Moonture featured in InStyle Magazine
CREDIT: COURTESY
Moonture has been featured in InStyle magazine!
The article, titled “We Can't Talk About American Fashion Without Talking About Native American Designers” by Alyssa Hardy shares the following:
Can you tell me about your background and why you began designing?
I am A Tlingit, Filipina, and Kanien'kehá:ka woman born into the Raven moiety, Copper River Clan, House of the Owl. My Tlingit name is Keixé Yaxtí, meaning Morning Star. I was fortunate enough to have a mother and grandparents that were traditional knowledge bearers. I spent a part of my childhood with them in museums' deep archives where they would identify artifacts. Within these deep archives, I marveled at the craftsmanship of Northwest Coast Artists. The beadwork, the weaving, and the symmetry in Formline artists' were incredible.
Our artists were so innovative — they always found ways to shape and work with new forms and textiles, including wood, mountain goat wool, animal skin, silver, gold, shell, and bone. As someone that has struggled with mental health throughout my life, I began practicing art and design as a way of attempting to translate the resilient components of our culture: love, compassion, clan relationships, matrilineal power. It is humbling to make a tangible translation of concepts that are sometimes intangible.
How has Covid impacted you personally? How has it impacted your tribe?
Covid impacted my family in 2020. During the shelter-in-place mandates, my husband was unable to work in his dental practice for several months. I was still working on my Masters of Public Health while also working part-time for a non-profit. Our finances were the galvanizing need behind diving into jewelry design. My village and tribe implemented protective orders because the positive cases of Covid were by people traveling to Yakutat from outside. We didn't go back home in 2020 as a way of protecting our loved ones and I missed my family and the land desperately.
How do your designs push your culture forward?
Our world needs compassion and understanding, and empathic communication through cultural art can help with that. Art and design are tangible expressions of emotion and culture and they can translate important social and global topics such as climate change, missing, and murdered indigenous women and girls, two-spirit people [a colloquial term for LGBTQ-identifying people]. In some ways, the pandemic has amplified a scarcity complex — a lot of people are hurting in so many ways. I have witnessed, and experienced communities of color react with lateral violence. In counseling with a trusted elder and artist, Robert Davidson, I believe that some of this violence comes from a place of deep intergenerational pain. I have found myself going through a grieving process this year to let go of profound internal pain so that I attempt to call our culture forward and create from an intentional place of transformative kinship. If we can draw from our ancestors' strength and resilience and intersect with transformative kinship, we can be indigenous futurism.
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Do you ever have non-native customers concerned about appropriation when buying your work?
It is not uncommon to have non-native customers concerned about appropriation when purchasing native art. In general, if an indigenous artist creates with cultural knowledge, they will not sell ceremonial items to non-indigenous people. We recommend purchasing directly from indigenous artists and businesses. Our friends at Eighth Generation have coined a phrase we often use: "Buy from Inspired Natives — not from native-inspired brands."
Can you explain what you are wearing in your photos? What if any significance do these pieces have?
These photos display prototypes I have been designing within my reflective journey. The turquoise moons were a collaborative project of my design and with the assistance of a mentor, their friend Mary Jane Garcia crafted the earring. Mary Jane is Diné, Tl'og'i (Zia People), and Kinyaa'áanii (Towering House People) Clan. It was a project-based on healing and kinship. The photo with the drum communicates my relationship with my late grandfather. I inherited his drum, and the earrings I designed [for my brand, Moonture] tell the story of the Northern Lights. My grandfather taught us that the Northern Lights are the spirits of people who have taken their own lives. Within the Northern lights' colors, you see spiritual movement, and the green color is the Moss that has grown upon them. Creating this design was a way of expressing my mental health journey this year and remembering that we need you here.
What are you hoping for in the next year with both your work and personally?
The survival of indigenous art has been like a Phoenix, and I believe that the future of indigenous fashion will continue to surge if our collective burning hearts remain true. It's incredible to think about everything indigenous people have gone through in the past few centuries: genocide, slavery, rape, segregation, racism, discrimination — but we have not only survived — but much of our art is thriving. I hope to create from that thriving place and dream of designing an apparel line at the intersection of Tlingit culture and sustainable material. I am slowly teaching myself the design and craft of heirloom and fine jewelry utilizing materials like Alaska Jade and Walrus Ivory gifted to me by the Apangalook family and my husband and I are learning under the mentorship of Anna Sheffield. These goals come back to my hopes of contributing to cultural compassion and understanding, and empathic communication through transformative art.”
To read more and see all the Indigenous artists on the list, read the full article here!
