Combining fashion, culture and advocacy in Lac Du Flambeau

Amelia Schafer
ICT

LAC DU FLAMBEAU RESERVATION, Wisconsin – Adaawe Design Collective is pushing boundaries and combining fashion with advocacy and culture on the Lac Du Flambeau Reservation in northern Wisconsin.

Adaawe, which refers to the Odawa tribe in Ojibwemowin, is run by Alexandria AnungoKwe Sulainis-Johnson, a Nottawaseppi Huron Band of Potawatomi and Odawa artist, and her Ojibwe husband Greg Biskakone Johnson.

The Anishinaabe family runs the micro-business from their home on the Lac Du Flambeau Reservation and storefront in downtown Lac Du Flambeau. Through Adaawe, the family of artists creates unique designs, featuring traditional Anishinaabe (Ojibwe, Potawatomi and Odawa) artwork and contemporary themes.

Since their first design in 2021, the family has pushed boundaries and created art that can be worn and enjoyed by Indigenous people and allies. The collective’s very first design that launched the business reads “Support Native Art” featuring a pictograph of a thunderbird and is a reaction to the frequent use of Native designs by non-Native companies. 

“I like all of my work to be culturally influenced, and I like most of it to push a boundary,” Sulainis-Johnson said.

In the 1980s, this region of Wisconsin was the site of the Walleye Wars, a conflict between non-Native settlers and Anishinaabe fishermen exercising their treaty rights to spearfish walleye off reservation.

The conflict became violent, with non-Natives verbally harassing and sometimes physically threatening and assaulting Ojibwe spearfishers. Decades later, the reservation is a major tourist destination for summer recreational fishing. Non-Native people often come to the Wisconsin woodland reservations to fish and relax. It’s a different climate, but the racial undertones still exist, Johnson said. 

Through her artwork, Johnson said she hopes to challenge this legacy and history.

Several of her designs feature the Lac Du Flambeau Reservation, one of which depicts a fish beside a spear and torch, paying tribute to the legacy of Ojibwe fishermen who fought for their rights to hunt and fish on their ancestral lands. On these designs, Johnson said she makes a point to include the word “reservation,” reflecting that this is Native land today. 

“It’s acknowledging it’s not just tourist-destination Wisconsin, but the place of the Native people of the area,” she said. “A lot of my business is tourists, which is why a lot of the shirts say the name of the local area and are centered around that.”

Another example is the Manoomin shirt, which uses eye-catching designs to call attention to the fact that wild rice is endangered in Wisconsin, she said. 

“A lot of my designs come down to cultural education,” she said. “A lot of the racism up here and the problems that we face are just from ignorance, people not understanding and not caring to understand why we do the things that we do, and then the more I can make the ways capable and public and talked about, the better it is.”

Adaawe Design Collective is more than an innovative clothing brand, it’s a place for Native people to gather and express themselves and their art. At the Lac Du Flambeau storefront, the family hosts various creative cultural workshops, and Johnson said her plan is to expand these opportunities going forward.

Within the next year, she said she plans to move most of the clothing sales to the shop’s online store, and use the storefront the way she’s always envisioned. 

“Our hearts are just in creating and in the community,” she said. “Community is our big main focus.”

Aside from her unique designs, Johnson also works on large-scale projects, such as a mural dedicated to boarding school survivors at the Burpee Museum of Natural History in Rockford, Illinois. She’s also currently working on a project for her tribe’s casino, the Fire Keepers Casino Hotel outside of Kalamazoo, Michigan. 

“For me, it’s not about, it’s not about retail. It’s not about just putting things out there to be out there,” she said. “I want everything to have some meaning and some representation. But then more than that, I’m very focused on the future that I’m creating for my kids.”

As a mom of two with a third baby on the way, Johnson said family is an important part of her story. She was actually inspired to start a clothing line after becoming a mother.

Johnson said she grew up painting. As a kid, she’d rush home from school to watch “Pappyland” on PBS, a kids show centered around drawing and creativity. 

After giving birth to her first child, painting became less of an option for her. The mess and setup required was too much, so she looked into graphic design and learned how to use Adobe Illustrator.

With Adobe Illustrator, she was able to pursue her childhood dream of creating art and combine it with another dream – designing clothing.

“If somebody asked me what I wanted to be growing up I’d tell them I wanted to be a fashion designer, I wanted to design dresses,” she said. 

With her business, Johnson said, she understands the problematic nature of the garment industry and works to combat this through creating products that last. 

“Everything I sell is screen printed. It’s not direct-to-garment transfer or anything like that because I want it to last a long time and leave less of a footprint behind,” she said. 

Since she first started Adaawe Design Collective in 2021, the business has grown and developed. Johnson said people have sent photos of her designs being worn across the world.

“For a long time, I felt like an imposter, kind of a fraud, but now that I can see the reach of my artwork outside of myself and how it’s appreciated and how far it’s gone and, and traveled, it feels more legitimate,” she said. “I can confidently say, ‘Yeah, I’m an artist.’”

Currently, she’s working on getting her website back up and running after vending on and off during powwow season and preparing to grow her family. Johnson said she expects the online store to be back up and running in early August, but for now she primarily will sell out of her storefront in Lac Du Flambeau.

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