- [Announcer] Production funding for Making it up North is provided by the citizens of Minnesota, through the Minnesota Arts & Cultural Heritage Fund.

- [Kate] I think I'm more of like style over fashion.

Like you can buy fashion, right?

Like you can have a lot of money and still have the worst style.

Style is more intuitive.

It's more of art, it's more of like who you are.

If you have style, you're going somewhere.

- [Sarah] I want to do cultural art, while also, I want to make really cool fun stuff that people just want to wear and just want to have in their house.

Like this is a super cool shirt, I just want to rock this.

I love that too.

(energetic soft rock music) (upbeat electronic music) - [Kate] It's complicated.

I don't wanna look like anyone else.

I don't want to listen to what everyone else is doing.

I like to push against the grain a little bit, and fashion has been that for me.

It's been my sense of like personality.

- [April] Like Kate says, style versus fashion, I'm finding my style and I'm appreciating what feels good.

- [Kate] I don't want to follow that path that everyone's doing because at the end of the day I don't think it's going to create art.

It's not going to be original.

It's not going to be inspiring.

It's just going to be bland.

So Noihsaf is a marketplace, it's a resale marketplace.

It's focused on independent and boutique designers.

- Well, should we see what's in the inbox?

- [Kate] I had an idea before I started the Instagram to start like a style blog and called it Noihsaf, and it's fashion backwards.

- [April] Kate kept Noihsaf pretty mysterious up until two, three years ago.

There was really no face behind it.

It was kind of just anonymous marketplace, and it grew to become quite popular before she revealed who she was, and that she was from Duluth, Minnesota.

And I think people were mostly just delightfully surprised.

Definitely surprised, definitely thought that this machine was pumping out of New York City or LA where most of our clientele is.

(both talking indistinctly) - [Kate] So I started the Instagram handle Noihsaf Bazaar in 2013.

I had just had a child.

I was actually in like the throws of postpartum depression.

I had left my job to stay home.

It was one of the coldest winters on record in Duluth and Instagram was this new thing.

And at that time, no one was using it as a marketplace.

It was still like very much filtered, you know, pictures of your latte.

'Cause I thought, oh I have some clothes to sell.

So I just took pictures and made this handle and posted them and let them know.

And they sold, and then those people were like, hey I have something I can sell, can I post them?

And in the beginning I was literally giving out the password.

Like I did it for free.

I also got first dibs on stuff, you know, 'cause I got to see them when they came in, so it was like, this is working, until it got to a point where I was constantly on my phone.

- [April] And yeah, honestly, when Kate first Noihsaf and was spending all the time on the phone it was something that seemed really foreign to me and something that I kind of resisted, like both the social media aspect of it and the fashion aspect of it.

- [Kate] I got to a breaking point where I was like, okay, I don't think I can do this anymore, this is silly, I'm spending hours a day on my phone, I'm just, it was fun, like c'est la vie, and my husband was like, why don't you just charge a fee?

And I was like, no one's going to pay a fee.

No one's going to pay for this.

You know, it just seemed like too simple.

And he's like, well, instead of, like why would you quit?

You know, like just see.

Right now it's $3.80 (laughs).

For the first two years it was free, and then it was $1.80, and then it kind of blew up.

And so now we have five team members that we pay.

And then I did a small friends and family fundraising round in December and secured funding to build out a website.

So that's being built out in Portland, and by a really small team called Human Shapes who I converse with.

I'm supposed to be flying there, you know, every few months.

And now with COVID we're doing everything only over computer.

So that's been interesting, building a company remotely.

- [April] When Kate was starting to think about taking this platform off of Instagram and turning it into her career, and she asked me to start helping her, that's kind of the avenue I came at like, I have the skillset to help, you know, bring some organization to a business and take all these skills I've learned working for other businesses as they've grown, and bring them to Noihsaf.

- [Kate] So Noihsaf has been living in the Instagram social media world.

And that's been great because we've been able to build this organic community, and people are addicted to their phones already, so they're already seeing our items, right?

But we are dependent on Instagram, and we want to have some autonomy.

So we are building out our own website.

So you can be on Instagram if you still choose to shop that way, but you can also just go to our website and list and sell your items through the website.

So you don't have to be on social media.

- [April] You know, we're nervous about it, but really excited about it.

But yeah, there is, it's a, I think Kate said, you know, she's a bit extroverted and I am a little introverted, so everything is a little scarier for me, but I'm appreciating being pushed out of my comfort zone.

- [Kate] So Noihsaf is living on Instagram right now, but we're entering a new phase where it will be its own website and platform.

People are going to have their own user logins, they're going to have their own dashboard to keep track of what they sell, what they list, it's going to be searchable.

And then we're going to have this media component which I'm really excited about.

We're really going to expand our blog and we're hiring writers to write about really important topics in fashion.

Cultural appropriation, inclusive sizing, you know, imposter syndrome.

A lot of these small designers went to school for something else, or were in the corporate world and decided to quit their day job and, you know, start a small fashion line.

We want to hear from those people.

- If you want to wear your headphones, you can.

You don't have to.

- I think they will make us look cooler.

- They do, they, you will look cooler.

- [Kate] We're going to be launching a podcast.

So we're going to be interviewing these designers and kind of people in the fashion world that are really addressing kind of the underbelly of these issues.

- [April] We had a really interesting item come in within the last few months into the vintage page.

It was a purse made out of an armadillo.

Like the entire Armadillo.

Like it's still had-- - [April Voiceover] I don't know what it is, but there is there's a momentum with Noihsaf, and a feeling, and I just feel like Noihsaf is going to make it (laughs).

And so it's really exciting to be, to have the opportunity to be part of that.

- [Noihsaf Staff] Noihsaf Bazaar.

Noihsaf!

(laughs) Noihsaf.

- [Kate] Noihsaf Bazaar.

- [Noihsaf Staff] Noihsaf Bazaar.

- [Kate] I can't word this well.

- [Kate Voiceover] Right now we're in beta mode.

So we are, the website, the first phase of the website is pretty much complete.

We're just testing it out, working out the kinks.

- [Kate] These are great.

These are all new, with tags.

- [Kate Voiceover] You know, our main market is in New York and LA.

But we have community members across the whole U.S., and a lot of them are working and living or going to school in small communities where they can't, they don't have access to, you know, boutiques, and they maybe perhaps don't have the budget to spend, you know, the full retail price of some of these articles.

So creating access is something really important to Noihsaf's mission too.

- [April] I'm in there doing the curating, so I get to see all the items as they come in, and I have been finding pieces that I love and developing this relationship with articles of clothing that I didn't understand was possible.

- [Kate] Our team members all work remote, so we do Zoom meetings once a week to talk about customer service issues, any announcements coming up, changes, website updates.

I think we're doing really good job so far.

Like I'm not taking any VC money.

We're trying to be really intentional with how we build it.

- [April] I think making it for Noihsaf is to continue to stay true to our roots.

- [Kate] I think following your intuition and that gut is the most important, because you will be told to go a lot of different directions or do this and not this, or, you know, you Google how to start a business and you'll get a list of things you should do.

Like that's not necessarily right, like surprise 2020!

Like if we learn anything it's we know nothing.

And we're all just making it up as we go along.

(playful acoustic music) (relaxing piano music) - [Sarah] I have fiddle heads, which are not only important ceremonially but part of our food system.

The way that I was taught was that our designs are meant to teach about medicines and foods and that they came from that.

Partly just because like when you live outside and you look around you're going to make your art look like what you see.

But during the time when our medicines and foods were outlawed, that people would design those and put them on there is this way to be like, this is what this looks like, don't forget what this looks like.

(speaking foreign language) Sarah Agaton Howes (speaking foreign language), so my English name is Sarah Agaton Howes, and (speaking foreign language), my Anishinaabe name is Naawakwegiizhiigokwe, and I'm from Fond du Lac in Minnesota, and my business is Heart Berry.

When my son was little, started doing more stuff while he was occupied, like little five minutes I'd bead something or sew something while he was busy and started, people started asking me to make stuff for them.

And my list, it started getting longer and longer.

And a couple of people, mentors in my community like Wendy Savage, were like people need to know how to do this stuff.

Not you doing it for them.

And I kind of struggled like at first, I love the feeling of seeing somebody like walking through like the powwow and they're like wearing something made, like I just, oh, it's like the most rewarding experience.

But what I didn't know was that teaching people would be that, but times like a hundred.

So I have the moccasin book, which is an actual pattern book with instructions, both in Ojibwe and English.

And we have online tutorials because part of the whole idea for me and working with Michelle Defoe, who's my apprentice is that we wanted to just create as many tools as possible to support makers.

(playful marimba music) When I started thinking about what was the common thread that had carried all the way through all the work that I had been doing and it was the strawberry.

And in Ojibwe, strawberry is ode'imin, and ode' is your heart, and min is a berry.

And one of my aunties and mentors, Roxanne Delille, was like, you know why you like that strawberry?

And she's like, we're the people of the heart way, and she would tell me all this cool stuff, and I was like, oh yeah.

And so I was like, I think I want the business to be called Heart Berry.

And it just was like, yes.

(inspirational orchestral music) - [Hannah] She's inspiring.

So when I first heard of Sarah, she was doing a t-shirt that said thrive on it with Ojibwe floral.

And I was like, oh, can you tell me a little bit about that?

And she got into, you know, like, we don't want to keep struggling and we don't want to just survive.

We want to thrive.

We want to be better than what's happening now, what's happening historically.

And it just, it clicked with me.

- [Sarah] So March 9th, I came back from doing a residency in (indistinct), which was like this amazing, incredible opportunity, you know?

And then it was like, boom, life changed just like that.

Normally we're at powwows, we're traveling all around, but it's really different based on where, what we're doing.

So right now we're in the summer of 2020, so we're not traveling anywhere.

All the plans we had set up for residencies, teaching, traveling, all changed.

And that feels like a million years ago now, 'cause now it's July, right?

But right away, sales completely stopped, and I got really scared.

And then I had, also during that time, just did a major build, the construction to build the HQ.

I had just hired a second employee, and so it was kind of like, well I've already committed to these things.

So it's a really different feeling to have people relying on you for their income.

And before that had just had like seasonal employees, so people were kind of like, just jump in wherever.

And this was like they were actually counting on me to pay their bills.

So I was like, I'm gonna have to adapt and improvise and think of something different.

So Hannah was going to be the pop-up manager and do inventory.

And now I'm like, well, what do you think about like doing social media and marketing, and anything else that I always need help with?

And she's just like yeah.

What, part of what I seen is like, this is like, as like Anishinaabe people we have to adapt constantly.

And so this is something that I'm like, okay, I know how to do this.

I can adapt.

- I do miss pop-up shops.

So I think part of that is a lot of our pop-up shops were at powwows.

So traveling locally, visiting a bunch of people, is just off the table for the near future.

But then shipping, the shipping opportunity happened and I was like, yeah let's, why not?

- There's this whole universe that, of images that we see, of products that we see, of murals that we look at, of posters and walls and shirts that we look at, that if we're not designing those as native artists, who's designing those?

Who's story is getting told?

Who's benefiting from that?

So we need to be doing that, because I think that that also provides an alternative to cultural appropriation.

You know, if we want to critique cultural appropriation, then we have to like also be the alternative for it.

I work with the Inspired Natives project, which is part of Eighth Generation.

And I have a mentor through there whose name is Louie Gong, who's like super amazing.

- [Louie] I started off just drawing on shoes and I recognized that it wasn't a good way to make a living.

So I started teaching myself how to make products.

And over time I started teaching other staff people how to do it.

And so now what happens at Eighth Generation is the design work happens upstairs, and then downstairs, we have native people who came to Eight Generation without any information about how to do art, how to operate a laser, or UV printer or how to work with Adobe Illustrator, actually making the products, with skills they've learned here on the job.

- When he contacted me, if he would've said to me I want to buy one piece of art from you and I'm going to make these blankets out of it.

I would have been like, oh my gosh, that's incredible!

Yes!

'Cause that's what a lot of companies do, right?

But instead he was like, if you want to build a website, you want to learn how to do digital art, you want to build your own business, I will help you with that process.

And he didn't have to do that.

And I am grateful for that every day.

So that project is called the Inspired Natives project.

And I really got in there like at a good time when it was really growing, which is great, but that's transformed my life.

Like in every way, being a part of the Inspired Natives project has changed the trajectory of probably my children's lives, of my employees lives, of my apprentices lives.

Like that's how powerful somebody with a really strong vision, who shined a light on something, and was like, this is what's possible, Sarah.

My hope would be that we would continue to grow, but also to be, not just grow more stuff, but that we would learn more skills all the time.

We would become more sovereign as a business, meaning we would be able to do more of the work ourself, that I would be able to hire more people, so it would grow to the point where I can hire a business manager and hire, you know, and do all those layers so that I could focus on art.

I could focus on relationships, 'cause I love people and relationships like it is my jam, 100%, which is why COVID is so hard.

- [Hannah] Having visual representation of cultures, especially if it's cultures that are reflected from your community, by your community, I think is really important.

And supporting local artists is one way that we can see those kind of murals and that big, public visual representation of who's living here.

- [Sarah] I want to do cultural art, while also I want to make really cool, fun stuff that people just want to wear and just want to have in their house.

Like this is a super cool shirt, I just want to rock this.

I love that too.

And I want to make huge, like murals that cover walls.

Like I want to do everything, which is why I need people!

'Cause I have like, let's make this, let's make that, like I love to make stuff and I love to have things exist that didn't exist before.

(relaxing contemporary music)