RED LAKE — Lavender Kingbird leads a life centered on tradition, family, powwows and designing fashion.
"I am most happy when I am creating,” said Kingbird on the KAXE Morning Show.
She comes from a long line of Anishinaabe women who beaded, sewed and participated in powwows. An educator, designer, graduate of the Le Cordon Bleu and a mother, Kingbird is a member of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe and resides on the Red Lake Nation with her family.
“This is something I’ve been waiting for."Lavender Kingbird
"I have been jingle dress dancing since I was a baby, along with all of that responsibility and living that way comes that urge or that need to want to have that ability to be able to sew and do bead work and create for yourself,” she said.
She is also raising her children to lead a powwow way of life with traditional values. As she put it, they are an immersed family.
“My husband is Mark Kingbird Sr.,” she said. “His drum group is the world champion singers, Young Kingbird, so there are many drums in our home.”
Though Kingbird has shown her work in fashion shows and powwows before, Northern Lights Native Fashion Show marks the first time she is stepping out from the brand I Am Anishinaabe, which she created with her sister Sage Davis and mother Delina White.
“We are contemporary Anishinaabe people, and we are wanting to show how proud we are of who we are and where we come from and what our ancestors have been through,” Kingbird said.
She said she feels strong and filled with pride when wearing her own designs in ribbon skirts and beadwork.
“I see that within my own children, we encourage them to be proud and to be happy and confident with who they are.”
Like during Kingbird’s childhood, her children are required to contribute to their own outfits for when they are dancing at powwows, where they may win prize money.
“We always tell them you need to invest back into yourself,” she said. “Put a little bit of the 'zhooniyaa,’ that money, back into your outfit because it’s also bringing you a good way of life.”
When it comes to the upcoming show at Fashion Week Minnesota, Kingbird said she is in a contemplative phase. She’s thinking about fabrics and colors she’s chosen, how they will look under lights and how the audience will feel during the show.
And it’s not just about her work — she is incorporating the change of seasons into her fashion. She said she asks herself, “What shoes am I going to wear?” because it’s muddy in springtime. She’s planning on fabric compatible with the season of rain when the Thunderbird — a widespread figure in Indigenous mythology — comes back. Everything is connected in Kingbird’s work — ancestors, kids, seasons, or sugarbush time.
Kingbird said she is both challenged and excited to see the other designers work at Northern Lights Native Fashion Show. The show will feature fashion from Deer River students as well as Delina White and Golga Oscar from the Yup’ik tribe in Alaska.
“This is something I’ve been waiting for,” she said.
Northern Lights Native Fashion Show is April 25 and made possible in part by KBXE and the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.
