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Cardinal's talent makes beautiful aboriginal items
Theresa Seraphim
for Spotlight
Margaret Cardinal takes a small hammer and pounds the toe end of a pair of moccasins she has been sewing.
“I’m doing this to flatten it,” Cardinal explains, continuing to pound, and then to sew the two flaps of hide together to form the foot.
Doing this is nothing new for the Joussard resident, who has been into crafts from childhood.
“I’ve been sewing since I was nine (on the Saddle Lake reserve),” she says.
Cardinal’s parents were craftspeople who taught her and her three sisters how to sew moccasins, quilts and star blankets, and do beadwork, as well.
“We did it to bring income into the family,” she says.
Today, the crafts are still a source of income for Cardinal, who also does it as a way of carrying on traditional aboriginal arts in her business, called Kahmah- mahkos (little butterfly). The name, she says, came to her when she was a child, from her aunt, who told her she was involved in so many things, she was like a little butterfly. It’s important to keep the arts going, says Cardinal.
“It’s retaining the history, the knowledge.”
Cardinal also does that by holding classes in tepee making and other traditional crafts and, for 20 years, she was the instructor in Northern Lakes College’s Aboriginal Art and Design program before it was cancelled.
While her mother cured the hides the girls used for their crafts, today Cardinal can do it, but it’s not as easy.
“Hide is hard to come by because it’s expensive,” she says, adding a piece of elk hide measuring about four foot square costs about $450.
Cardinal has two hides she’s presently curing, but she stresses they’re for her, not for sale.
“It’s just too much work.”
But Cardinal is adamant that she retain the skill and pass it on, as there are fewer and fewer people now doing hides.
With moccasins, after the hide is cured comes the beadwork, then sewing the project together.
“There are several different styles. We tend to make the ones with the gathered toe,” says Cardinal.
The amount of time needed for a project depends on the type and complexity.
“Moccasins usually take about four days,” says Cardinal, adding those are done with her sister, who puts the beadwork on and then passes them to Cardinal to sew together.
Dolls are a Cardinal specialty, both traditionally-dressed ones made of moose or deer hide and horse hair and goddess dolls, made of hide or cloth and symbolizing a wish for love, joy, good health, prosperity, healing, guidance, protection, and remembering friendship.
“They’re meant for doll collectors; they’re not the kind of doll you give your kids,” says Cardinal.
There’s another important aspect of her dolls – they don’t have eyes.
“You have to put the spirit in,” Cardinal explains.
She also makes business card holders and teepees (from miniature to large ones). She recalls the year 1976, when her mother made 40 teepees.
“We had three months to do them,” says Cardinal.
With beads being such an integral part of aboriginal art, every two years she goes to the United States on a bead-buying trip.
“I’m an admitted beadaholic,” Cardinal laughs, then adds more seriously, “Most of my beads have a history on them.”
Porcupine quill and horsehair wrap are other items Cardinal uses for her projects, ten of which (including two beaded snakes, a beaded butterfly, a set of traditional Cree dolls with sweetgrass baskets, and a child’s wraparound, and a doll made out of deer hide, among other items) now grace one floor of the Lois Hole Pavilion at the Royal Alexandra Hospital, a floor which is dedicated to aboriginal women’s art.
Indeed, a pair of porcupine quill dolls she created recently sold for $800. Cardinal also sold another item k material which involved 52 different stitches, 16 of them on edged beadwork on silmaterial – to the Royal Alberta Museum, and several teepees to the University of Athabasca two years ago.
When it comes to teepees, each of the 15 poles involved has a particular teaching attached to it, such as “be strong”, “have faith”, “be kind”, and “have hope”.
Cardinal also makes horses, trading card holders, butterflies and bears. The latter have proven particularly popular.
“I can’t keep up with them; people just love them,” she says.
In April, Cardinal will become artist-in-residence at the Boreal Centre for Bird Conservation, making objects using items found there and doing hands-on work during the centre’s annual Songbird Festival.
The beginning of May will see her t each a silkscreening workshop in Stony Point.
Cardinal can be reached at 780-776-3992.
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Margaret Cardinal holds a goddess doll she sewed. Such dolls are said to bring love, joy, good health and many other positive benefits to their owners.
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Cloth beaded butterflies.
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A sample of the porcupine quill dolls Cardinal had sold for $800 two years ago.
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Cloth beaded horses.
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Margaret Cardinal sews a pair of moccasins in her studio.
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