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"Minnetonka first started selling its βThunderbirdβ moccasins in 1965. Now, for the first time, theyβve been redesigned by a Native American designer.
Itβs one step in the companyβs larger work to deal with its history of cultural appropriation. The Minneapolis-based company launched in the 1940s as a small business making souvenirs for roadside gift shops in the regionβincluding Native American-inspired moccasins, though the business wasnβt started or run by Native Americans. The moccasins soon became its biggest seller.
[Photo: Minnetonka]
Adrienne Benjamin, an Anishanaabe artist and community activist who became the companyβs βreconciliation advisor,β was initially reluctant when a tribal elder approached her about meeting with the company. Other activists had dismissed the idea that the company would do the work to truly transform. But Benjamin agreed to the meeting, and the conversation convinced her to move forward.
βI sensed a genuine commitment to positive change,β she says. βThey had really done their homework as far as understanding and acknowledging the wrong and the appropriation. I think they knew for a long time that things needed to get better, and they just werenβt sure what a first step was.β
Pictured: Lucie Skjefte and son Animikii [Photo: Minnetonka]
In 2020, Minnetonka publicly apologized βfor having benefited from selling Native-inspired designs without directly honoring Native culture or communities.β It also said that it was actively recruiting Native Americans to work at the company, reexamining its branding, looking for Native-owned businesses to partner with, continuing to support Native American nonprofits, and that it planned to collaborate with Native American artists and designers.
Benjamin partnered with the company on the first collaboration, a collection of hand-beaded hats, and then recruited the Minneapolis-based designer Lucie Skjefte, a citizen of the Red Lake Nation, who designed the beadwork for another moccasin style and a pair of slippers for the brand. Skjefte says that she felt comfortable working with the company knowing that it had already done work with Benjamin on reconciliation. And she wasnβt a stranger to the brand. βOur grandmothers and our mothers would always look for moccasins in a clutch kind of situation where they didnβt have a pair ready and available to make on their ownβthen they would buy Minnetonka mocs and walk into a traditional pow wow and wear them,β she says. Her mother, she says, who passed away in 2019, would have been βimmensely proudβ that Skjefteβs design work was part of the moccasinsβand on the new version of the Thunderbird moccasin, one of the companyβs top-selling styles.
[Photo: Minnetonka]
βI started thinking about all of those stories, and what resonated with me visually,β Skjefte says. The redesign, she says, is much more detailed and authentic than the previous version. βThrough the redesign and beading process, we are actively reclaiming and reconnecting our Animikii or ThunderbirdΒ motifΒ with its Indigenous roots,β she says. Skjefte will earn royalties for the design, and Minnetonka will also separately donate a portion of the sale of each shoe to Mni Sota Fund, a nonprofit that helps Native Americans in Minnesota get training and capital for home ownership and entrepreneurship.
Some companies go a step fartherβManitobah Mukluks, based in Canada, has an Indigenous founder and more than half Indigenous staff. (While Minnetonka is actively recruiting more Native American workers, the company says that employees self-report race and it canβt share any data about its current number of Indigenous employees.) Beyond its own line of products, Manitobah also has an online Indigenous Market that features artists who earn 100% of the profit for their work.
White Bear Moccasins, a Native-owned-and-made brand in Montana, makes moccasins from bison hide. Each custom pair can take six to eight hours to make; the shoes cost hundreds of dollars, though they can also be repaired and last as long as a lifetime, says owner Shauna White Bear. In interviews, White Bear has said that she wants βto take our craft back,β from companies like Minnetonka. But she also told Fast Company that she doesnβt think that Minnetonka, as a family-owned business, should have to lose its livelihood now and stop making moccasins.
The situation is arguably different for other fashion brands that might use a Native American symbolβor rip off a Native American design completelyβon a single product that could easily be taken off the market. Benjamin says that she has also worked with other companies that have discontinued products.
She sees five steps in the process of reconciliation. First, the person or company who did wrong has to acknowledge the wrong. Then they need to publicly apologize, begin to change behavior, start to rebuild trust, and then, eventually, the wronged party might take the step of forgiveness. Right now, she says, Minnetonka is in the third phase of behavior change. The brand plans to continue to collaborate with Native American designers.
The company can be an example to others on how to listen and build true relationships, Benjamin says. βI think thatβs the only way that these relationships are going to get any betterβpeople have to sit down and talk about it,β she says. βPeople have to be real. People have to apologize. They have to want to reconcile with people.β
The leadership at Minnetonka can also be allies in pushing other companies to do better. βMy voice is important at the table as an Indigenous woman,β Benjamin says. βLucieβs voice is important. But at tables where thereβs a majority of people that arenβt Indigenous, sometimes those alliesβ voices are more powerful in those spaces, because that means that theyβve signed on to what weβre saying. The power has signed on to moving forward and we agree with βYes, this was wrong.β Thatβs the stuff thatβs going to change [things] right there.β"
-via FastCompany, February 7, 2024
