CROW AGENCY — A Montana-based moccasin business is helping powwow dancers extend the life of their shoes and the tradition stitched into them.
Watch the Bozeman-based business repair traditional moccasins at Crow Fair:
At the 106th annual Crow Fair, every step taken in the arena tells a story. For dancers, the moccasins they wear carry those stories along. But time, and hard dancing, can take its toll on these beaded, hand-stitched shoes, often passed down through generations.
Moccasins are not easy to replace, and when damaged, options include taping or discarding them.
Bozeman-based company White Bear Moccasins recognized this fact and knew they could help. Founded in 2020 by Shauna White Bear, they brought a mobile repair station to Crow Fair for the first time this year. For around $20 a pair, dancers could get their moccasins resoled and repaired in under an hour.
"Obviously, you don't want to throw this away, so this is an opportunity that we can repair them and give them a new life, and so then they can be passed on," said White Bear.
Related: Crow Fair celebrates 106 years of culture, dance, and tradition
White Bear first began the company while working at a Bozeman shoe repair shop, and specialized in custom, handmade modern-style moccasins, as well as repairs. As the business grew into its own space, she hired a small team of Indigenous college students who became passionate about preserving their cultures.
"Each one of us, just over the years, making moccasins, we eventually had to repair our own moccasins,” said White Bear.
One of those students is 24-year-old Summer Tapedo, who is of Crow, Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache descent and is originally from Crow Agency. She has attended Crow Fair for the past decade and now feels honored to have the skills to help fix the moccasins.
“There's so much creative outlet in being able to make things that are not only artistic and native, but also functional and very usable in today's society, especially," said Tapedo. “These are precious things. These are things that carry you on your feet, and so to be able to be trusted with that is a lot."
The idea to repair traditional moccasins sparked from Valor Kills Back, a Northern Cheyenne stitcher. He decided to patch his own worn-out pair after a powwow earlier this summer, and White Bear knew it was something that the business could expand to offer.
“One day I just brought my moccasins to work and I was like, 'I'm going to try to fix these up and see how hard it is,' and then I did it in half an hour, fixed them,” said Kills Back. “It's not often that people are able to use the machinery that we have to be able to quickly fix their things. It takes years or months to fix things for people, especially when they have five or six children that they need to take care of.”
“I was like, 'Maybe we can do repairs on traditional-style moccasins,'" added White Bear. “I got access to a hand-crank, patching sewing machine, and that's basically how it just formulated.”
After less than 24 hours of setting up at the fair on Thursday night, they had already repaired two pairs and received dozens of inquiries.
“We had so many people stop by. They're like, 'I'm bringing mine tomorrow,' so it was really gratifying to be able to do that," said stitcher Mae Little Light.
Little Light is also from Crow Agency and has fond memories of camping at Crow Fair. She's seen firsthand how vital the service will be as new pairs can cost upwards of several hundred dollars.
But it's more than the money saved; for Little Light, it's preserving the paths of those who danced before her.
“We don't want our culture to die out. That is a major thing. We already have a hard time with our language," said Little Light. "Just to keep our culture alive and keep it going for generations to come, and also if they were passed down from a grandparent, it's like nice to have those things, especially when those people are gone.”
White Bear aims to convert a trailer into a mobile moccasin repair unit, allowing the team to bring their services to powwows across Montana and beyond. The crew sees this as the start of an exciting new venture, eager to support the next steps of dancers for years to come.
“It's really, really special to be given these kinds of things and how much they carry, so to be able to bring that back to life, it gives it a new life. It gives it time to continue on and not be put away and not be seen again," said Tapedo.
“Being native and indigenous and being able to help the people in the community that we're a part of, being able to use outside knowledge to help our people is a blessing," said Kills Back.
