While In Winnipeg, I met up with talented beadwork artist and young mama, Kailey. She wanted a mixed session – up to date images of her and her family as well as some creative portraits of an idea she had brewing. I was game, as the love and strength she had for her role as a mother she through, and her visual project about what it’s like to be a young Indigenous women in Winnipeg, was powerful.
Kailey was a guest blogger over at tea&bannock, and in her own words she describes the meaning behind this next series:
“My sister and I were once in the Child Welfare System so the death of Tina Fontaine struck me personally. If it wasn’t for my mother choosing to change her life around by becoming sober, the system could have likely failed us too.
I was raised by a single-mother and grew up on-reserve with all of the poverty, social dysfunctions and addictions from colonial trauma around me. It took a lot of strength and courage for myself to make the decision to break the cycle too and change my life around for the better.
Now that I have a daughter of my own, it’s important that I do everything in my power to voice my concerns and create change for my people.”
