Winnie the Pooh, Wednesday Addams and a can of spam reinterpreted through an Indigenous lens

Indigenous artists are adding their own style to popular images and getting noticed.

Storm Angeconeb didn't expect her Woodland-style recreation of Winnie the Pooh and friends in a canoe to go viral after she posted it to social media.

After an artistic block she was inspired by the old Winnie the Pooh cartoons she grew up watching.

"I posted it the next day thinking nothing of it. And then like four hours into it, while the post was up Relentless Indigenous Women posted it," said Angeconeb, who is Ojibway from Lac Seul First Nation in Northwest Ontario. 

"That was just huge for me and like it felt nice to be acknowledged and recognized by her."

Angeconeb currently lives on Mackenzie Island, outside of Red Lake, roughly 140 kilometres north of Kenora, Ont., where she likes to paint with her son — a huge inspiration for her work.

Wednesday's dance

Bead worker Heather Stewart, who is Cree from Kashechewan First Nation in northern Ontario, operates under the handle Sweet Grass by Heather Stewart. She uses some vintage beads and tiny glass beads in her earrings and patches and incorporates pop culture and movie references into her work.

She moved to Peterborough, Ont., for nursing school and decided to pursue her art full time.

Last month she posted her beadwork rendering of Jenna Ortega's dance scene from the series Wednesday to social media; it's since garnered over 17,000 likes.

"It sold within two seconds of me posting it for sale," she said.

She made stickers available to meet demand.

She's been beading since she was four years old. Her mother would set up a beading station for Stewart whenever she was working on a project.

Her art earns enough to support her and her family. Since opening her Etsy shop four years ago, she said she has made over 30,000 sales.

The shop is a family business; she and her fiancé are both artists.

"It's kind of surreal. Like I still don't understand how my beadwork gets so far," she said.

Stewart's work has been sold all over the world and has buyers from New Zealand and Germany.

'Thera-beading'

Lisa Muswagon, from Pimicikamak Cree Nation in northern Manitoba, started beading as a child and comes from a family of beaders. She said beading was a way to bring herself out of poverty.

"My dad, I used to watch him bead as I was growing up, and I used to see him craft things to get us out of a bind… I was always inspired by that," Muswagon said.

She calls her beading "thera-beading" because it helps her deal with stress and some of the challenges she's faced.

In 2018, her husband was diagnosed with kidney failure. She needed money for transportation to and from his dialysis treatment.

"It would help me like pay for my gas. It would put groceries on the table," Muswagon said.

A beaded, three-dimensional Spam can which took about 100 hours to complete is part of a collection of work meant to highlight some of the food staples Indigenous people grow up with that aren't healthy.

Muswagon has plans to create a series of items around healthy eating, too.

She has sold her pieces to TikTok personality Doggface and her artwork has been seen on red carpets.