Beauty, Identity, Pride: Native North American Footwear

If you’re in the Toronto area, or planning to visit Canada’s biggest city, you only have a few weeks to head on over to the Bata Shoe Museum for something pretty special.

The exhibit Beauty, Identity, Pride: Native North American Footwear is only on until January 3rd. The exhibit is an incredible display of beautiful footwear that according to the museum’s website will change the way people think about moccasins.

Via batashoemuseum.ca

Moccasins were made for more than just walking, and many Canadians don’t know this. The footwear can represent a person’s birthplace or community, their status in a community, their gender, so many different things.

Elizabeth Semmelhack, the exhibit’s curator, spoke to Rosanna Deerchild on CBC Radio’s Unreserved recently.

The exhibit is a walk through Indigenous culture and geography, she said.

Via batashoemuseum.ca

"You end up with a mixture of beadwork, ribbon work, embroidery, moose hair tufting, moose hair applique, and quill work. All of this wide variety of decorative techniques also has regionality," Semmelhack told Deerchild.

"Shoes are intricately involved in our expressions of self, status, gender, cultural identity," she said.

To find out more about Beauty, Identity, Pride, visit the Bata Shoe Museum website and listen to the full interview with Semmelhack below: