How TikTok helped this Indigenous beader learn the craft and connect with her culture

Sophia Whiteye says she got into beading to heal from a traumatic domestic violence experience. She was looking for ways to get back up on her feet, and said she found no better method to feel better than to get close to her culture that she never got a chance to practise growing up.  

"Once I got into it, I was like it's medicine. It's like good medicine," said Whiteye. 

Whiteye  is a member of Delaware Nation at Moraviantown in Chatham-Kent, Ont., and currently lives in Windsor, Ont. The idea to get into beading came from a friend who gifted her a pair of beaded earrings. 

Whiteye said she started looking for classes to learn, but found none in Windsor that she could afford. She had hoped to have her grandmother teach her. But because her grandmother is a residential school survivor, no one in her family got to practise much of the Delaware Nation culture. 

The bead artist said she is now trying to break this cycle, so she turned to TikTok.  

"I caught on really fast and now I'm like — I'm obsessed," said Whiteye. 

"It feels really good and knowing that I have those skills and if I can do that like and teach somebody else now," she said. 

While Whiteye is happy she managed to connect with her culture at the age 26, she says she wishes it was done in the meaningful traditional way. 

"It is sad because it would have been a lot more probably a lot more like meaningful to bond with my family, to sit there and get taught by like my auntie or my mom or my grandma or something," she added.

Whiteye feels like social media still gave her a little bit of that, where the content creators are almost considered family.

"They're not blood related, but they are because they're teaching us something so important." 

Keeping traditions alive online 

One bead artist says one of the reasons why he started creating content online is to educate people and share tutorials. 

"I'm thankful for platforms like Instagram and TikTok to help us amplify our own voices to be heard, at a stage that's we've never sort of experienced before," said Jori Waskahat, a Toronto-based two-spirit Plains Cree bead artist.

Waskahat said he also started beading to heal from addiction during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.  

"I was actually able to come out of that because beading helped me," he said. 

VIDEO: Bead artist Jori Brennon shares a brief history of Indigenous beadwork in North America

Waskahat said he fears that the art and culture around beading could die, like many Indigenous languages.

"I think that's part of the reason why I create, because once you sort of put something online, especially like a beadwork tutorial it's there forever, it's on the internet, so people will always be able to learn from it," he said. 

"Platforms like Instagram and TikTok, they're giving so many like Indigenous youth and Indigenous people as well like to the Indigenous people in general, the sort of like opportunities that we never really received before," he added.