Mindimooyehn – Creating Art from Our Mother, the Earth

The Anishinaabemowin word for ‘old woman’ is mindimooyehn and when broken down translates to ‘one that holds it all together.’ A mindimooyehn is the foundation of the Anishinaabe family. I like to think that I am an old woman trying to hold it down in a new world, creating art from our Mother, the earth.

Monica Jo Raphael (Grand Traverse Band Ottawa and Chippewa; Rosebud Sioux; Huron and Pokagon Potawatomi) is a fifth generation woodland porcupine quill and beadwork artist and 2021 First Peoples Fund (FPF) Cultural Capital fellow.

In 2018, after working over twenty years inspiring youth to seek the knowledge of their ancestors, Monica Jo Raphael followed her dream of becoming a full-time artist. Monica is known for her craftsmanship and her unwavering dedication to patience. Spending most of her life on the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indian Reservation, Monica now makes her home in the foothills of the Wichita Mountains in Oklahoma.

In addition to making jewelry, Monica also creates traditional and contemporary Native attire and clothing.  Well-versed in the traditional arts and culture of the Anishinaabek, she is dedicated to preserving the culture she was raised in and is committed to sharing her knowledge with others to be carried on for generations to come.

Her young daughter’s patience, perseverance and determination to quill, along a multi-generational lineage of traditional woodland quill artists, inspired Monica to learn the traditional art of embroidering porcupine quills onto birch bark. She learned this from master quill artist Catherine Baldwin and her father Joseph "Buddy." Her great-grandmother, Rose Chippewa Raphael, was a master quill worker who made quill boxes for the Work Projects Administration (a public works New Deal project) during the Depression era. Several of her boxes are now part of museum collections, including the prestigious Smithsonian Institution.

After quickly mastering both the flora and fauna designs for which her family was known, flash forward 25 years to when Monica made the decision to leave her full-time job in tribal government to do something that would make change in her community and focus on what she truly wanted to do – maintaining her cultural traditions.

Her journey has been an interesting one. Born and raised on her father’s tribal homelands in Michigan “where birch trees are plentiful and porcupines roam freely,” Monica and her husband decided to move their family to Oklahoma in 2014. In addition to being closer to her Comanche husband’s family, Monica has found community in Apache, Oklahoma. Soon after moving, she learned that some of the tribes who were forcibly removed there as part of the 1830 Indian Removal Act were also Anishinaabe.

“My ancestral homelands were their ancestral homelands. We speak the same language, practiced the same culture, and created the same art.” 

It broke Monica’s heart to know that their way of life was taken from them — leaving them only with pictures of museum collections and artifacts that survived the removal. With this realization, she knew she had to share her knowledge with others. 

Today Monica mixes complex designs and traditional art of techniques with bright modern colors, creating a modern twist to a timeless art form. This approach has quickly become her signature style, winning her awards almost immediately at the Woodland Art Market, Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market, Santa Fe Indian Market and the Eiteljorg Museum. Perhaps Monica’s biggest source of pride is a recent work titled Debwaywin, regalia celebrating the right of passage to womanhood, which won Best in Division in Beadwork and Quillwork at the 98th annual Santa Fe Indian Market in 2019. The piece has since been acquired by the National Museum of the American Indian to become part of the museum’s permanent collection.

Monica first joined the First Peoples Fund family when she attended a Native Arts Professional Development workshop hosted by the Citizen Potawatomi Community Development Corporation, a long-time partner of First Peoples Fund. And it was through that workshop and the instructor Leslie Deer (Muscogee), 2016 Artist in Business Leadership Fellow and trainer, that she first learned of the Cultural Capital Fellowship, something that not only aligned with her core ancestral values, but also was an opportunity to scale up her business and enhance her impact.

As a 2021 First Peoples Fund Cultural Capital Fellow, Monica is using her funding to purchase some equipment that will enable her to more professionally deliver her workshops, market and sell her work more online, purchase supplies for students who will be participating in her classes, and make new pieces of her own as she prepares to participate in upcoming markets and shows. She will be working with Citizen Potawatomi Community Development Corporation, the Wyandotte Nation, and the Ottawa Tribe of Oklahoma on outreach to target their tribal members for her classes.

As the winter months transition to spring and renewal, Monica is getting excited about and looking forward to being able to travel back to Michigan to source all of her artmaking supplies. But today because of climate change, there are some added challenges beyond making the long trek up North. “The once strong and bountiful birch trees are often small and weak, sometimes not healthy enough to share their bark,” Monica says, ‘’and the porcupines have also become a victim to environmental changes and urban growth.”

But Monica will still make the trip and do her best, relying on the traditional ways and teachings of her ancestors, to source only what she needs in a meaningful and respectful way.  

Read more about Monica Jo Rafael and follow her work across social media here:  https://www.firstpeoplesfund.org/monica-jo-raphael