Mary Connors, secretary of the FNECC, greeted most visitors with familiarity as they walked into the new FNECC house. She said she is excited for this semester because the FNECC community has grown since the center has moved from Weatherly Hall last year to a house on Eighth Street.
After a potluck dinner of homemade food, Marilyn Cleveland, native elder in the FNECC, taught community members the ins and outs of traditional beading.
Rather than using fish bones for needles and beads from clay, community members were taught the art of earring-making using ?man-made materials.
“You just always have to use what you have,” Cleveland said as she looked to the plastic, online-ordered beads and metallic needle. “And this is what we have.”
At 72 years old, Cleveland has been one of the leaders of Craft Night at the FNECC for about ten years. She never gives up opportunities to teach about native traditions.
“The more we know about people and the many ways different people do things, the better we all get along,” Cleveland said.
Cleveland’s niece, Betsy Middleton, said beading is relaxing for her. She said she “learned how to bead from the best” when she was taught by her aunt.
One visitor, Jill Vass, said she has recently been very interested in learning how to bead and is happy to learn from “someone of (Cleveland’s) expertise in this area.”
While trying to create her own beaded earring, Vass said Cleveland makes the beading “look so easy.”
Cleveland told Vass she has been doing this for a long time. She told stories of how her grandmother taught her to bead and loom accessories from the time she was four years old.
Brian Gilley, director of FNECC and associate professor of anthropology, said events the FNECC hosts mean more to the community than learning how to make crafts and telling stories.
He said the beaded earrings are one way the native people communicate value.
“You really learn about a person and a community ?indirectly,” Gilley said.
He said the conversation, connections made and the stories told by elders such as Cleveland are the moments where a community is built and discovered.
The FNECC builds a community by bringing natives and non-natives together where they learn off of each other and work together on a deeper level. Cleveland said she likes the way other people are enlightened when she tells them she is more like them than they think.
She said she has surprised a lot of younger people by telling them her “horse” is the minivan sitting outside of her house.
“My people never lived in teepees, we lived in wooden houses similar to the ones now,” Cleveland said.
