Stitched with Love: Carrying Cultural Legacies Forward
First Peoples Fund is thrilled to welcome two outstanding fellows from the 2025 First Peoples’ Artist in Business Leadership (ABL) fellowship! These self-taught artists and entrepreneurs developed their skills by reflecting on their family traditions. These visual artists are focused on sharing the traditional practices of cradleboard making and patchwork sewing to share their cultural and familial narratives.
We look forward to seeing their professional journeys grow with First Peoples Fund support.
Artist in Business Leadership Fellows
Alayna Eagle Shield
Cradleboard maker, educator, and Artist in Business Leadership Fellow Alayna Eagle Shield (Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, Three Affiliated Tribes) creates art rooted in kinship, traditional knowledge, and community care. A mother of five, Alayna’s creative practice began with love from a cradleboard prepared by her father and necessity—learning to make cradleboards for her children. “Cradle boards are my passion,” she shares, describing how her family storytelling and creative improvisation guided her early creations. Her work grew into a cultural methodology.
A recent doctoral graduate from the University of Washington’s College of Education, her research centered on cradleboard-making as Indigenous technology to be reworked, revitalized, and reclaimed through traditional teachings and oral history.
Alayna Eagle Shield is the Executive Director of the Mni Wichoni Health Circle and co-founder of the Mní Wičhóni Nakíčižiŋ Wóuŋspe (Defenders of the Water School), leading with a vision of wellness grounded in language and land. “I wanted this to be shareable,” she explains. “We know that there’s no way we could make cradle boards for every single baby in the world who deserves them… but we wanted to figure out how to create a process.” Alayna’s work blends beadwork, sewing, quilting, and quillwork with deep cultural teaching from women, relatives, and midwives in her communities.
Her family joins her in this work—her husband, a woodworker, builds cradleboard frames and bonnet templates, while her children bead alongside her. She has helped make and distribute over 100 cradleboards and now teaches workshops across Native communities, focusing on the intention in the process of beadwork. “We just share everything,” she says. “This way, you're continuously making community and building kinship while you're preparing for your baby.”
This work is intergenerational and expansive for Alayna: “I’m ready to start building and putting into my own dreams… I want to be the grandma and the mom that everybody felt like I just generously shared… everyone was radically wrapped with love by me.”
Jaylee Lowe
Award-winning Seminole patchwork artist and Artist in Business Leadership Fellow Jaylee Lowe (Seminole, Muscogee (Creek)) is reviving and reimagining visual traditions through fashion, quilting, and sewing. Based in Glenpool, Oklahoma, Jaylee taught herself how to sew by studying the skirts her late maternal grandmother made, whose artistry and care continue to guide her work. “I always credit my grandma for teaching me, even though she’s not here anymore,” she reflects.
Beginning by sewing for her family, Jaylee honed her skills before gradually sharing her work with others, eventually joining competitions across the country. Today, her bold and intricate garments carry forward a family legacy of traditional Seminole patchwork, a style deeply tied to memory. “Using remnants… clothing from family members who have passed on or thrifted fabrics… it creates a really vibrant piece,” she says. This focus on remnants reflects sustainable practices and connects directly to historical survival. “Indigenous people were the first designers and artists,” Jaylee explains. “We’ve always been sustainable.”
Jaylee’s patchwork art, grounded in geometric forms and ancestral patterns, tells stories with every patch. “Our patchwork tells stories,” she says. “A lot of people know about patchwork, but they don’t know that those designs have significance.” For Jaylee, her work is also a bridge between past and present, tradition and innovation, utility and fine art. She is determined to redefine sewing and patchwork as respected visual art forms, participating in art markets such as the Muscogee Art Market, the Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market, and the Santa Fe Indian Market. “It’s such an honor to be a part of these prestigious markets… getting to represent myself, my family, and my culture,” she says. Yet, she often finds herself one of the only patchwork artists present—this experience deepens her desire to see more young people engage with these traditions.
Through the First Peoples Fund fellowship, Jaylee is expanding her practice with new tools, materials, and professional development opportunities. Her proposal includes attending additional art markets, building a website, and creating broader visibility for Seminole patchwork. She dreams of building a network of artists who carry the knowledge forward: “To have a patchwork maker in every family or band of my tribe.” Whether through community classes, publications, or online tutorials, she hopes to ensure that the ancestral designs she learned and carries are not forgotten.
Conclusion
With the support of First Peoples Fund, Alayna Eagle Shield and Jaylee Lowe continue their dedication to preserving and promoting their cultural traditions, knowledge systems, and communal healing through traditional practices or materials. As inheritors of their family’s cultural practices, they are expanding their outreach to share and provide a path of reconnection. Their works are more than fashion and craft—it’s a living archive, stitched from memory, tradition, and a vision for the future. By providing workshops or material bundles, Alayna Eagle Shield and Jaylee Lowe are ensuring their cultural legacies continue to grow and flourish in their families and tribal communities.
