Artist Spotlight: Wenzdae Anaïs Brewster (she/her)

by Mikaela Brewer ​for The 44 North

Wenzdae sitting on a wooden chair next to a window. She is wearing a green, brown, and red patterned skirt and a flowy white top. She has tattoos, lots of jewelry, piercings, and large glasses. Her hair is blond and cropped short, and she has light brown skin. Next to her are several plants and a wooden side table with a lamp.

Multimedia Artist: digital, traditional beadwork, oddity work, and painting 

Wenzdae (she/her) is an Afro-Indigenous, multi-media artist hailing from the Georgian Bay Metis Community, of which she is a registered and claimed member. She is a direct descendant of the Clermont-Dusome, Trudeau-Papanaathyhianencoe and Beausoliel-Giroux family lines, and her lineage is traced to Manitoba as well as Barbados on her paternal side.

Wenzdae is an accomplished artist with many credits to her name. She specializes in jewellery production, Indigenous beadwork, graphic design, and traditional hand-poke tattoos. Wenzdae has over 13 years of experience and mentorship under her belt.

Her credits include artworks published in both media and television, including creating beadwork for ‘Motherland: Fort Salem’ and an upcoming season of

‘Sullivan’s Crossing’ as well as outfitting several Indigenous community leaders and celebrities.

She is a published author, illustrator and photographer, with one of her iconic images being named amongst CBC’s top 12 best Canadian book covers of 2017. She was also a recipient of the 2013 James Bartleman Aboriginal Youth Creative Writing Award and has multiple upcoming projects and publications coming in the following years through her agency (Trans Atlantic Agency) and Swift Water Books.

Website: wenzdaeweird.ca

Instagram: instagram.com/wenzdaeweird.ca

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“My roots will always play a key role in how I think, how I create and perceive the world but they will not define or limit me as an artist. I hope people see that art and culture are not the same as history. Culture is forever shifting and growing, evolving and expanding. Finding new ways to implement old techniques into modernity is one of the ways we carry our ancestors into the present.”

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For a few years, I've had the absolute privilege of wearing and admiring Wenzdae's art. Please spend some time with her responses to my questions about her work, alongside photographs of the variety of art she crafts!

M: For each of your projects/artworks, is there a story behind their crafting/creation process that you'd like to share?

W: Each creation is made different but with equal intention and care. I never truly have a plan going into a new piece (even when I think I do—haha). The theme of the work varies based on what I want to emphasize or project into the world, but the foundation of all my creations is my culture. I spent years under the mentorship of my chosen aunt, June Taylor, who taught me everything I know about Indigenous beadwork (specifically woodlands aesthetic) while we sat at her kitchen table. No matter what I create, the foundation of my knowledge stems back to those days. 

M: How do you, your family, ancestry, community, politics, and values braid into your work on these projects? Where/how, especially, would you like folks to witness/experience this when spending time with your work? Is there anything you hope people pay particular attention to? Take action with/from?

W: I am an intuitive artist who also happens to be Black and Indigenous, as well as European and South Asian. My creative knowledge stems from my Metis heritage, which I grew up deeply entrenched in—from plant medicine knowledge to resistance through storytelling. I like to think of my work as culturally rooted in that heritage but able to be enjoyed by all. I have no intention of separating myself, my beliefs or morals from my work. I like to call myself a radical hippie—as I strongly stand for freedom and equality, which has never truly been achieved by the “peace and love” motto we typically identify with hippie culture, particularly as it pertains to non-western communities. My roots will always play a key role in how I think, how I create and perceive the world, but they will not define or limit me as an artist. I hope people see that art and culture are not the same as history. Culture is forever shifting and growing, evolving and expanding. Finding new ways to implement old techniques into modernity is one of the ways we carry our ancestors into the present.

M: If these projects could speak, what might they say/offer? If not in words, what might they offer in energy? Mind, body, heart, spirit? 

W: My work would offer a new perspective on mixed identity, not one that “waters down” any one of the cultures in my background but one that incorporates, shares and enhances each, in particular, the ways in which they connect and alchemize into something uniquely beautiful. Love knows no boundaries or borders, so cultural appreciation is essential for the ethical trading of knowledge, skills, stories, and arts. My work embraces elements of the aesthetics and environmentally informed processes that underpin my understanding of art, while also bringing its own unique characteristics that have been made possible through the act of true cross-cultural communication. 

Hand-painted ethically harvested animal skulls with upcycled vintage frames (2024-2025).

Accessibility text: An array of animal skulls painted in many different colours, shapes, and designs.

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Modern beadwork created for the set of “Motherland: Fort Salem (2023)”

Accessibility text: Several women (characters) from the show "Motherland: Fort Salem" wearing a variety of Wenzdae's beaded jewelry, especially earrings.

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A sample of diverse styles & mediums re: original illustrations for current & forthcoming projects

Accessibility text: 2 paintings of Indigenous women in pink and purple dresses decorated with rainbows, flowers, and butterflies. They are also wearing black and white feathers in their hair.

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Eighteen unique images commissioned by Indigenous Geographic

Accessibility text: "A diverse and visually vibrant range of illustrations inspired by Métis culture, ensuring accuracy and respect for traditional design elements.” The images include canoes, flowers, moccasins, and more!

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Utilizing natural & upcycled materials, glass cut beads and ethically harvested and treated animal products. Samples from recent commissioned and creative projects (2022-2025)

Accessibility text: Many pieces of beaded jewelry in different colours, including rings, earrings, necklaces, and small purses. They feature images of water, trees, people, flowers, and other shapes.

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Early draft illustrations for ‘THE GIRL WHO COLLECTED STARS’ (Swift Water Books/Penguin Random House Canada, forthcoming 2026)

Accessibility text: 2 drawings of a young girl with medium brown skin, brown curly hair, and round glasses. In the first, she is looking out the window of an apartment building at night, through purple curtains. The building is surrounded by flowers and stars, and a small black cat looks out the window next to her. In the second image, the girl is standing on a green stool with blue flowers, looking into a mirror. She's wearing a striped purple dress and pink socks.

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Signature Beadwork Style

Accessibility text: This signature style came from a dream Wenzdae had of beautiful birch bark paddles dripping with beaded florals and berries, and they carried people to and from the river banks. Upon waking up, she knew she had to re-create this vision. The Métis (also known as the floral beadwork people) are known for their intricate botanical beadwork designs on materials such as plush velvet. Wenzdae combined the teardrop shape of an ore with colourful materials and glass cut beads to make her staple beadwork design she’s now known for. You can view these creations on her website or on the big screen.

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Ghosts of Diet Cultures Past

by Hailey Hechtman, ​for The 44 North

Contributing Writer

X: @HaileyHechtman IG: @hailey.hechtman

Hailey Hechtman is a social impact leader and mental health advocate. She is passionate about inspiring positive change through community collaboration, constant learning and self-reflection. Watch her interview on 'Life Outside the Box' here.

The December air brings with it many familiar feelings: the coziness of being curled up on the couch with a blanket and a book; evenings chatting with friends reflecting on the year that was; walks through sparkly side-streets shimmering with the glow of red, green, and gold lights hung from trees and balconies. Yet, while these most delight-inducing snippets of the year-end magic fill me with warmth, I am also visited by an uninvited acquaintance from the not-so distant past, the fragments of my eating disorder brain. 

While years have passed since the core of my deepest pain and most obsessive thoughts, there is something about the holiday season and the practice of looking at all those health and fitness goals set in January that lost their way by the spring.

There is an uneasy shadow cast as people gather to have feasts and inevitably wax poetic on the good vs. evil dynamic of the meal that stands before them.

There is something alluring about the reminder that January is a fresh start and that all the choices that resulted in shifts in your body can be wiped away with a new plan, a more disciplined approach. There are the temptations to gorge on the plethora of beige carbs and then confront yourself in the mirror with promises that all will be different on Monday. Sound familiar? This is because so many of us regardless of where we are on the continuum of our relationship with our body, have an uncomfortable and yet incredibly engrained ghost that follows us around, the ghost of diet cultures past. 

It is seemingly innocent when it shows itself as an affirmation to work it off in the morning or a quote posted on a message board telling you that being more disciplined is a cure-all for any feelings of self-doubt. Yet, don’t be fooled, these are just the messages that we see as external to ourselves, the ghost tunnels deeper, it follows us into the corners of our mind and with a few little tweaks, the occasion idiom, it starts to sound like us. 

The mysterious trespasser tags along into the change room at the mall where it laser-focuses in on that one part, that one area that makes us believe we are not worthy. It chases us out of the kitchen and away from that dessert we have been eyeing all evening with reminders that you will not be lovable if you come within a foot of that pile of sugar. It whispers in our ear when glance upon our reflection at a holiday party, signalling to us that everyone is staring and silently judging us for how that dress fits across our hips. 

While this menace likely has been floating around us in a spiral of self-critique since we were young enough to absorb the messages shouted or hushed through magazine covers and our mother’s response to our 2nd helping of rice pudding, it isn’t our voice. 

It is an intruder, an interloper reinforcing a conditioning designed to make us feel less than, to fan the flames of insecurity and leave us distracted away from all the beauty and joy in the world. And, because it is not our truest inner monologue and doesn’t hold a place that is real and honest, it can be banished and replaced. While never easy (it is still something I tackle many years after it has faded into a hum, replaced by a much kinder, compassionate character) we can begin to stop it in its tracks and unlearn its harmful messages of caloric doom. 

How do we do this you ask? Any time a murmur begins to rise thoughtfully informing you of your thighs, or that your last trip to the gym was two weeks ago or that that chocolate has more ingredients that some influencer told you it should, interrupt it. Let it know that you are aware that it is not your voice, it is not your friend. It is a culmination of decades of commercials and movie quips describing to you what worthiness does and does not look like. In these times, once you have it right where you want it, give it a little push and assure this villain in your tale on the journey to self-compassion that you will no longer be handing it the mic. Clearly state that you have decided that as often as possible (because this will take time and you will be strong, and you will be vulnerable and you will confidently pushback and sympathetically let it back in) that you will be calling in a new lead, the one that shows up with a recognition of your gifts, a softness towards your insecurities, the speaker of pep talks when you are uncertain of yourself. The more you can get out in front of vicious force, the shadow that lurks in your fridge, and instead invite the voice that treats you as a friend, as a small child simply trying to wonder at the world around you, the better your ability to call them up will get. 

This approach will not only help and lead you to fill the thought buckets with loving encouragement where vile insults were once slung, but it will also give you insight into the minds of everyone around you, who too is trying to shush an unkind spirit in the form of those absorbed and internalized stories from their inner dialogue. 

You see whether yours speaks of macros and hours moved on an elliptical or of how hard you are supposed to be pushing yourself for your boss or that if your date doesn’t find you charming, clearly they are right and you are scum, we all have these apparitions. We all have slurped up the social norms that surround us at all moments, channelled through the comments of our grandmother at dinner or on our iPhone as we flip through reels showcasing people living the shiniest lives imaginable. So, in these micro-moments where you have a chance to glance at yourself from the outside for a split second, showcase the warmest, most genuine smile to yourself and to those around you as together we all put on the suit of self-compassion to activate our own inner ghostbuster. 

Finding Love: When Your Loved Ones Vote Differently Than You

by Mikaela Brewer ​for The 44 North

A red “I Voted” sticker, stuck to a fingertip

At the peak of a cool, June golden hour, Henrie searched for her house keys in the pocket of her jeans. They jingled around her fingers on their sparkly purple coil, singing with the wind chimes hanging from the porch. The old wood steps creaked, as if the groan of its paint-skin peeling, and the stone cardinal riding the chimes jolted as Henrie bumped their head on them. She’d always thought this a strange design—cardinals always appeared in pairs.

Finally finding the right key, she unlocked the door and sniffed for expected tobacco smoke. They slipped off their hiking boots, and tiptoed toward the foyer stairs. 

“Henrietta? Honey, is that you?” A familiar, gravelly voice wound around the doorway of the living room.

Henrie breathed a soft sigh. “Yes, Grandpa, it’s me.” Henrie heard the T.V. volume decrease as her grandfather, Danny, shuffled out of his back and neck pillows. He stopped in the doorway, with a warm smile that reached Henrie like a ghost hug. They knew he was wondering why they hadn’t announced their entrance, as usual. But Danny was sweet, and respectful, which Henrie always appreciated. The grief of losing a mother wasn’t the same as losing a daughter, but the state of the old farmhouse consistently clarified that the ache was shared.

The quiet was a bit disarming. Danny must’ve fed the animals a bit early, Henrie thought. Why?

“Would you like anything special for dinner? I wish I could say the tomatoes were ready for pasta sauce, but not quite.” Danny’s eyes crinkled with playful frustration.

“Oh, that’s okay. I’m good with whatever you’re feeling, honestly. I’m a little tired to think.” The setting sun’s golden beams made the floating dust in the air between them visible. One beam shone directly on a black and white graduation photo of Ellen, Henrie’s mother, nearly coercing the colours of life out of its past as if they were behind the wall the photo was nailed to. 

“Well why don’t we cook something together? Maybe you can tell me about your Tuesday afternoon?”

Clever, Danny. This is what Henrie did not want to do, but they didn’t know what else to say. “Okay, sure.” 

“Perfect. Let’s do it.” Danny walked down the hall toward the kitchen, which was mostly windows overlooking Ellen’s garden. It was Henrie’s favourite room in what had been her mother’s childhood home. In the sun, everything caught fire, especially her and Danny’s deep amber hair, his now streaked with silver. At night, the dark orange walls looked almost black lit by a blue-white moon. The whole room smelled like basil, bread, and the ripening tomatoes climbing an open window. 

As Danny washed his hands, he offered a look of invitation and expectation. Not unkind. But one Henrie knew well: Why, at 23 and living at home, she hadn’t been “working” this afternoon. 

“Well, I voted, first,” she paused for a reaction but Danny just nodded as he poured green pasta curls into a corningware dish. “And then I went to an open meeting at the Seed Library. It was about queer ecology and ensuring community gardens and other natural spaces and parks are queer, trans, indigenous, and Black and Brown centred and inclusive leading into PRIDE, Juneteenth, and Indigenous Peoples Month. I wrote down pages of notes, and I’m hoping to volunteer a bit more, because, you know, learning about how to organize and activate a community is how we do more than just vote.” Henrie stopped here, aware of her swelling eagerness. 

Danny nodded again, but looked down as he rinsed rosemary residue from his hands. “I voted, too.” 

Henrie smiled with their lips pressed together. Danny mistook it for despair, and an opportunity.

“Don’t worry, love. Once we get a new government, they’re going to mend this cost of living crisis. You’ll be able to move out and live the life you’re hoping for—that I’m hoping for you.”

Henrie’s brows knit. She didn’t know how to respond to her unspoken question being answered. 

“Grandpa, how could you vote for them?”

“What?” He asked with genuine confusion, again not unkindly, but defensively. “I’ve always loved and supported you. And learned about the 2SLGBTQIA+ community. Did I say it right? I was just watching that series with RuPaul! And I finished Season 1 of that show last night! The Last of Us? Right? It’s very good. I really like it.”

Henrie’s heart seemed to stall between beats to take up more blood, but the delay hurt. 

“I know you love me, Grandpa. I do. I really do.” She meant it. “But that’s not what we’re talking about. I agree with you. We are in a violent cost of living crisis. But it certainly won’t be fixed or solved by any of our parties or leaders. We have to vote for harm reduction, and not just for ourselves or the people closest to us. Maybe it’s like Joel trying to save Ellie in The Last of Us—he was only considering her when he killed all those people to free her from the hospital. And it wasn’t for lack of love. It was almost like—” Henrie paused to think, “love out of context.”

“But I’d do what he did, Henrietta. I think I would. Wouldn’t you?”

“I don’t know, and that’s what makes this so hard. Maybe Joel and Ellie are a poor example. But we do make judgement errors when we don’t consider folks outside of our immediate circle of conversation and influence. How much we love someone close to us should be fuel for learning to love others who aren’t.”

“Yes,” Danny tried to take a calming breath, “you’re right about that bit. But this government has messed up everything for your generation. We need change! How could you vote for them? Again?” 

Henrie glanced at the tomatoes growing up the kitchen window frame, green but reddening, reflecting off of Danny’s furrowed face.

“You’re right. We do! But change has to come from us. And when we vote—a bare minimum step—we have to think about who, in a position of power, is most likely to join that change when we make it. And react with fear, control, and surveillance least often.” 

“Henrietta, you’re young. You’re confused—”

“No, I’m not. Can’t you see we’re saying the same thing?” 

“You just voted for the same crap that’s been happening for ten years!”

“There has been a lot of trash. Yes. A lot of manipulation. But reviving a past—before the past ten years—isn’t change. Doing this won’t build or enact the new pillars we need to float our country’s dock.” 

From the living room, a breaking news anchor’s voice wafted in. The election results. 

Henrie and Danny made sharp eye contact before hustling into the living room. Both were silent as the election was declared, much earlier than anticipated. Henrie felt her socks sink further into the tiger-print carpet than usual, because it hadn’t been vacuumed. 

“Well. That’s just perfect. Good job.” Danny’s voice wavered as he walked out the back door to the garden, knelt in the dirt with both knees and elbows, and put his head in his hands.  

Henrie jogged upstairs, flopped onto their bed, and opened Andrea Gibson’s Substack. 

The first poem that popped up was a video of “What Love Is”. They hadn’t heard it before. Henrie wept as she listened to it, facing her mother’s handwriting—accidentally in plum-purple Sharpie—on the top right corner of her vanity mirror. 

“Where there is rage, remember its tenderness. Where there is tenderness, don’t forget its rage.”

[This is an invitation to pause reading & watch Andrea read us their breathtaking poem; we don’t have copyright permissions to reprint it!]

Face damp, Henrie stood to look at their face in the mirror. Her freckles seemed bolder, like wet versus dry rocks. In the mirror’s reflection, Henrie looked out her open window. A mist of rain sprayed lightly across the backs of her arms, bringing with it a few lilac petals from the bush that climbed the back of the house. Henrie didn’t wipe away her tears on the way to the printer downstairs, and then out to the garden. 

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Danny was tenderly thumbing the tomatoes, both a fruit and a vegetable, as if two truths simultaneously. Henrie walked slowly toward him, remembering something from earlier that day, at the Seed Library: patience as the vital cornerstone of nature, and of course, gardening. When they flourish, not unlike a family, it’s not always due to their fertility and reproductivity, but to their depth, circularity, and broadness of influence. Our garden and our grief is what we have in common, Henrie thought. 

Henrie approached Danny, dropped to their knees, and placed a hand over his. “I don’t blame you.”

“I know. I don’t blame you either.”

She took a deep breath and handed her grandfather a paper with a poem printed on it. He took a few moments to read it, right there among the tomatoes and lilacs. Tears fell into the imprints where his hands had been pressed into the soil. He read one of the last lines out aloud:

““I’m 76 years old, he said, and I just tonight figured out what love is.””

“I know what love is at 23 because you’ve shown it to me—in ways like this poem. And that’s where we’ll try to understand and forgive each other, okay?”

Danny nodded. He smeared soil across his cheeks, like a football player or a warrior, as he tried to clear his tears. “Could I share something with you, too?” 

Henrie nodded, eagerly. 

“Victor Hugo said, once, that “Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.” Our souls are both on their knees, Henrie, I know. Especially right now. But because they’re here, they see eye to eye. Let’s stay for a moment. Let’s talk from that place.”

Henrie closed their eyes and took their grandfather’s hands, nodding gently. Two cardinals landed on the lilac bush beside them. She tilted her head up to the warmth of the afternoon sun, the smell of petrichor, and colours of the garden making a mosaic against her eyelids. They thought—perhaps prayed—to always be moved by what love is.