41 Teachers and Murmurations (2021, 2024)- Earrings Collection (Sold Separately)

Artist Statement:

About the Work: On May 27, 2021, at the height of gathering data for my PhD
dissertation focused on Indigenous beadwork, “Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc confirmed an
unthinkable loss that was spoken about but never documented by the Kamloops Indian
Residential School”. It was a news story that was shocking without being surprising, and
in the world of Indigenous academia, it was hard to know the right thing to say or to do,
and doing nothing didn’t seem like a choice I had; I had interviews scheduled, I had
emails to answer, I had Zoom calls to attend. In the midst of a confusing kind of grief, I
created this fringe earring design; then I created four more of the same pairs. I had never
recreated a design before, but something about this design enabled my Spirit, and my
heart, my hands, and my mind to reconnect. I kept the five pairs of earrings in my
desk, and I returned to my interviews, and my emails, and my Zoom calls.
Three years went by, but not a day passed that I didn't think about beads, beading, or
beadwork. When I looked up and realized that my PhD project was coming to an end, my
mind separated from my hands, from my heart, and from my Spirit again. The writing was
coming to an end and I felt joy, but I also felt another strange kind of grief; I didn’t know
how to say goodbye to this work that had been my life for 5 years. So, I turned back to
this design to re-member what I had learned. I wanted each piece to have its own space,
but for it to contribute to the whole. Every night for weeks I created one earring at a time
for this collection, and each pair represents time spent and stories shared with the 41
beadworkers from around Turtle Island who participated in my project. You learn a lot by
creating a new design, but there’s more to learn when you create it 40 more times.

Indigenous beadworkers are changing the way business can be done. We are telling new
stories about what it means to work for ourselves and to create value. We are finding each other and finding new (old) ways of pimachisiwin, of “making a living with the land”
(Ghostkeeper, 1997). This is all of our story, this collection is just one small way that I
could think to share it.

About the Artist: Jordyn Hrenyk is a Michif (Métis Nation Saskatchewan, Local #7)
researcher and beadworker. She studies Indigenous self-employment, and in particular,
she wrote her PhD dissertation about the Indigenous beadwork market on Turtle Island.
She loves Indigenous beadwork Instagram so much, that she literally got a PhD in it.
Janet Antone (@ms.antonesbeadwork) was Jordyn’s first beading teacher and Jordyn is
forever grateful for those lessons. You can read Jordyn’s PhD dissertation project in full
at the SFU Library:

• Sold Separately 
• 14krt Gold plated wires
• Seed beads