This story originally aired on Marketplace on Feb. 14.

Mikailah Thompson is an Indigenous beadwork artist based in Washington, D.C. When she was 10 years old, Thompson moved to the Nimiipuu reservation in North-Central Idaho where she lived with her grandmother, Chloe Halfmoon, who taught her how to bead.

Now, Thompson has made a business out of her beadwork. Thanks to the recent success of Beadwork by Mikailah, she was able to start a second business, Indigenous Creatives, a creative agency that works to spotlight Native American artists.

You can listen to her full story using the media player above or read a transcript of her story below:

My name is Mikailah Thompson, owner of Beadwork by Mikailah, LLC. I’m from the Nimiipuu reservation in Lapwai, Idaho. I currently reside in Washington, D.C.

I am a full-time artist, and I do an art form called beadwork. So it’s a traditional art form — Native American art form — where you’re basically tacking down a couple beads at a time, and you’re making regalia, you’re making accessories.

I grew up on the East Coast, and I moved to Lapwai, Idaho, at the age of 10. When I did get there, I was living with my grandmother — my maternal grandmother, Chloe Halfmoon. And she had stacks and stacks of beads just in her closet. And so she basically just said, “Yeah, I’ll teach you how to bead.” Ever since then, I’ve been beading.

I finally decided to kind of jump into going into business three years ago and haven’t looked back since. It’s been a great decision. When I first started pricing, I started pricing my hats, for example, at $500. And then I bumped it up a little bit more because I realized how quickly they were selling — they were still selling pretty quickly. [I] went to $800. $800 was a little bit of a steep stretch, because I realized some people weren’t buying as quickly. So I decided to go back to $700; that became my price.

What a lot of people don’t realize is, you know, what you’re paying for isn’t time. Like, I get that question a lot: “How long did this take?” You know, well, technically, it took all of my 30 years of life, because I hadn’t had this experience. I had to see this in certain ways. So that’s kind of been my journey with pricing.

Because of the success of my beadwork business — which is still growing, there’s still the long-term goals — but I had the opportunity of starting a second business, called Indigenous Creatives, which is a creative agency. We focus on multimedia and events. And so the whole purpose of that is being able to showcase Native creatives and Black-Native creatives, just as myself, and being able to support those dreams and those goals of those artists.

So it all kind of comes from my journey of being an artist and realizing, “Hey, this is what I love to do. I’m representing my community. I’m representing my culture, and I don’t have to rely on a 9-to-5 that I’m not passionate about. I can do what I love and still do all of those things.”

This series is part of Marketplace’s “My Economy” series, which tells the story of the new economic normal through the eyes of people trying to make it, because we know the only numbers that really matter are the ones in your economy.

Sensing Sasquatch, a new exhibition that will explore Sasquatch’s past, present, and future within the High Desert Region through an Indigenous lens, opens March 2 at the High Desert Museum in Bend, Oregon.

Popular depictions of Sasquatch can be found all over America, from t-shirts and road signs to beer cans and traveling mugs. Before you enter the exhibition, visitors will be asked to leave behind these ideas and perceptions and consider another side of Sasquatch’s story. 

Visitors will then be introduced to the Indigenous Plateau of the High Desert and the arid forests and canyonlands where Native peoples have long come into contact with and exchanged their stories about Sasquatch. Here, you will see representations, stories, and artwork about Sasquatch and how they vary between tribes across the regions. 

For many tribes across North America, Sasquatch is regarded as an elder, a relative, and a spiritual guide who appears to deliver important messages to humans. When Sasquatch suddenly comes into view and interacts with humans, it can be a life-changing experience. 

Sensing Sasquatch will feature work by five Indigenous artists, including Phillip Cash Cash (Nez Perce/Cayuse), HollyAnna CougarTracks DeCoteau Littlebull (Yakama/Nez Perce/Cayuse/Cree), Charlene “Tillie” Dimmick (Warm Springs), Frank Buffalo Hyde (Nez Perce/Onondaga) and Rocky LaRock (Salish).

Native News Online sat down with artist Hyde to talk about how he became an artist, how his parents divorce led him to see the world differently, what visitors can expect to see from his work, and what he hopes audiences will take away from the exhibition. 

Hyde attended the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His work is featured in permanent collections around the United States and was recently featured in Showtime’s “The Curse.” His artwork is described as bold, culturally relevant, and inspiring, featuring vibrant colors and animal subjects, most commonly buffalo and his tribe. 

You can check out his work on his website, Facebook, and Instagram. 

NNO: How and when did you begin your artwork career?

Hyde: I have artists on both sides of my family, so I’ve been around art my entire life. My uncle’s are all painters and sculptors and my father is a sculptor. I was 21 when I made a conscious decision to pursue art as a career vocation. I was in a group exhibition with my charcoal drawings when I was in high school and I think that kind of had an impact on me, as well as being young and having a gallery take me seriously. It kind of gave me the validation that I needed to make that decision and go forward.

NNO: Where are you from and how does that influence your artwork? 

Hyde: That’s really an important part of who I am and how I see the world. I was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico, but I was raised an equal amount of time on the Onondaga Nation as well. My parents divorced when I was 3 years old. I’ve been going back and forth between New Mexico and New York my entire life because of the conditions of the divorce. It led me to see a wide variety of creative people within different environments and really gave me a perspective that there was an art world or a world beyond the borders of my reserve. Having that close community and cultural knowledge really strengthened my resolve as a person in my worldview about the environment and politics.

NNO: What is your intention within your artwork?

Hyde: Why I started to make art is because I would look at the “contemporary Native American art” magazines and see that not a lot of artists were making work that commented on the current life of an Indigenous person. 

It started out that we, as Indigenous people, live in two different dimensions. But now in 2024, we live in multiple realities. We are heavily involved within parts of society, which wasn’t the case 25 to 30 years ago. Now we’re a lot more educated and in a position to tell our own stories and our own narratives. 

For my work, it’s always been about redefining what people think contemporary Native art is, and taking it to different places. I try to make it a little bit easier for the artists that are coming along behind us to not feel that demand or issue of your work having to be Indigenous enough or not. I don’t ask for permission for what I do and I don’t restrict myself to any preconceived notions of what native art is.

NNO: Can you describe some of the artwork you will have displayed at the upcoming Sensing Sasquatch exhibition?

 Hyde:  The High Desert Museum commissioned me to make a piece specifically for the exhibit. It’s going to be a combination of part painting, installation, sculpture, and experience. I wanted to make something that combined a lot of my interests, and also wanted to make something that would be interesting for the viewers to interact with that they maybe have not seen before.  

I hope that audiences will have a different level of reverence for Sasquatch instead of the tourist plywood cutout version.

NNO: Can you tell me what Sasquatch represents to you? 

Hyde:  My older sister is into paranormal things and cryptozoology. So, you know, being a nosy and annoying little brother, I was always into the stuff that she was into. Whenever she would leave the house, I’d go into a room and play her guitars, turn her records on, and read her books. So by proxy, I got interested in those things.

Culturally, also, I recognize that there are certain things that exist that are ancient that have always been here. There are certain things that are medicine that are here to help us and that are to be respected. In my mind there’s a popular cultural version of Bigfoot, but I also recognize Bigfoot or Sasquatch as medicine. I recognize the entity as something that is not here to harm anyone, but it is an extension of humanity and is here to help and nurture just like a relative. 

NNO: What do you hope audiences will take away from your artwork at the exhibit? 

HYDE: I hope that audiences will have a different level of reverence for Sasquatch instead of the tourist plywood cutout version. That’s what most people think of when they think of Sasquatch. They think it is an attraction or just some sort of anomaly like the Easter Bunny. It would be great if I could get a conversation started that there is actually a whole group of people out in the world that don’t question Sasquatch’s existence and that there is a very deep respect for the being itself.

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About The Author

Author: Kaili BergEmail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Staff Reporter

Kaili Berg (Aleut) is a member of the Alutiiq/Sugpiaq Nation, and a shareholder of Koniag, Inc. She is a staff reporter for Native News Online and Tribal Business News. Berg, who is based in Wisconsin, previously reported for the Ho-Chunk Nation newspaper, Hocak Worak. She went to school originally for nursing, but changed her major after finding her passion in communications at Western Technical College in Lacrosse, Wisconsin.

Minnetonka moccasins, two and a half years after apologizing for cultural misappropriation, has relaunched its best-known style after a redesign by a Red Lake Nation artist.

The Thunderbird, first introduced in the 1950s, is now Animikii. Graphic designer and activist Lucie Skjefte, a citizen of Red Lake Nation, reimagined the shoe’s beading work. It is named after her son, whose name coincidentally shares similar meaning as thunderbird in the Ojibwe language.

“The Thunderbird is one of our top-selling shoes and one of our most recognizable, so it’s been important to us to think about it related to our reconciliation work and the idea of redesigning it with an amazing artist like Lucy is such a privilege,” Minnetonka President Jori Miller Sherer said.

The Animikii style will go on sale Tuesday for a suggested retail price of $54.95 to $67.95 for adults and $44.95 for children. .

Skjefte also has worked on other projects for Minnetonka, the company said. Minnetonka, a private company, declined to share sales figures.

The company for several years has taken steps to reconcile its success as a white family-owned firm that made products largely from the ideas and traditions of Native Americans. The police killing of George Floyd in May 2020 became a tipping point in its reckoning process, as it did across American businesses and institutions.

In fall 2020, it posted a statement called “Our Commitment to the Native American Community” on its website. Minnetonka hired Adrienne Benjamin, an Anishinaabe artist and member of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, as a reconciliation adviser in 2020.

Formerly known as Minnetonka Moccasin Co., the company issued a formal apology in October 2021 for adopting Native American culture without acknowledgment.

The company, which dropped “moccasin” from its logo in 2008, then removed the word from much of its corporate messaging and called itself simply Minnetonka. The company said it would start working more closely with Native American artists and businesses and continue to contribute to Native American causes.

Through Benjamin’s work, Minnetonka has been working with Indigenous designers to empower them artistically, giving them freer rein to rework appropriated styles and offering lifetime royalties for each redesign.

“This is a bigger moment to show that people can change and forgiveness can happen,” Benjamin said.

For this launch, in addition to lifetime royalties, the Minnetonka team filed the image’s copyright in Skjefte’s name — ensuring that she is the sole owner of her design.

Minnetonka calls this a game changing tactic in the fashion and footwear industry and showcases that if a family-owned brand like Minnetonka can do this, others can follow suit.

“Minnetonka’s support is another way I feel immensely empowered as a designer,” Skjefte said. “I could really see myself elevating and collaborating with more indigienous artists and bringing them into the fold.”