Janet Dugan started working with seed beads after purchasing and completing an earring kit with her daughter at a community celebration. She then went to a beading workshop offered by the First People’s House of Learning at Trent, led by artisan and Indigenous Studies Ph. D. candidate, Malinda Gray (@beautifulstarbeads). With the help of online resources, YouTube tutorials, and the teachings of Gray and her sister, Judith Keesic, Janet had officially caught what she calls “beading fever”.

Prior to this, Janet spent nearly 30 years as a child and youth care worker, with her most recent position as the first Indigenous Student Advisor for the Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board. During her time in this role, she taught kids, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, how to bead using larger “pony beads”, and even made a YouTube channel, Beginner Beading with Janet D, to guide her students through completing the pieces that they had started together. In doing beadwork with children, she discovered the important connections that can be formed through crafting. When discussing this technique of community building Janet said that “[beading] became a way to focus on what you were doing and being able to have a conversation without being embarrassed or uncomfortable.” She continued that “When you’re focused on the beads, it becomes a bit easier, I’ve found.”

Not only did Janet’s use of beading become a tool for forming connections within the community, but it also became a way of sharing the spirit of beads.

“There’s a spirit to the beads that comes out and helps people”, Janet told me. She was given a teaching from a beading teacher that the Ojibwe word for bead, manidoominens, means “tiny spirit”—as “manidoo” means great spirit or creator, while “minens” means little seed or little creation. She was also taught about the importance of listening to the beads she’s working with, as the beads guide a piece to “turning out the way it wanted to be”, and “will determine how your work turns out”.

Janet hadn’t thought about beads holding a spirit until she had an experience that solidified the truth of the concept while making a Red Dress pin. Each of the pins that she makes for her Red Dress Pin Project has the name and story of a real missing or murdered Indigenous woman attached to it, and this specific pin was in the name of a woman named Helen. After the pin repeatedly wasn’t bought at markets, Janet finally decided to fix an error on the hanger portion of the pin and “take her apart”. In the process of repairing the pin, a bead broke, which led her to keeping and wearing Helen’s pin. Within a day, the dress portion came away from the pin.

After discussing this experience with a friend, her friend replied with “Oh Janet, [Helen] is talking to you, she doesn’t want her story told, […] her spirit doesn’t want you putting her out there yet.” Janet then took the pin, wrapped it in red cloth and tobacco, placed it in a dish above her fireplace, and shared the story with her daughter. Her daughter did some research on Helen—which led to a life-altering discovery.

After 10 years in the foster system, Helen ran away from home at the age of 13. At 19, Helen was found dead under a couch in an alley behind a bar in Hamilton, Ontario. After her murder, which remains unsolved to this day, an Indigenous group from her community built a lamppost behind the bar in Helen’s memory. When the lamppost was built, it would take six months before the light would work. 

To Janet, this case revealed that the breaking of the pin was no coincidence and Helen’s story would go on to shift the aim and objective of the Red Dress Pin Project. Janet, her daughter, and her granddaughter now wear pins that represent Helen. While telling this story, Janet said “my whole process and my whole thought around the project became not about raising money and raising awareness—it became about caring for spirit.”

The spirits of beads have continued to guide Janet throughout the project, and she says that “fantastic things happened after I realized it was about spirit, and spirit started to support my project.” Even when looking back to the start of the project, she can’t place how she decided on red dresses. She said “I bought a bag of red beads, and I was determined I was going to make red dresses […] I’d say that was spirits speaking to me.” 

At one point, Janet was going to end the project, but she came into work to a desk “covered in beads”, which led her to continuing to create pins. She had thought, “Now I have responsibility for these little spirits, I can’t just throw them out, I have to find a home for them.”

Since starting the Red Dress Pin Project three years ago, Janet has raised nearly $4000 for a variety of foundations by donating as close to 100% of the proceeds as possible.

She has created 329 pins to date, each in the name of a different missing or murdered Indigenous woman. When I asked about how the name is assigned to each pin, Janet replied with “I think the pin knows who they are, I just go off the list”, which really illustrated the trust that she carries for the spirit within the beads that make up her pins. Each pin is accompanied by a card, which and writing these cards is the hardest part of the project for her. 

“I look up every single name, and I write a part of the story on the card. I make a connection, […] I know 300 and some odd stories”, Janet told me.

Janet says that having no direct connection to anyone who has been murdered or gone missing makes this project easier for her to facilitate, as she holds a personal relation to the issue at hand, but she’s “not so close to it that [she] can’t lead a group and have that discussion.”

The pins that are made in her workshops, including the upcoming “Weaving Traditions” workshop, are a separate project for her, and are her source of income since retiring in 2021. Not only do these workshops allow for experienced beaders and new creators alike to come together to learn, it also helps build the connections alongside beading that Janet loves. She believes that relationship building is the most important part of reconciliation, that “the relationship comes first, then comes the reconciliation work”. 

Her beading workshops provide the opportunity for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people to create and learn in the same space, in a similar way that her Red Dress Pin Project has allowed for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous individuals to learn more about the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada, while connecting with a specific story. Cultivating this sort of community is really important to Janet, she considers it “a nice way to give back. It’s a good way to do reconciliation work, it’s true reconciliation work having non-Indigenous people connecting in that way.”

Along with managing her own project, Janet is a member of the Ishkode Indigenous Art Collective, a group of artisans who participate in craft markets and are available for teaching and facilitating in-person and virtual Indigenous craft workshops—with a portion of workshop fees funding free cultural workshops for urban Indigenous peoples in Durham region. Through joining the collective, Janet says that she has “taken on the role of ‘Auntie’ to some pretty amazing [young] artists.”

Janet’s love for beading is truly inspiring. When asked about how beading plays a role in her personal healing process and connection to her community, she replied “it’s everything. […] I’m beading all the time. I bead every day. It’s my life at this point.” 

Janet would describe herself just after retiring as “your picturebook assimilated indigenous person”, “was walking both sides” as a mixed heritage Indigenous woman and first-generation residential school survivor who grew up outside of her community, and she describes beading as her “medicine” within her own healing journey. Near the end of our conversation, Janet said “I’m doing what I love [with] the piece of bringing awareness” which I think sums up her passion for the craft and dedication to providing the spirits within each bead with a proper home.

Janet will be leading the Community Race Relations Committee of Peterborough’s upcoming "Weaving Traditions" Beading Workshop on December 15th, 2023 at Watson and Lou (383 Water Street) from 11:30AM-7:00PM with a one-hour lunch break from 3:30-4:00PM. Participants will have the opportunity to learn about Indigenous beadwork, and create their own unique Red Dress Awareness pin through Janet’s teachings and guidance.

As for the group organizing the event, the Community Race Relations Committee of Peterborough (CRRC) works towards a more positive, anti-racist Peterborough through advocacy, education, and collaboration. In conversations with Rhea Shahe, the CRRC’s Community Advocacy and Outreach Coordinator, I was able to learn a bit more about the committee and their role in cultivating a more inclusive, social justice-oriented community in Peterborough.

To the CRRC, advocacy is an important element in creating a more supportive community for BIPOC individuals, as pairing prevalent self and community advocacy helps in preventing the isolation that is often associated with self-advocating. Along with the discomfort of self-advocating, “many racialized people are deemed aggressive or difficult when they advocate for themselves.” 

Through developing an established community of allies and BIPOC-identifying people, the exhaustion and fear of prejudice or discrimination can be reduced for the individuals most affected by racial matters. “It is very important that we have collectives within the community that are willing and equipped to support BIPOC folk in situations where they are being discriminated against, exploited, invalidated, and/or pushed to the margins of society,” Rhea explained.

The committee values close collaboration and connections with local businesses, organizations, and initiatives, as it provides them with the opportunity to “gain insight on different perspectives and approaches to social justice, and at the same time contribute our own expertise and knowledge on the topic.”

In collaborating and partnering with a variety of community members and groups, the CRRC is able to consider more diverse perspectives in their outreach and approach to caring for the Peterborough community.

The CRRC also offers a selection of anti-racism training, workshops, and resources for community members to educate themselves on the pressing issues that face racialized individuals within our own community, as well as outside of Peterborough. Their collection of resources seeks to “enlighten [community members] on the historical aspects and contributing factors to racial oppression”, and inspire discussions surrounding anti-oppression that prompt others to educate themselves on how racism affects the lives of the BIPOC population in Peterborough.

The “Weaving Traditions” beading workshop is a part of the committee’s community-driven BIPOC Bounce Back Program; an initiative that helps engage meaningful connections between local businesses and the BIPOC community and their allies through race-focused workshops held in downtown Peterborough and led by BIPOC-identifying individuals. The businesses involved in this program have all “explicitly identified themselves as safe spaces for racialized individuals” and provide a space for those attending the workshops to participate in “activities that actively foster an inclusive and equitable culture within Peterborough.”

In order to stay updated on the CRRC’s upcoming initiatives, or even participate in an event, you can follow their Instagram or their eventbrite. Those interested in volunteering for or getting involved in future CRRC events are encouraged to reach out to Community Advocates and Outreach Coordinator Rhea Shahe (rhea@racerelationspeterborough.org) or CRRC's Executive Director Patricia Wilson (patricia@racerelationspeterborough.org).

A special thanks to Janet Dugan (Ishkode Indigenous Art Collective) and Rhea Shahe (Community Race Relations Committee) for their time and involvement in this piece.

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This article has been updated to accurately reflect Patricia Wilson's title of Executive Director of the Community Race Relations Committee.