Felice Gladue and Ashley Giebelhaus – Metis Alive

Felice and Ashley are passionate about bringing their Metis history and culture ALIVE through engaging cultural learning experiences, high energy Metis dance workshops and a variety of traditional skills workshops and material art. They offer multi-sensory and interactive Metis learning experiences with hands-on exploration of their extensive artifact collection as well as a trapper tent Metis exhibit. Metis ALIVE strives to keep the traditional skill of capote making and embroidery ALIVE. They collect high quality vintage wool blankets and repurpose them into capotes. Capotes are the coats our Metis voyageur and trapper ancestors made from trade wool blankets during the fur trade era.  They also create mittens, pouches, leggings, vests and even doll clothes from vintage wool blankets. Each piece is hand stitched and decorated with hand embroidery which is a traditional skill many Metis women practiced in the 1800s and early 1900s to help support their families.