got buckskin, sewed them together and that's what she wore. So then when I started my journey into sobriety and I started getting into beating, it kind of kept me busy, kind of kept me out of trouble I realized during COVID it was I don't know. We had a lot of time on our hands and depression set in, not knowing what was going on, not knowing what to do. So that's when I grabbed a hold of beating and I was thinking of at my husband's aunt. He had passed away before COVID had hit.
Speaker 1:So I was thinking about when you decide to make that decision in disparity, it's always that first step. You're taking that first step in disparity, wearing those moccasins, and that keeps you grounded, keeps you grounded in your culture. So I decided to make moccasins with my community. I want to show them how and give them a safe and sober environment, something that the community members can look forward to doing, like maybe on a weekly basis. When you take that first step, it's with your feet. In order to ground yourself, you have to have a good foundation and your foundation starts at your feet.
Speaker 1:So that's why I wanted to learn how to make moccasins. I wanted to be able to share that experience with my community members and take back that space and start bringing back traditional clothing, because we only wear traditional clothing during fine events graduation, weddings, big celebrations and I was like, why don't we do this every day and I was thinking to myself what is something that we can wear every day to make it normal? And I was like shoes, moccasins. My Aunt, dorothy, did it all the time. They weren't fancy, they were just buckskin moccasins that she would bead. When she'd wear them out, she'd make herself a new pair, like every year, every other couple of months, when she would wear holes in them. How I envisioned this project going is I've been buying buckskin. I think I got four hides.
Speaker 1:Now I'm not charging my people or people that come to learn how to make moccasins. I don't want to charge them. That's the whole reason why I applied for this grant. I want to be able to have them come in and then have them trace their foot out and show them the steps on how to make moccasins, because that also seems to be like a lost art. There's only a couple people that know how to make moccasins, so I want to be able to have them come in. I have another family friend. She's going to help me teach the class, because I always get to a certain point and then I forget. Do I go under? Do I fold? Do I sew them inside out right side in, when I told people yeah, we're going to have a moccasin making class. And then all of a sudden on Facebook, I have 20 million people maybe not 20 million people, but 20 people messaging me. Hey, when are you going to start those classes?
Speaker 1:I learned about the first people's fund back in 2020 when COVID hit. I was part of a program put on the Black Hills Community Loan Fund. They had a program called Pivoting into Pandemic. Basically, they got a bunch of us Indian entrepreneurs together from all over the nation. That program helped us build a business plan. It helped us write strategic planning, how to sell things online. Basically, it was taking your business from like a brick and mortar store to an online store, to an online platform, because a lot of us artists were facing COVID times. They weren't doing vendor markets, they weren't doing farmers market. How is it happening? I mean, a lot of artists that I've met in this program and the First People's Fund are people that do face-to-face sales.
Speaker 1:That program had contacts with the First People's Fund the first year when pivoting in the pandemic program. They encouraged a lot of us artists to apply for the business and leadership or the cultural capital program out of the First People's Fund. I applied for the business and leadership that first year and got denied, which it happens. I mean you can't win them all, but you sure can try. I was at the Scourge Day. I told me the try again the next year.
Speaker 1:The next year came and I decided to do instead of working on my business plan, I wanted to more focus on community work and giving back to my community. What can I do for my people and my tribe here? That was why I applied for the cultural capital. I'm really glad that the First People's Fund was able to read my proposal and rent with the idea, and it granted me this opportunity to do what I want to do. Now I'm in the planning process.
Speaker 1:I'm hopefully, by the end of this month, be able to start my community work and be able to send back some numbers and pictures to the First People's Fund and show them. Hey, you guys believed in me. You guys gave me all this. You gave me this much money to do this project. Here's what I did with it and I'm hoping that I'm able to keep going with it even after my fellowship ends with the First People's Fund.
Speaker 1:But it's been rewarding, I guess you can say not as just them giving you grant money to go do this, but rewarding, as a person, that they actually believed in my idea and that they're actually going to help me implement my idea. We're going to beat them. So at the end, I'm going to be able to take pictures of their Marcus sense and encourage them to wear them all the time, anytime that you can, not just when we have Rock your Marcus and Day or graduation. Wear them when the weather permits. Wear them to work, wear them to school, wear them around the house, wear them to the store. Just wear them. Take back that space, be proud of who you are and you're taking that first step of showing everybody that we're still here and we're going to be here. That is my plan.
Speaker 2:The Collective Spirit Podcast is produced by First People's Fund, whose mission is to honor and support indigenous artists and culture bearers through grant making initiatives, culturally rooted programming, and training and mentorship. Learn more at FirstPeople's Fund dot O-R-G.