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https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/all-women-indigenous-snow-sculpting-team>
"It’s the dead of night on the edge of Wisconsin’s frozen Lake Geneva, and the
frigid February wind is howling. A woman stands atop a cube of packed snow
that’s taller than she is. Over and over, she muscles an auger—essentially, a
giant corkscrew—into the block, painstakingly carving out a precise pattern. At
the block’s base, her two “snow sisters” lop off more of the snow with machetes
and saws in the light of their headlamps. They’ll have 49 hours to turn the
eight-foot block of snow into something beautiful.
It was the trio’s first time competing in the National Snow Sculpting
Championships. They call themselves Team Kwe, after an Anishinaabemowin term
for women; as far as they know, they are the only snow sculpting team in the
United States that’s made entirely of Indigenous women. The towering sculpture
that emerged that wintry Wisconsin night in 2023, an otter diving beneath lily
pads titled “Ngig Nibi Ganawendan (Otter Water Protector),” won them second
place in the People’s Choice category at the competition.
Team Kwe’s captain—and the most experienced of the trio—is Heather Friedli, a
visual artist based in St. Paul who has spent the last 13 winters as a
professional snow sculptor. Friedli recruited her sister, Minneapolis karate
teacher Juliana Welter, in 2019. Kwe’s third member, who joined in 2021, is
Maggie Thompson, a Minneapolis-based textile artist. The team uses their snow
sculpting designs to connect to their own identities as Anishinaabe women—the
sisters being of Odawa descent, and Thompson, Ojibwe—and to tell a story with
their work. “Traditionally in the Ojibwe culture, storytelling season is when
there’s snow on the ground,” says Friedli. “For us, telling a story is
important.”"
Via Kenny Chaffin.
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
