'Her spirit was with me': Cree beadwork artist reconnects with great-grandmother in latest project

A Cree artist is using beadwork to reconnect with her ancestral past – recreating her great-grandmother’s intricate design of an 85-year-old pair of mittens.

“I always refer to it as a project of love,” says beadwork artist Cynthia Boehm. “This connection between my great-grandmother and I, this project is really to honour her.”

It started five years ago when Boehm approached then-cultural anthropology curator Maureen Matthews at the Manitoba Museum.

“She thought her grandmother had a piece of beading here,” says Matthews. “Her mum said something about mittens or something, and so I started to look into it.”

After a few months, the museum was able to locate the mittens made by residential school survivor Jane Mary Sinclair, along with a collection of ancestral pieces donated by Boehm’s family and friends.

“I was really in disbelief that it really was my grandmother's work because a lot of the items aren't identified, the makers aren't identified,” Boehm says.

Boehm set out to reproduce her great-grandmother’s gauntlets – a learning process she says was very challenging and emotional.

“I had so many special memories of her throughout this project,” Boehm says. “There's times I love thinking about her and her little funny ways…and there was times I cried because of memories of her and missing her.”

With the museum’s support, she received funding from the Manitoba Arts Council to pursue the project over the span of two years.

“The connection to my grandmother came to life that much more enduring during the beadwork,” Boehm says. “And during this whole process, I felt her spirit was with me and I let her spirit guide me.”

A side-by-side comparison of the beaded mitten made by Cynthia Boehm to replicate her grandmother's decades old creation. (Source: Alexandra Holyk/CTV News Winnipeg)

While Sinclair didn’t do a lot of beading when Boehm was younger, the artist says her great-grandmother inspired her to take up beadwork later in life.

“I would play with her beads. I would dig into her tins and you know, I always, I always wanted to learn,” Boehm says.

Matthews says this is why the Manitoba Museum offers courses in skill reclamation and repatriation.

“It's so that Indigenous people can reclaim the mediums that they express their artistry through,” she says.

The museum says connections like Boehm’s are rare, but empowering.

“It really enriches our records and what we know about the objects too,” says Amelia Fay, the Manitoba Museum’s curator of anthropology and the HBC Museum Collection. “Often what's recorded is a very small amount, and we can always add to the records as we have these sort of chance meetings and discoveries.”

Boehm says that while the process was strenuous, she is grateful for the opportunity to pay tribute to her great-grandmother’s memory and spirit in this way.

“I couldn't think of doing anything more to honour her than doing this,” Boehm says.