SPEAKER_01 0:09

Welcome to Between the Threads, a podcast exploring the threads that connect us. Story, memory, identity, and meaning, and how they weave the fabric of peace in our lives and communities. Between the Threads is a joint initiative between Kahani and Narratives. Kahani is a nonprofit organization that amplifies storytelling for peace building. And Narratives is an award-winning planning and design firm based in Winnipeg, Canada. Welcome to our next episode of Between the Threads. On today's episode, we have Justine Pru. Justine is an indigenous tattoo and mural artist whose Metis identity is rooted in Ojibwe and Korean ancestry through deep Red River ties, a descendant of Paul Peru who worked alongside Louis Riel during the Red River Resistance. Her work is grounded in history, connection, and community. Through woodland style art, she explores relationships between spirit, animals, nature, and people, using each piece as a way to honor her heritage and spark dialogue around identity, resilience, and decolonization. Welcome Justine. Thank you. So I love asking people what little them were like. What was little Justine like?

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Little Justine, I think she had a lot of energy, for sure. Um I'm the eldest of I have a younger sister and a younger brother, so I remember being quite energetic around them. Um I loved being a sister. I don't, I'm very close in age with my sister, so I don't remember her being born, but I remember my brother being born, and I remember being very involved in playing with them and just loving, loving to be around them. I have a lot of cousins as well. I'm the oldest of most, most of my cousins. So I just was kind of always like managing caretaking kind of roles, but I was very artistic from a super, super young age. I I think all kids are, but I I really, really liked it. And my dad was also very artistic. He still is very artistic, but he drew a lot in my childhood. Not as much anymore that, you know, he's a little older, but that was kind of his hobby as I was growing up. So that really encouraged me to draw. My siblings, they're artistic in their own ways, but yeah, they they didn't draw or want to create the same way that I did when I was little. So I just always remember wanting to make stuff, build stuff, um, not just, you know, drawing with pencils and pencil crayons, but I just loved creating things. So anytime I could draw, paint, whatever, I think that's that's what I was doing. And that was the same in school. Like anytime I had a creative project, it was just anytime I could be creative in a project, I would mostly do that part instead of the actual school part. Yeah, like if we had to make like a poster board, it was mostly drawing and not really the subject matter that I was supposed to be focusing on. Yeah. Yeah. So lots of just art. I also, one thing my mom loves telling people is about my love for animals because I still I very much love animals. I love reptiles and snakes and that kind of stuff. And I have since I was very little, way more, I think, than the average kid. And I would, I was the kind of kid that would like sneak animals into the house and try and keep them as pets. I feel so bad now looking back on that for my mom, because we we just filmed a documentary together and she talked a little bit about that in the documentary because she was like, I would just go in her room and you know, was vacuuming and find something under the bed. I know, my poor mom. And uh like, yeah, that was that was fun. I brought a stray cat in one time because I felt bad for it. Dad caught me and was like, What are you? It was probably someone else's pet. Um, but yeah, any any chance I had, I would bring them inside. Yeah, and I'm still kind of kind of like that.

SPEAKER_01 3:59

You still have a bit of a zoo. I do, yeah. Yeah. That reminds me when I was growing up, my mom sent me to this um this chicken shop to uh get eggs. And um the person, the shopkeeper, said that they had these eggs that have two yolks in them. And I had just learned in school about how eggs are where chicks come from. Right. And I was so intrigued. I was like, wait a second, so if I can take care of these eggs, each egg gives me two chicks. I'm clearly gonna take care of them. So I I asked him to give me two eggs, and in my mind, that's four chicks. Right. They need to be incubated, didn't really figure out the mechanics of how that incubation works. Went home, put them in my blanket, and assumed that you know this is where they'll stay the next morning. Mama had a bit of a bit of a mess to mess to deal with. I love that you talked about how as kids we we love to create. I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Uh that we learn, we grow up learning stories and then and drawing and being creative and being free, and then somehow we forget or don't do that anymore. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:09

What do you think that's about? I don't know. You know, it's funny. I just taught a class this morning on like woodland art with a bunch of grade threes. And uh that's I do it with any age. I've done it with kindergarten, I've done it with high school and adults, but my favorite age is kindergarten to usually like grade three or four. Because yeah, that hasn't been squished out of them yet. You know, I find that when I do workshops with maybe grade, I don't know, grade seven to nine, they're a lot more self-conscious. And the kids that are artistic are confident, and the kids that maybe aren't are not in grade seven. And even with adults when I teach the course, you know. But in the younger years, not one kid today. I had 30, 33, or 34 kids today. Not one of them said, Oh, I'm not good at drawing. I can't do this. I'm not one of them did. But in the older grades and the adults, they always do or they're nervous, or some of them, if you know, they don't even necessarily want to participate because they're nervous about messing up. Yeah, they're very self-conscious. And um, the younger kids, they don't really have that at all. Um, you can, you know, there's some kids that are very gifted, you know, and you can see that some of them are just great and some of them are not, you know, but there's no difference in their confidence, no matter what their skill level is. And I I'm noticing more and more in schools um that these teachers are really encouraging their kids to continue to create, like the teacher in the school today. She had all these little songs for the kids. Like if they were really stressed about making a mistake, she I don't remember the words to it, but she had a song about how making mistakes is okay. And not one of the kids was yeah, they were not stressed out, they were not anxious about messing up or anything like that.

SPEAKER_02 6:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

Yeah. So I think that when I think about, you know, when I was younger, I'm 30, so I I don't know what year it was that I was in grade three, but I remember that there was like a time and place for everything in school, and art was very small, you know, like it was you had art class and it then there was math, science, whatever. And I feel like it wasn't really I was encouraged a lot at home by my parents, but I think that we really need to just encourage kids all the time because I think there's a lot of kids that they're that are not encouraged to do those type of things and then they get lost, and maybe they return to them in adulthood, but a lot of them, yeah, they just uh well and if they return to them in adulthood, it's almost like returning to something as rebellion as opposed to something that you have the freedom to pursue.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

And sometimes there's there's uh you know incredible art that emerges out of rebellion as well. And I also think that how how free it would be if you had if you had the freedom to be able to do it all your life. For sure. So growing up, lots of art, lots of encouragement at home. Why tattooing specifically?

SPEAKER_00 7:53

You know, I people always ask me that question, and I don't fully know because I was very young when I decided I wanted to be a tattoo artist. I was around eight or nine. And yeah, and I don't really even know consciously why I thought that that young. I'm like my dad had some tattoos, my mom's side, not really anyone. Like she had one very small one that she got out of rebellion, probably. Like, not a lot of people in my family are covered, but I think it was my my dad's drawing. Like he loved to draw, and it was mostly tattoo-looking designs, like biker, Harley Davidson kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_02 8:27

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:28

And um, yeah, he really encouraged me to draw. And so a lot of my first drawings were me copying things out of tattoo magazines because that's what my dad had. So just trying to look at a picture and and be a photocopier, basically. So a lot of my first drawings were like koi fish and dragons and skulls and pinup girls and stuff like that, because that's just what was in the magazine. And that was probably early 2000s, and there was a lot of shows on TV at that time, like um Miami Inc. or Ink um Inkmaster, I think that one's still around, or Cat Bond D had a show. So there was a lot, there was a lot of tattoo shows, lots of um cover-up shows too, like where they go in, have a horrible tattoo, and then yeah, the artist fixes it. So that was a lot of the stuff I watched growing up because my dad would be watching it. And I just thought it was super, super cool. And I just I love the tattoo magazines and I love the tattoo art. So I just always was like, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do this. And I, you know, had a general sense, sort of by watching the tattoo shows, what it might be like. But I yeah, I was eight or eight or nine. So I was very far away from being able to have a tattoo. But yeah, for it just felt like that's what I was supposed to do. My mom encouraged me to do art in general. I think she was kind of more like, oh, maybe not to the tattoo thing, especially when I was so young.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Do you want to think about this again? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:54

Um, and then uh yeah, I don't know. As I progressed through high school, my art teacher was really encouraging. He really wanted me to pursue art, but again, kind of like on the tattoo front. But when I I don't know how old I was, I was still quite young. I think I was like maybe somewhere like 12 or 13-ish. My dad got another tattoo, and that was the first one he had gotten. Well, I was old enough to kind of know. He got one when I was quite young. Like he had a few before I was born, and then got one when I was younger. And so, yeah, I think I was 12 or 13, and he let me come to the appointment with him and he got tattooed. I forget the guy's name, but it was at Metamorphosis tattoo. Yeah. So I went and I was my dad was like, Well, you know, you're always saying you want to be a tattoo artist. So, like, and I bought at first he said no, and I begged him to go, and my mom was like, Yeah, just let her go. Like, yeah. Um, and so I went and I thought it was really, really cool. It was, it was a pretty small tattoo. It only took like two hours, maybe, but I really enjoyed being that close to it because I'd never, I don't think I'd ever been in a tattoo shop before that. And uh, because when I when like I now people are taking their kids to get their first earlobe piercings, you know, at tattoo shops. That's normal. I was from the hair salon gun days, so like I hadn't hadn't been in a proper tattoo shop yet. Um, but yeah, I loved it. And that was a shop I ended up working at for around eight years, once I was over 18. But yeah, I don't know. It was just, it was always something I really wanted to do, like since I was very young. Yeah, and it never I had some other career opportunities, you know, come my way, and I did a few other things other than tattooing. Yeah. But of course, yeah, it was always just like ingrained in my brain. I feel like that's very neat.

SPEAKER_01 11:35

So, you know, thinking about your journey towards tattooing, and then we've been reflecting on in this season about how how stories are told and how tattoos can be a form of how people tell their stories. So would love to hear, like you've I'm sure you've worked with so many people through your career. What is that like? How do people use their bodies to tell their stories?

SPEAKER_00 12:00

Yeah, I think honestly, that's my favorite part of the job because you know, there's so many different ways to tell a story. And I very much I was never very skilled at writing or any, you know, yeah, that wasn't really my thing. So to tell stories through artwork was something I'd been doing my whole life, especially because it's a really good way to process your emotions, especially when you're growing up. Yeah, it's a great like art therapy is a thing now. That wasn't really a thing when I was little, but yeah, now there's like specialized therapists for it, right? So I think that a big part of the tattoo process is usually usually people are going through something, about to go through something, or have overcome something. So there's always some type of thing going on there. And sometimes that's a really big story. It can be like some of the ones I've done just in the past year or two are like someone, someone grieving the loss of somebody in their life, or we get a lot of miscarriages and infertility. That's something I've I've tattooed a lot of. Pet deaths, that's a really big one. Yeah. So a lot of people get tattoos to honor their pets, whether they're alive or or past. And sometimes it's like it's just a milestone in their life. So, you know, if you're getting something for your pet or someone that's past, usually when you look at the piece of artwork, the viewer can gather, okay, that's a pet tattoo, that's a memorial, whatever. But sometimes people just like to mark their body with anything and everything just to signify like a time in their life. So a lot of people will get like a tattoo for their graduation present to themselves. So it's not like I'm tattooing like a grad hat on them or something. Like they'll get a flower or an apple. No judgment though. Yeah, right. They'll get whatever they want, but it'll be for a birthday, for a graduation, for a marriage, for a divorce. Um, I probably get more divorce celebrations than weddings. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but all sorts of stuff. Yeah, yeah. And I think I get a lot of um, yeah, one celebrating something, you know, they're getting a tattoo to commemorate a milestone. But I get a lot of people who are getting tattoos for mental health reasons, you know, like if they've overcome a really difficult period in their life or are currently going through something, because um, I was a hairstylist. I'm still a hairstylist, but that was another very common thread in hairstyling that I loved is how how you can just make people feel so good about themselves, especially during a really hard time. Um, because people get their hair done for weddings, red sums, but for I think at least most women I know can relate to wanting to do a big change with their hair after a breakup after. So you know what I mean? Tattooing is the same in that way that people will just want to commemorate that time in their life with something. It may not be someone's first choice to think, oh, I'm gonna mark my body forever. Like that's unlike my husband has zero tattoos. He thinks that's a little crazy. He's like, What do you how do you just decide to get something? That's not something How do you commit to something? Yeah, that's and so there's a lot of people like him who is just like, I can't even comprehend how that would be somebody's first line of action, as you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But for a lot of people, um, it is because it's just it's I think it's a lot about like, yeah, taking control and ownership and yeah, making decisions for yourself. That's a great segue to my next question. Was gonna be can tattoos heal? I think so. And um, I was a body piercer at Metamorphosis before I tattooed, that's how I got in there. And um the owners of Metamorphosis, one of them is named Diane Matt, and uh the other is her daughter, Nadine Mitchell. So I was Diane's last piercing apprentice, and then I was um Nadine's tattoo apprentice. And Diane was a nurse for a really long time, mostly labor and delivery. But I loved learning under her because um, to her, like, yeah, we want to pierce people properly. We want to make sure that the piercing itself is in the right place. It has longevity and it's gonna heal well. But Diane really taught me a lot about how the healing part, not the physical healing of the piercing, but the healing of the person is just as important as the actual piercing. So she she would talk a lot about how, you know, people will cry when they get pierced, even if it doesn't physically hurt them. It's just like an emotional release. And so I watched her as I was piercing, and then eventually during your apprenticeship, you get to the point where you're piercing people and she's she's watching. And I think it was a nose piercing, the first piercing I did on a stranger. And she had just signed her divorce papers that day. And uh she cried and she was because she was so happy. It does hurt like a little bit, but most people's eyes water because of the piercing part. Yeah, it you'll your eyes will water no matter what. Yeah, um, but she started crying and she was so happy. And uh, she was saying that um she's just wanted to do this forever, but her husband, her ex-husband, thought they were so ugly. I know. So her very first thing that she did as soon as like her divorce was finalized was she got a nose piercing and like her confidence I could so I saw that like most people were coming in for piercings or tattoos for something like that. And metamorphosis as a whole, even when I was doing my tattoo apprenticeship, that shop is really, really about how those types of changes to our bodies and hairstyling. My hair styling teachers were big on this as well, that like the the healing, whatever you're doing to your body, yeah, whatever it's great, but the healing inside is way more important. And um, I don't think I think if you're a good artist, yeah, maybe you'll be a decent tattoo artist, but I think a huge part of the job with piercing tattoos, hair, whatever, is really about how you can connect with the client and make them feel safe. That's a really, really big part of it. Um, and yeah, that's my favorite part of the job. They they definitely heal people. Um they, yeah, I don't know, they they let people are able to take control of a certain way.

SPEAKER_01 17:48

Because I would imagine there's there's so many parts of even deciding to do something. You know, this woman who decided to get her nose nose pierced after a divorce, the act of deciding that that's what I'm gonna do, there's so much healing and just even making that decision. And then leading up to it, you're thinking about it, you're processing so many emotions, and then after you've got this like celebration period of having been able to go through that. Totally, totally so amazing.

SPEAKER_00 18:14

Yeah, and the one thing I love about piercing is that it can be very spontaneous. Tattoos, not as much, but you know, someone can just come in on a walk-in and decide to do it, and then that is uh that's super fun. Tattoos, it's more of a process most of the time because you have to- You gotta think, yeah, you gotta talk, you gotta draw it. If it's like a walk-in shops are still a thing, but they're they were definitely way more of a thing when I started learning. Now, not as much. Now it's a lot more about okay, contact your artists, we're gonna do a custom piece. It's more of a process, but piercing is really fun for the reason that you can just go in and get it done. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:47

So yeah, I'm gonna think about piercings now. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:50

It's that's a really good one if you just want to get it done, do something right now, go get pierced. And the risk is low. You could take it out, whatever. It's true. Yeah, it's true. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:59

Yeah. Yeah. A little irreversible with the tattoo setting. As though you've done cover-ups.

SPEAKER_00 19:04

A lot, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:05

Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:05

What is that like? You know, it's um I that Nadine who taught me, she specializes in cover-ups. When I was doing my apprenticeship, most of the tattoos I saw her do were not on virgin skin. They were mostly cover-ups. Like I think I was training under her for like honestly three months before I saw her do a tattoo on virgin skin. Yeah, and she's very talented at cover-ups. And um, so I was very fortunate in my apprenticeship that I got to watch somebody who really knew how to cover stuff. And um, so when I started tattooing, I didn't do cover-ups right away. You know, most of my first tattoos were on virgin skin. But when I started doing cover-ups, that is almost, it's like almost even more powerful than someone choosing to get a brand new tattoo, I find because a lot of sense. Yeah, and I've had a few cover, I've had, well, I've had a good number of cover-ups, and um, they're not because I hated the artwork or or anything like that, or thought I made a mistake with the subject matter. But some people, you know, they just they grow out of the designs they maybe get, or there's a a memory associated with it. So I always tell people, you know, it is high risk to get a partner's name, a boyfriend's name, whatever. That's high risk, right? Or a word you may not spell correctly. Yeah. So there's that. There's I have a whole list of things I tell people, you know what, I'll do it, but this is my professional opinion, blah, blah, blah. But a lot of the cover-ups I do, there's there's a couple different, I guess, categories for why people decide to cover something up. A lot of people love the tattoo. It's just old and looks super faded. Like if they got it 20 plus years ago, like if they're in their 50s or 60s, right? So sometimes we'll just I call it like a facelift. We're giving the tattoo, we're just reworking the tattoo, making it look better. So there's lots of times where someone has a butterfly from the 90s, they're, you know, and we just do a better butterfly on top. So there's that actually. It needs a little more color. And that I feel like the the transformation for the person, they love it because they fall in love with their tattoo all over again. But I find that, yeah, there's there's a good chunk of people that I do cover-ups on because not because the tattoo itself is bad. I've covered up some beautiful pieces that were honestly perfect, but the person has a really terrible memory associated with them. So maybe they got it for somebody in their life that at the time they had a good relationship with or they loved. And then yeah, or um, the tattoo artist was a crappy person. That's something that's like it's not talked about as much in our industry as I think it should be. But we, I've had a decent amount of clients either be assaulted by their tattoo artist or I know, or be treated very poorly by them, or just the experience in general was not that great. And so then we know whenever they look at the tattoo, they're not remembering, well, that was a great experience. That was the artist was nice, whatever. They're like, Oh, that guy treated me kind of crappy. And so that's honestly like a good chunk of the cover ups I do.

SPEAKER_01 21:58

It's such an intimate. Space to be and like this is someone who's marking your body.

SPEAKER_00 22:03

Yeah, so I've had a a good chunk of clients say, Oh, you know, I went to this shop and they were just rude to me, or I felt like they didn't want to tattoo me, or they they didn't treat me very nice, or I had some clients be ghosted by tattoo artists. One of my clients got ghosted in the middle of her tattoo artist or her tattoo process, and so I had to finish it. She couldn't I know all sorts of things happen. So that's usually that's a big reason.

SPEAKER_01 22:28

Oh, that's so interesting. One of the to switch gears a little bit, one of the things that we've been thinking about a lot on this um on this podcast is if we walk into a city, how does a city tell its stories? And you know, we think of what gets represented, the sounds we hear, the visuals that we see, the people, the languages that we hear. And I would love to hear a little bit more about your journey towards doing murals then. Because we think murals are a beautiful way to tell a story as well.

SPEAKER_00 22:57

Yeah, like I I just went to the Saskatoon tattoo convention and I love traveling, I love driving around. And um, the very first thing I always look for when I'm going to a new place is like, where's the artwork? Do they have any artwork? You know, what do their outdoor, if they have any, what are their outdoor murals look like? And how outdated are they? You know, because there's a lot of cities that have murals, but they're like so old. I also really love we have a lot more cities now doing like public art in a very functional way. Like we have designs on mailboxes and street signs and stuff like that. And in Saskatoon, I definitely found that they had a lot of really interesting artwork. Um, their storefronts were decorated very nicely. Like I just love seeing how a city mostly it's mostly in the downtown areas, right? That you get to see that. And um, Winnipeg has a lot of artwork. And we I feel like when you drive through downtown Winnipeg, there's a lot of indigenous artwork there. We have all sorts of different murals up. We have right now on the exchange, like we have statues, we have the the lights on the exchange, lanterns. I'm not sure if they're still up or not, but they were over the winter. So I just love it when I can see that a city is making that a priority because artwork is very healing. Yeah. Um, and it brings people together. It's it's not like it's it's a long process to get your art put up publicly. I think maybe not so many people know that, like how long it takes to create the people creating the piece of artwork and then working with the people in the city to get it up. That's a that's a really long process. Yeah, months. And it really brings the community, the art community together to be doing that. Yeah. Yeah. But I started doing murals kind of by accident, really. Yeah, it was um never really in my game plan, I don't think. I uh I've paint I painted on some walls in high school. I did a mural at my high school in the band room, but it was just whatever. It was just another art thing to do, right? Like I never really thought that much about it. And um, during COVID, my mom, she's a teacher at Miles Max. She teaches family studies and indigenous studies, and she got a new space to work in. And this was the period of time where tattoo artists were on lockdown. We weren't working. Yeah. And at this point in time, I think teachers were in the building for schools, but the students were at home. So the teachers were coming in every day and just like sitting in an empty classroom. Right. So that's what she was doing. And she got this new classroom, and it was very like it was new, boring white walls everywhere. And when the kids returned, it was supposed to be an indigenous classroom. So she asked her principal, you know, can Justine come in here and paint me something like, you know, it's low risk, like of whatever of infection or cross contamination. So he was like, Yeah, whatever. So the very first mural that I did in woodland style was for my mom. Uh, I forget how big it was. It's something like 12 by 6 or 12 by eight. And um, I basically just collaborated with my mom and was like, what do you what do you want? What do you want? And that's so a lot of things in that mural are um like her choice, her color palette, her animals, all that kind of stuff. And um, it was fun. It was just something to do during lockdown. I yeah, I really was not like I want to continue to do this. It was, and honestly, by the end of it, it's a lot of work to paint the mirror. I have a system now and I love it. But the first one, oh my god, like there's just you start painting and you're like, this is a lot bigger.

SPEAKER_01 26:20

I took a bigger project than I wanted to.

SPEAKER_00 26:23

And I mean, I had the time because otherwise I would have just been at home, so it was fine. But yeah, when I finished, I was like, I was kind of like, oh, okay, like good. We're done. And so I put it on my Instagram because I didn't have anything else to post, right? And people loved it. And then I was like, whatever. And then I um I started getting some teachers emailing me. And the school that I took my hair styling at was Louis Riel Arts and Technology Center. And um, I still talk to some of my hair teachers. I've tattooed some of them, they're all very sweet. And um, one of them contacted me and she was like, Will you do this at Louis Riel? And I'm like, No, like I don't like because as soon as the lockdown opened, two artists were getting our people in, and we're like, Oh my god, we have to get these people in. Yeah. And so, and that happened, as I'm sure you remember, like it was like you as soon as we got the lockdown lifted, it was like a couple weeks, and then we were back and forth and back and forth. So my calendar was like so messed up. So I was, and I think we were backlogged. I think I had like 90 clients to do because we just kept opening and closing, and it was, yeah, yeah, it was weird. So I said to her, like, that's not, I don't, that's not my thing. I have so many people waiting for me to finish their pieces, their tattoo pieces. And um she kept bothering me. I love her, but she was like, Yeah, no, you should do it, you should do it. And um, she was like, just come down and like talk to us. And I was like, okay. And um, I love that school and I love the principal. Um, his name is Brian Cameron, he's retired now, but he gave me a pretty big wall. I forget how big it was, but I think it might have been like 50, it was over 50 feet. I know it was big. Oh, wow. And um, he said to me, This is like an artist's dream because a lot of the time and in the tattoo world, we are confined by our clients' ideas sometimes. So people sometimes we're not, sometimes we don't really have crazy artistic freedom in what we're doing. So he said to me, He's like, Yeah, this is the wall. It was big. And he said, Um, you know, I kind of want the medicine wheel in there and you know, a theme of community. And like, that's it. That's all he told me. And I was like, Do you don't have any other guidelines? Um, and he's like, Nope. And I was like, Okay. So I was like, okay, like I I guess I can, I guess I can do this. Maybe it'll be fun. Another lockdown happened, actually. So I did paint, I think, some of it during lockdown. And anyways, it was very fun. And it took it took quite a while, but I really enjoyed it because I was like, okay, I'm learning more, I'm getting a better system. And that happened a few times. A few teachers that were kind of connected to my mom or past schools that I went to, they were like, Oh, will you do one here? Will you do one here? So in the beginning, I was maybe doing a mural, like, I think for the first year it was like every four months because I was just waiting until I had some tattoo time, you know, that was out of the way, or I had a free block of time, I mean. And so, yeah, the first couple were people that knew my mom, knew me, whatever. And then more people started asking, and I was like, hey, this is like, I don't, I don't do this. Like, and so I fought it quite a bit because I was like, I don't really, you know, because my whole life, I since I was eight or nine, I was like, I'm gonna be a tattoo artist. And then right when I was, you know, a couple years into tattooing, I was like, had found my groove. I was doing it like full time. This other opportunity was happening, and it was, I always say, like, the universe like opens doors for you. I was being pushed through the door against my will. And I was like, okay, maybe I should, you know, give this a try. So I said yes to a few more. And I didn't know this at the time, but Louis Riel Arts and Technology Center is the um the school that all the schools in the division go to have meetings at. I didn't know that. So all the teachers it did. So then I just was like, okay, I guess I'll just keep doing this, I guess. And I haven't stopped since. Um, and then you know, over time, that's how I was able to get into doing some more outdoor projects, some other public art projects, just through all that.

SPEAKER_01 30:11

Beautiful, beautiful. So, one of the things that we talked about in your bio was that you're a descendant of Paul Peru. Tell us more about what that's like for you.

SPEAKER_00 30:21

Yeah, so that's on my dad's side. I don't know if you guys have seen the picture, but there's a pretty famous picture of Louis Riel surrounded by a bunch of guys, right? And that's his council. And so Paul Peru, he's on like the bottom right, sort of sitting at the bottom. And he, there's there's like there's not a lot of documentation about exactly what every single person's role was in that council. Some say he wasn't like a part of the council, he just kind of served with like Riel. There's some documents that say he was like a guard during the rebellion. So, but he was around um because he ended up marrying Louis Riel's first cousin. So he was kind of married into that family as well. So yeah, he was involved, knew Louis Riel, and um my I knew that since I was quite young. Um, my on my dad's side of the family, I was our culture was very celebrated growing up. And I always knew, well, when I was very young, I knew I was Metis. I didn't really know what that was. I was very privileged on that side of the family to grow up with a lot of out of my culture, you know, as part of my upbringing. Like I thought everyone hunted. I thought everybody did. I, yeah, I there was this one time where um my teacher, I think it was in grade two or three, every week a student would have to come up with like it was like a week of you, basically. So she did it with every student in the class. And so on the when it's your week, it's like the Monday, talk about your immediate family, the Tuesday, talk about your extended whatever. So your pets. So the whole week would be about you, and you'd have like 10 minutes to share each day. Yeah, it was fun. So my week was up, and I had to bring in a bunch of photos, and then we have a photo box at home. And I said to my mom, can I just like take some? And she's like, Yeah, yeah, whatever. Um, so there's this picture of me and my, I think my sister is in it, and we had a deer shed at my mame and pape's where they would hang. And I thought that was totally normal. I thought it was I thought it was very normal to kill your food, bring it home, watch its skin be peeled off. I thought that was totally normal. And then we hang them and they hang for a couple days. So every year that my dad or my pape would get deer, like there would be a picture of us like standing with the hanging bodies. And I've yeah. So there's this picture of me and my sister. We're young and we're like in the carcass, like very close because we're quite small, right? Yeah, and I brought that and I was like, Yeah, this is and it feeds us the whole winter. I was very proud of it. Yeah, and my class was so upset. I don't know if my mom remembers this. I don't know if they ever called her, but my teacher. Yeah, and I was like, You guys don't do that. Like, I went, my family shopped at Superstore like everyone else, but it was very like normal for me to have that part of, you know. And um, yeah, so that was very celebrated. On my mom's side, not as much because she learned when she was a little bit older that she was indigenous. On her side of the family, she had the very typical story of it was a lot more shameful, you had to be quiet about it. And they didn't say ever that they were indigenous because um my great grandma was a Mennonite and she got pregnant before marriage by someone who was full indigenous, so they lied to everybody or just kept it really quiet. And so my grandma grew up, I think, mostly being told, you know, don't talk about this, like we're not a part of that. Yeah. So my mom's journey was a little bit different to kind of connect. But yeah, on my dad's side, I was very blessed to have that. And he was always telling us, you know, you should be proud, like, you know, we you have family. Well, we have, you know, we're related to Paul Prue, but you know, he since he married into Riel's family, we have those family ties, and like, um, because our family line comes from Paul Prue marrying Riel's first cousin, and then we're descendants of them. So yeah, no, it was great. And so I share that picture whenever I do a presentation, and um, yeah, it's a part of my heritage I am really proud of. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:11

That's incredible. Um, when I was growing up, my great-grandfather, my Miyaji, would always say, sometimes the best form of resistance is to just be and I carry that strongly for myself. And you know, your story of um the carcasses reminded me, I was going through these old photos just recently, and I pulled out the old photos from this box, and I couldn't believe how many photos there were were of us kids standing, like posing next to goats that we had just butchered. And I thought, yeah, we're we're not gonna be able to share these photos. Like this is pretty graphic content, but it was just such a normal part of our lives that we would take care of these goats and then we would uh you know butcher them and enjoy the meal and be grateful, and that was just very much a cycle of life. And didn't realize that this was uh this could potentially be traumatizing to people watching. So, you know what's I loved hearing your your story from your dad's side and from your mom's side. And to me, it seems like you carry your ancestral identity with a lot of pride. What is it like for you when you're or how do you weave that into your work, if you will, as a tattoo artist or as a mural artist?

SPEAKER_00 35:21

Yeah. Now, you know, I um I predominantly tattoo in the in the woodland style. I didn't used to.

SPEAKER_01 35:28

Um I for those who may not know, could you tell us a little bit about what does that mean?

SPEAKER_00 35:34

So woodland art, sometimes it's called woodland painting or medicine painting, legend painting. A lot of the time we call it woodland art. And it's a type of artwork that's really kind of specific to the middle of North America. So Manitoba, Saskatchewan, a bit of Ontario, the the upper states, that kind of thing. And there's all types of different indigenous artwork all throughout North America. Woodland art is what I'm most knowledgeable about. Um, but it has a lot to do. When people ask me, like, what is woodland art? There's definitely a certain visual style to it that you'll be able to see. You'll know when you see it. But in terms of the subject matter, it has a lot to do with the natural world and relationships. Um, so a lot of connections between animals, plants, people, spirituality. The spirituality is a relationship, yeah, a big component of it and how they kind of all work together. You'll see lots of different lines and circles, and they all mean different things and tie the artwork together.

SPEAKER_01 36:29

Yeah, awesome. And that's one of the ways that you read your own identity into the work.

SPEAKER_00 36:33

For sure. So when I started painting murals, I was I pretty much have always painted in that woodland style. I experimented with that style a little bit in high school. I think before I painted my first woodland mural for my mom, I'd maybe done a few tattoos. Not a lot though. And it was it was mostly like replicas of artwork from people's grandparents. So I my very first one that I ever did was a guy. He brought in his grandfather's painting of an owl, and he just said, Can you replicate this for me? My grandpa painted it. And I was like, Yeah. Um, and I did think, I was like, I would love to do more of this because I don't see a lot of it. But I found that like my clientele at Metamorphosis was very different from when I moved shops because at Metamorphosis, I was the newest artist and I tattooed very frequently. So and I could get people in fast. So I kind of in the first couple years of my apprenticeship, I kind of just did whatever was asked of me, you know, like people would come in for watercolor or script or black and gray. I would just do it because I just really wanted to learn and and grow. And so once I was a little bit more established, I noticed that people were asking for that. Or they would see my murals on Instagram and say, can you tattoo that? And I was like, Yeah, for sure. And um, now I'm at the point where I'm almost exclusively tattooing that and I I love it. Um, and the mural and the tattoo process, it's very different canvases, I would say, but a very similar process because, like I said, one thing that's huge in in woodland art is the connections and the the way everything works together, but just storytelling overall is the main theme of woodland art, I would say. So that's basically what I'm doing with somebody when I'm creating their tattoo piece or when I'm creating a mural for a school of 400 kids. We have like a brainstorming session. They'll they'll hear my presentation on woodland art. I like to give the history of it to the kids and show them other woodland artists, that kind of thing. And then they collaborate with me. So I try really hard to, yeah, like make sure that the people that that are either Because then they they see themselves reflecting. Totally. Yeah. And the kids love that. And they and I find that they once they start learning more about the artwork, then they I really encourage them to think in pictures and not words. So a lot of the time we'll think about what do we want in your mural? Um, you know, what do we want people to think when when they look at it? And they'll say something like love or respect or whatever. And then I'll say, okay, how can we represent that in pictures? And then we'll kind of go backwards that way. And with tattooing, sometimes it's a little bit like that because sometimes sometimes people come in and they know what they want, and sometimes they're like, I don't know at all. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh so that brainstorming collaborative session is something that's really important to me.

SPEAKER_01 39:11

Tattoos, you you probably like you take a photo and you may not see that tattoo again that you've created. Totally, yeah. But with murals though, what's it like to drive by something that you've created?

SPEAKER_00 39:23

Yeah, it's kind of surreal. Like the the main one that I have in the city that's very public is on the RBC Convention Center. And when I was drawing it, like I knew it would be big, but describe that to us.

SPEAKER_01 39:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:35

What's that like? It's weird because I I remember when I I think it was my instructor who said this to me when I was learning to tattoo. It was someone I worked with. And they said, Oh, tattooing your family is the worst because you got to stare at it for the rest of your life. And I think all artists will say that, you know, they they nitpick their own artwork, they they pick it apart. We're the worst, we're our own worst critic. And when I look at artwork from two or three years ago, or like in the process of filming this documentary I was just filming, they wanted artwork from like when I was in my teens. And I pulled it out and I'm like, oh god, I don't want anybody to yeah, yeah. So I think that there's there's always a little part of that where I'm like, oh, like that's that's there and I I can't change it, or yeah, if I grow or change as an artist, you know. So so that's always an aspect that I find I struggle with because I'm like, oh I like even some of the murals I've done, they all they're all great, but I'm like, oh, if I could do it again, I would do this or that. Yeah, designing, designing it, you I usually will script like um sketch it out way way smaller to scale and then work on making it bigger. When I'm working with that tiny rectangle on my desk, it doesn't seem that big. And then um, I was there when they started installing the panels, and I think the panels are I think they're eight by four feet each. Incredible, and there was like 52 of them. So like that made sense on paper. We had a little graph, and I was like, okay, this each panel is gonna have whatever. And then when they were like unloading them out of the trucks, one panel was like the turtle's eyeball. And I'm like, oh my god, like this is gonna be really, really big. Yeah. So when I like I I don't always have a chance to drive by it because it's downtown, I may not be passing it. But when I do, I'm like, yeah, that's pretty big. So that one was very fun because that's the before that the biggest mural I'd done was I think like 108 feet. And that's at a high school in Oak Bank. It's a whole room, so it's like each wall. And uh this one I think is like 204 or something. It's like a whole big city block. Yeah, wow. So a lot different, yeah, to see it on that scale.

SPEAKER_01 41:36

What do you when people see your art? So noted how you feel when you see your mural. When people from outside Winnipeg come into our city, what do you hope that they see?

SPEAKER_00 41:47

That was a big thing I was thinking about when I was doing that RBC mural, because most of my murals are inside, right? So they're in schools, community centers, hospitals. Yeah. So I've had I've had a few smaller public art pieces, but yeah, this one was big. And one of the main topics was storytelling. And you know, yeah, what what are people gonna and whenever I'm creating a piece of artwork, I kind of think about it, okay, is this and I tell the kids too when I'm planning the mural with them, do you want this to be a teaching tool or do you want this to be something that celebrates something or both? You know, what do you want people to? I tell the kids, what do you want people to think when they walk into the school and see the mural, right? So I I apply those same rules to myself. And so that was something that was discussed quite a bit when we were talking about what should be there. If you haven't seen it, it's like four sections over the 204 feet or something, and each season is represented. So there's the seasons, the animals, the medicines correlating to the correct sections on the medicine wheel, all of that. And I just I really wanted people to have just the story of treaty one, I would say. Just I find that something that is something that I always love to paint and put in my murals and in my tattoos are like seasons and cycles. I find that um, especially the moon cycles, just everything. We have a you know, 24-hour clock now, but we didn't used to, you know, and things were a lot slower. And um, I think the mural is titled returning to our roots for that reason, because I think right now we we have all of these other issues like pollution, deforestation, that kind of stuff. But we are also just in a in a the way that our society is set up is so time oriented and everyone's stressed. Like, I don't know one person that's like, I'm fine, honestly. Like everyone's stressed, everyone is running around on this 24-hour clock, and nobody seems to have enough time to get done what they need to get done. And it never it's not supposed to be like that. It never, it never used to be like that. So, you know, returning to your roots, whatever that means for you as an individual, that's what I wanted people to really think about and kind of meditate on while they're looking at that piece of artwork, you know, and thinking about slowing down and living with the seasons because I feel like the earth slows down. But we don't. And yeah, it's I think that's that's one thing. Honestly, I'm trying to listen to my own advice, honestly, and and work more with that, with the way the earth goes and the moon phases go and just live instead of being stressed out all the time. Cause that's what everyone is like, honestly, that I know. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:17

Well, and it also like if we if we think about taking a moment to be to truly be in relation with the planet and its seasons and its cycles, then we would slow down. I'm a huge fan of hibernation. I wish that we could hibernate every year. Often in when winters get too long, I imagine what that would be like. So look, I look forward to a time when we can actually do that. We also have so many newcomers that come into our in our city. And I also love that representation of art and the representation of the history of Treaty One and what that entails. And I think it's also just a beautiful way for people to learn more about the history in such creative and very colorful, beautiful ways. Totally. Yeah. So when we think about what our city needs more of and how our city can better tell its stories as an artist, what's that?

SPEAKER_00 45:12

What can we do? You know, I one thing I always say in a lot of my presentations to anyone that I'm presenting to is that art, in my opinion, art is a universal healer and it's a universal language. And, you know, just what you were saying, you don't all have to come from the same background or culture to appreciate any piece of artwork. And you know, artwork is so much more than drawing or murals, you know, it can be dancing, singing, sculpting, whatever. And I think that, yeah, getting people to return to their roots, be more creative, just be more grounded. Like, yeah, you don't have to paint, you don't, but even just writing, journaling itself is an art form. And I think that in our city, I see a lot of wonderful organizations and foundations like creating spaces for people who do need help. But some of these I feel are, you know, they fix the immediate need, but they don't go deeper for people. And we see a lot of individuals in our city, in my opinion, just going through cycles, harmful cycles, cycles where they just they just can't break out of it. And those cycles are not going to stop unless the individual um has access to healing. And that's so much more than like, I mean, yes, having a bed for the night or having a meal for that moment, they need it. But the deeper nothing will get fixed unless there's deeper healing. Yep. That's kind of what I would love to see more of. And there's lots of wonderful places doing that already.

SPEAKER_01 46:35

I feel like this can be a beautiful way. Totally. Yeah, beautiful pathway. So before we wrap up, I would love to hear a little bit more about this documentary that you were talking about.

SPEAKER_00 46:44

Yeah, it's um put on by some Red River College students. So I think they have an Instagram account. Um, I think it's called Nestaway Originals or something like that. Yeah. And um, we filmed it over the last couple months, and I so I think they're wrapping up the editing process right now. It's um, I believe it's three parts, so I'm one of the parts, and it's on indigenous artwork in Winnipeg specifically. So I think one of them is potentially a birch bark artist, and then we might have a sculptor or hide artist, I forget. Yeah, so the crew they used Red River College students, and um the I think one of the directors or the creator of it is Andre Batista, I think if I'm saying his name right. I'll send you maybe a link to it after. Yeah, it was a really, really fun process because there's a lot about my personal story in that documentary. There's um a lot more about my art workshops and you know, just what I was talking about, how I yeah, I want to make cool pictures with kids. Like that's fun, but I really want to be able to connect with the kids and even if they just have you know safety and peace for an hour a day, however long they're with me. I want to make it worth their while. And so we have a little bit of that in the documentary. It's some of my there's tattoo stuff in there, there's mural stuff in there. So very cool. I think it's airing soon. It's um, I think it was sponsored or by Bell MTS. So yeah, I'm interested. I don't know if it actually has a name in it. Oh, okay. But yeah, I don't know. Let us know when you know.

SPEAKER_01 48:13

We'll include that in the show notes then.

SPEAKER_00 48:15

Um, what lies ahead for you? Well, this year I've decided to focus a little bit more on tattooing because it's kind of fallen to the wayside, honestly, over the past couple years. But my mural wait list is honestly never ending at this point. So I have one more before the school year ends. I tend to work in school years that works easier for my type of work. So the school year's ending kind of soon in June. The summer I'll mostly be tattooing. We have the Winnipeg Tattoo Convention this weekend. And then fall, I'll probably start doing some more murals, some tattoo stuff as well. Yeah, very cool.

SPEAKER_01 48:51

Thank you so much for your time. Loved hearing your story. Of course. Loved hearing what's happening in your life and really appreciated your reflections on how we tell stories sometimes through our own bodies and sometimes through what art we put out into the world. So thank you so much for spending time with us, Dave.

SPEAKER_00 49:07

Thanks for having me. Welcome.