The Art Bank recently acquired six works of art by Indigenous artists from across Canada that highlight the rich history, cultural significance and ongoing evolution of beadwork. These works of art are now making their way into workspaces and public spaces. Among the recent acquisitions is Prairie Love Song (2024), a fire bag by Métis artist Haley Bassett, which is currently on display in the Resistant Fibres exhibition in Âjagemô, the Canada Council for the Arts’ exhibition space.
The history of the fire bag
Fire bags are traditional Métis items used to carry fire-making materials, such as flint and tinder, one’s pipe and tobacco or ammunition. They are traditionally made by Métis women for their husbands or other men in their families.
Fire bags came into being as the Métis Nation did, through the meeting of European and Indigenous influences and the gradual emergence of a distinct Métis identity. The unique, eight-legged design is derived from Anishinaabe bags made of small mammals featuring elaborate quillwork on their legs and tails. Around the same time that trade items, like broadcloth and glass beads, were introduced to Turtle Island, the Métis people were coalescing as a distinct culture and Nation.
Broadcloth replaced pelts, floral beadwork was combined with quillwork, the bags sprouted four additional legs—and that’s how the fire bag was born. Fire bags were highly prized trade items that were widely adopted by many First Nations, as far as the West Coast, where they received the name “devil fish” or “octopus” bag. Unique Métis floral designs traveled with the fire bag, making them instrumental in popularizing floral beadwork across Turtle Island.
Telling stories through beadwork
According to Métis elder Maria Campbell, Métis women “wove the stories of wahkotowin and the histories of our people in and out of their beading, embroidery and berry picking.” Campbell describes wahkohtowin as “a word in my language… that means kinship, relationship and family, as in, human family. But at one time, from our place, it meant the whole of creation. And our teachings taught us that all of creation is related and inter-connected to all things within it.”
Wahkotowin, a Cree-Métis concept, is often represented in symmetrical and interconnected floral beaded designs. Métis elder Rose Richardson elaborates on the significance of floral beadwork. “As our ancestors picked and used plants, they told stories, and in the winters, they retold those stories in pictographs and patterns they sewed and beaded on jackets and clothing. All our bedding and household belongings told stories of our spirituality, our respect and our understanding of the signatures of a divine power.”
Fire bags carried the means to warm or arm Métis ancestors and medicines to sustain them spiritually. They were integral to the Nation’s sustenance and survival. Like many Indigenous traditions, they are reawakening after generations of repression.
Prairie Love Song (2024), by Haley Bassett. The photos of the work in progress are a courtesy of the artist. Photo of the artwork: Brandon Clarida Image Services
A love story
“Prairie Love Song is a love story—a courtship mediated by the land. My partner is a gifted opera singer and muse. This work tells the story of our first summer together through wild roses, saskatoons, bluebells, wolf willow and strawberries.
We are both artists with different backgrounds—a settler boy, a Métis girl. Prairie Love Song celebrates the shared principles of our art forms: balance, movement, rhythm and light and dark. Such designs represent the balance between the masculine and the feminine, while buds, blooms and berries represent the changing seasons and the passage of time.”
— Haley Bassett
View of the Resistant Fibres exhibition in Âjagemô featuring Prairie Love Song (2024) by Haley Bassett
Visit Resistant Fibres and join us this fall
Prairie Love Song (2024) is on display as part of Resistant Fibres in the Âjagemô Exhibition Space until May 19, 2026. Take the opportunity to see this work of art in person. Learn more about beading or share your knowledge at the next Sesabίnsan & Kegόn / Threads & Things creative drop-in session taking place in Âjagemô on September 24, 2025.
About the Artist: Haley Bassett
Haley Bassett is an interdisciplinary artist of Red River Métis and settler descent from Treaty 8 and the Métis Homeland, also known as British Columbia’s Peace River Region. She is a registered citizen of Métis Nation British Columbia. Her visual practice incorporates locally harvested natural materials and found objects and spans various mediums, including painting, sculpture, installation, beadwork and textile arts.
Sources:
Barkwell, Lawrence. “Characteristics of Metis Beadwork.” Metis Museum. Louis Riel Institute. Accessed April 10, 2024. https://www.metismuseum.ca/media/document.php/13489.Characteristics%20of%20Metis%20Beadwork.pdf.
“Metis Octopus Bags.” Metismuseum.ca. Metis Museum. Accessed April 10, 2024. https://www.metismuseum.ca/media/db/11910.
Barkwell, Lawrence, Leah Dorion, and Anne Carrière-Acco. “Women of the Métis Nation.” Métis Museum. Saskatoon, Saskatchewan: Gabriel Dumont Institute Press, 2019. https://www.metismuseum.ca/media/document.php/149695.Women%20of%20the%20Metis%20Nation%20-%20Maria%20Campbell%20Foreword.pdf.
Belcourt, Christi, Rita Flamand, Olive Whitford, Laura Burnouf, Rose Richardson, and Gabriel Dumont. Medicines to Help Us : Traditional Métis Plant Use : Study Prints & Resource Guide. Saskatoon: Gabriel Dumont Institute, 2007.
Campbell, Maria. “We Need to Return to the Principles of Wahkotowin – Maria Campbell (2007).” M. Gouldhawke, November 5, 2019. https://mgouldhawke.wordpress.com/2019/11/05/we-need-to-return-to-the-principles-of-wahkotowin-maria-campbell-2007/.
Teillet, Jean. The North-West Is Our Mother. HarperCollins, 2019.
Van Kampen, Ukjese. “Origins of Yukon First Nations Beading Styles: Searching Floral Patterns from 1500s France to 1800s Yukon.” 2022. https://lauda.ulapland.fi/bitstream/10024/64982/1/Van%20Kampen_Ukjese.pdf.