Métis artist Kaija Heitland sews fox fur trim to deer leather moccasins keeping her hands busy as she talks to SAD Mag about her multidisciplinary artforms. From her full-time job as a tattoo artist to her traditional Métis clothing and wildcraft designs through Indigenous Nouveau to her jewellery line By the Thorne, Heitland is always creating. "I really do feel that true artists have to create. Otherwise, they'll explode. That's such a truism for me that I know that I just have to keep creating constantly," says Heitland.

With an entrepreneurial spirit from a young age, Heitland started her first company at 10 years old called Beaded Creations. She first learned about beading from her mother, who did Métis beadwork herself. "My family, especially my mother, has been a large driving force in ensuring I always had a strong connection to my roots," says Heitland.

Combined with her Métis roots, growing up in the Sunshine Coast's vast wilderness, travelling and living abroad, and her family's support, her art embodies the person she is today. "I don't think I could be doing the things that I'm doing now without the outlook that I have based on my experience and based on the exposure I've had to so many different cultures and ways of life," says Heitland.

On the Sunshine Coast, Heitland practiced a self-sustaining lifestyle where she would hunt, fish, and trap what she needed. Her practices of using the entire animal also transfers to her art, where she uses bones and claws in her jewellery from her own ethical hunting or sources them from Métis, First Nations, and Inuit communities who do the same.

Recently transplanted to Vancouver after a fire burned down her home on the Sunshine Coast, Heitland has been taking what she has learned from her life experience and bringing her art into the city space. She hopes to inspire dialogue about traditional practices. "I was raised not to waste anything. The idea that we live in such a disposable culture that it extends to the way we raise animals, and how that has allowed us to disassociate with our food, that we find traditional practices, abhorrent, that really confuses me," explains Heitland. 

Heitland is proud of her lineage and speaks of her family history and the art renaissance she is producing in her work through Indigenous Nouveau. "I'm trying to shed more light on who the Métis are, and I think there's a lot more room at the table to see more diversity in Indigenous art in British Columbia," Heitland says. 

Indigenous Nouveau is a space for Heitland to celebrate this renaissance and resurgence of Métis art. "Through Indigenous Nouveau, I can show something tactile where people can interact and have an experience with [my work] to help them understand the beauty and necessity for supporting things like sustainable hunting practices and Indigenous food sovereignty. Those things are an important part of the dialogue we're having about things like climate change and conservation," says Heitland.

This ethos is also brought into her jewellery work, where her most recent collection, Regalia, evokes a rebirth of Métis art. She describes how Métis use natural materials meant to decompose in their work, and that's why much of their traditional artwork is seen as artifacts in museums. "I created these sterling silver compartments that I've made almost like little frames for pieces of beadwork. I wanted to give these pieces of beadwork this permanent shrine so that they could be protected and preserved," says Heitland. In a sense, Heitland's beadwork transforms antiquity into the modern world, allowing traditional pieces to be adorned instead of viewed from afar.

Heitland's work acts as a catalyst for her understanding of the world and her drive to educate those about traditional practices: "I think that art for me is the consistent thread that runs through everything. Through my work. Through my study and my interests. Through my interpersonal relationships. Art really is that binding tie. It's the way I can make sense of everything if I just look at it artistically."

Learn more about Heitland by following her on Instagram. You can find out more about Indigenous Nouveau here and check out her jewellery on By the Thorne.