Randy Elm grew up surrounded by fabric, thread and sewing machines. As one of five children, Randy’s adopted mother made most of the family’s clothes by hand. When he was about 10, his mother gave him a toy sewing machine that he used to sew paper together.
As a teen, Randy learned the sewing basics in home economics class. When he married, he and his wife were given a sewing machine as a gift and that’s when Randy’s passion for sewing blossomed.
“I have more sewing machines than I want to admit,” says Randy. “I started by making baby quilts and mittens made from cotton, and one day I experimented with a heavy-duty needle and moosehide to make leather mittens from the moose I harvested.”
While Randy’s sewing endeavours are to be celebrated, stories like his are not told enough. Randy, who works as a senior advisor on the Indigenous Workforce Development team, was the first child born to his Indigenous parents. He was a healthy baby, but his mother had tuberculosis when he was born, so he spent the first months of his life in hospital. At six months old, Randy was adopted by a non-Indigenous family and raised, as he says, in “white ways.”
Randy is a Sixties Scoop survivor and like thousands of other Indigenous children in Canada, including two of his adopted siblings, who were “scooped” out of their biological families between the 1950s and the 1980s, Randy was raised without connection to his Indigenous culture or blood relatives.
Randy’s sewing creations include ribbon dresses, like this one he made for his daughter.
The Sixties Scoop, which saw a dramatic increase of Indigenous children in Canada’s child welfare system in the 1960s, is considered by many as an extension of the residential school system. Under the guise of childcare, authorities removed Indigenous infants and young children from their biological families and placed them with non-Indigenous families, often without consent from the families or communities.
“Growing up I knew members of my biological family, but I knew them as friends of my family,” explains Randy. “I learned a lot from my biological family, including sewing from my biological auntie who is a beautiful beader, but I didn’t know I was related to any of them until I was an adult.”
Randy and his wife of 33 years, Tamara, learned to sew together. Tamara, who is also Indigenous, was raised in the traditional ways and has helped Randy reconnect to his culture. Over the years, and many sewing machines later, Randy has gone from making baby quilts to sewing ribbon skirts and dresses, including a ribbon dress he made for his daughter’s wedding and moosehide mittens for Suncor’s Board of Directors.
Every item Randy sews is made with intention and with the person they’re being made for in mind.
“I can make a pair of moosehide mittens in a couple of hours,” says Randy. “I use the hide from the moose I harvest and get them tanned—I use every part of the animal, as is the traditional way to harvest.”
Randy went from sewing items out of necessity, like knife sheaths he uses for hunting, to sewing for gift giving. Each gift he makes by hand is made with intention and the gift receiver in mind.
When making moosehide mittens, like the ones gifted to Suncor’s Board of Directors, Randy uses the hides from the animals he harvests.
“I give the things I make as gifts because of how it makes me feel,” says Randy. “I can feel when someone needs something and the difference between needing something and wanting it. That’s the story behind Medicine Chief, or Maskihkîy Okimawiw in Cree—the name given to me by Elder Starlight during the tipi raising ceremony in the Suncor Energy Centre—because I know the medicine people need.”
Despite growing up in a caring home with adoptive parents that instilled the value of a good work ethic and the importance of family, Randy felt a disconnect between himself and the world he was being raised in. Sewing has helped him find more connection.
“There was a void, and I can still feel it,” says Randy. “Sewing helps me feel more connected; connected to my culture as I incorporate Indigenous ways into my work and connected to other people that sew.”
Randy is currently working on baby blankets for the newest members of his family, twins who were born to his niece earlier this year.