In the circle: powwow, crafting a path to healing for Bearspaw First Nation artist

Bearspaw First Nation dancer and artist Tobias Ear. LEAH PELLETIER RMO PHOTO

ÎYÂRHE NAKODA – Tobias Ear can still picture it – looking up at his grandmother, a concentration painted across her face as she effortlessly crafts another dream catcher.

“I remember when she would make her little crafts, I would say, ‘I want to make things like that,’ but I couldn’t keep up with her,” Ear recalled from his family home in Mînî Thnî.

• Sign up for breaking news alerts from CTV News, right at your fingertips
• The information you need to know, sent directly to you: Download the CTV News App

Wrapping each one in a leather hide, Phyllis Ear, with her grandson by her side, would head to the trading post in Bragg Creek or Banff where she’d sell her creations for $3 each, earning grocery money for the day.

“Every time I saw her, she was always working with something” said Ear, a powwow dancer, drummer and artist from Bearspaw First Nation, one of three bands in Îyârhe (Stoney) Nakoda First Nation.

Phyllis passed away in 2022 but those are the memories Ear keeps close to his heart and the ones that have encouraged him down the path to making his own regalia.

“Being around that, I think it’s starting to show. I think that really inspired me,” he said.

Inside a room in his basement, the shelves lined with handmade moccasins, intricate headdresses and boxes of beads and crafting material stacked in the corner are certainly evidence of it.

Most pieces are a part of Ear’s regalia that he dons for a powwow, and many are a result of hours spent leaning over his work bench and threading lines of beads or painting feathers to bring his vision to life.

“He’s always got his outfit on his mind,” said Ear’s wife Robin Ear.

Growing up singing with his family drum group and travelling for powwows, a love for dancing came before art, says Ear. In those days, his outfit was the last thing on his mind and all he wanted was to be in the powwow circle, feeling the rhythm of a song.

“I was a kid, and I didn’t ask questions. I just wanted to dance,” he said.

Travelling around North America with his family, Ear recalls the struggles of his teenage years.

“I just hit the wrong type of friends and they weren’t into powwow; they were into concerts and I went down a wrong path. I wish I didn’t. I wish I stayed to myself.”

Battling addiction at the darkest point in his life, dancing faded into the background and Ear felt like an outsider in his own community.

“ At one point, alcohol nearly killed me,” he said. “The doctors told me you’re not going to see Christmas and I didn’t take that seriously.”

“That lifestyle got old, and it was tiresome.”

Ear recalls a story his grandmother told before she passed away that seemed to open his eyes to the path he was headed down and the one he wanted to be on instead.

“My grandmother told me before she left, nobody knows when they’re going,” Ear recalled. “She said, there was this one guy, he used to go drink and party and have fun and then one day he sobered up, disappeared, made beautiful things and then he tried to be a chief – a high person, a high power – and then she said, ‘but when he tried the community said, ‘hey, when your elders were alive, weren’t you running around to the nearest liquor stores’ and he had nothing to say. He just sat down and so that’s what I kind of picked up.”

“She said, ‘don’t put yourself in that kind of place,’ so I’ve learned to push back on myself,” he said. “I told my late grandmother, ‘I’ll stay away from all those types and I’m going to get out of this circle. I wish she could see that now.”

‘At least make it once’

With the words of his grandmother on his mind, art became another step towards healing and the start of a new direction for Ear.

“My grandmother always told me that [my great grandmother], Flora, would try to craft anything at least once, a headdress, the war bonnet, a vest – she made a bunch of things,” Ear said. “Growing up hearing that, that inspired me [to] at least make it once.”

That was enough for Ear to set his mind to crafting his own regalia, even if it meant teaching himself every step of the way.

“I felt nobody had hope and nobody had faith and I was just tired of that. It was time I had to prove it to myself and [crafting] made me happy,” he said.

Making a trip to the band office one day to get an Indian taco, instead it was an array of beads for sale that caught Ear’s eye. Before he knew it, he was leaving with a handful of every colour and no idea where to start.

“Complete truth, I checked out YouTube,” he said with a laugh. “I was pumping myself up, like ‘OK, I can do it. I got the beads, what do I need?’”

“That was my first step.”

A month later, Ear had completed his first beaded vest. Working on the project for up to 12 hours some days, Ear says designs came to him in many ways.

“I started having dreams of it … and I’d wake up and quickly grab a pen and paper and draw what I saw,” he said, noting dreams are “taken serious” in Îyârhe (Stoney) culture.

Fascinated by stories about other tribes, Ear says he will often incorporate Sioux techniques or Blackfoot-style designs in his beadwork.

Showing up in many of his creations is also the two-row wampum. The parallel lines he creates with beads represent “a sacred law.”

“This is the law you know naturally, like it’s wrong to kill someone or you’re going to go to prison. … I tell my wife, it’s the white law,” Ear explained. “There’s that law and the law of the spiritual side.”

Other designs come from his family, like a dragonfly for his brother, Dancing Star, or the colours purple and pink in honour of his grandmother.

Keen to see what else he could make and with a determination to learn more about his culture, the vest became a launching point for Ear.

Next, he would try his hand at making his first headdress, a ceremonial headpiece that indicates high status in Îyârhe Nakoda culture.

Eager to be a part of an event at the Calgary Stampede one year, Ear found out last minute he would need a headdress to participate, but without one of his own and no time to pay someone to make it, he got to work.

“I used some hockey tape, wrapped fluffs on each feather. I’m like, ‘OK, got that’ and I’m timing myself and I was completely done in like 15 or 18 minutes,” Ear said, noting he now has several headdresses under his belt, including some worn by chief and council at the Bearspaw First Nation inauguration earlier this year.

“Oh man, the looks I got,” Ear said with a laugh, recalling the makeshift headdress he pieced together before going on stage.

From weasel pelts to porcupine quills, Ear says he finds material to make his regalia in many ways, sourcing feathers from one place and beads from another, while other items have come to him as gifts.

“My father says, everything you wear now, you earned it. It came to you,” he said, noting that some items in his outfit have taken years to track down.

“There’s a lot of giving in Native culture, not just in powwow or anything,” Robin added.

Îyârhe Nakoda pride

When Ear steps in the powwow circle, he feels like himself.

“Those two minutes that you dance or you’re out there listening to a song, you totally forget about reality and real life,” says Ear. “I love to dance. I love to be in the circle, in the light.”

“The world is tough ... and I don’t want to be in that tough place anymore. I’ve seen it already and it doesn’t lead to a good place. When I stick to my outfit or crafts it actually takes me to places,” Ear added. “It’s when I feel happy. It’s a lifestyle.”

But most of all, handcrafting his own regalia and stepping into the powwow circle is what makes him proud to be Îyârhe, Ear says.

Given the Native name Rainbow as a child, now Ear’s name has become Rainbow Dancer.

“I was mad at that name for a long time, getting teased and this and that. It was a hard name to carry. One time I hated colours. I used to wear all black,” he said, recalling his younger years.

“I didn’t take any pride in who I was. I was lost.”

But now, moments before a powwow, as Ear puts on every piece of his outfit – from his breastplate to beaded vest and ankle bells – he steps into the circle, adorned in colour from head to toe.

“I’m proud of that name nowadays,” he said. “Now, I try to use all the colours I can.”

The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada. This position covers Îyârhe (Stoney) Nakoda First Nation and Kananaskis Country.

Leah Pelletier, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Rocky Mountain Outlook