Tribal Elder Oshanee Kenmille Teaches Hide Tanning and Beadwork to Generations
By Luke Johnson/For The Missoulian
You can learn most of what you need to know about Oshanee Kenmille just by spending a little time in her living room.
Eighty-seven years worth of pictures of her alongside her ever expanding family of relatives and well wishers are neatly arranged along a shelf over her mantle. They move on a timeline from black and white to color, but don't ask Oshanee to tell you who's whom. Many of the faces in the black and white shots were taken away too soon, and plenty of the ones in the colored shots too, went before their time. Most bring up memories too painful for Oshanee to want to share about.
Statuettes, figurines and pictures of wild life are also abundant throughout the room. Deer, wolves, birds and horses. Her living room’s picture window in the middle of a wooded area in Pablo, Montana gives you the feeling that these same animals might just as easily appear outside as they do on her walls and shelves.
Outside of her baby blue house an American flag blows in the wind — in honor of her brother who served in World War II and passed away three years ago.
Inside, equal parts of Native Art of all sorts and statues of Christ and the Virgin Mary make up the remainder of the room’s decor, representing her dual faiths: Native and Catholic.
But mostly her living room is filled with her art and her art in progress. Sprawled across her couch, coffee table, television and chairs are traces of her work in the form of scissors and beads, leather scraps from hides, thread, needles and spools.
For Oshanee, her art is not just a hobby and it is much more than a job. It's not only her way of life, but very much cultural heritage. Her beadwork and tanning are her piece of mind. Her way not only of relaxing and of being productive but of carrying on the ever going conversation between her and her ancestors. It is her way of taking her mind off of sorrow and grief and the muscle memory she must pass down to those in her community willing to learn. It is her source of income, although these are better times and she probably does not need it. But in the past it has been her crafts that got her and her family by when nothing else could.
She fights off arthritis to make each piece but does not complain despite putting in as many as twelve hours a day, seven days a week. She does so in the traditional way that her mother and mother-in-law taught to over 70 years ago.
She transforms leather hides that people from all over bring to her into dresses, vests, gloves, and moccasins. She does the hide-tanning, the beading, the stitching, the cutting and every other step by herself right in her home.
The strong, but not over-powering smell of leather fills every room in her cozy home. Perhaps the only thing that fills the rooms more consistently is the sound of Oshanee’s laughter — a deep, repeating chuckle — and the sight of her smile.
And although her life has been marked by tragedy, conversing with Oshanee you’d never know it. Instead it is her positive outlook and energy that is infectious. Her way of joking that will make you mirror her smile with one of your own.
Tomorrow she will turn 87 years old. Today she is finishing up a stunning white leather hand bag from deer hide.
As she walks from her kitchen to her comfortable looking living room chair, she moves slowly and with a purpose. It's the purpose that sees her hoisting 30 pound dresses above her head with ease and watched her tan animal hides with a grace.
She wears her hair in two long braids that rest over her shoulders. The hair that used to be entirely jet black is now mostly pure white. Her rounded face is largely wrinkle free until she starts cracking jokes. She might joke about how old she’s getting or putting you to work tanning hides. She’ll wait half of a second then get a look of surprise on her face as her eye brows are raised. Her eyes fill with a look of childish wonder and delight and she makes an “O” shape with her mouth. Then a half second later when you get that it’s a joke her mouth opens into a wide smile and her face crinkles up as she punctuates the joke with her laughter.
She goes to work on her hand bag that matches a dress and moccasins that she has made earlier. She is busy cutting narrow fringes all the way around the edges of the bright white leather, long fringes in the middle and short fringes on the sides.
The hand bag already bears Oshanee’s trademark bead design which consists of bright yellows, oranges and reds that bleed into deep blues and purples. They are arranged in sort of a jagged star shape.
Oshanee chose these colors long ago because she says, “the design stands for mountains and the colors are the colors of the flowers in the mountains.”
She works in her large chair in front of her picture window as the sun pours in. Her eyes are still nearly perfect; she only wears glasses when there is too little light. But presently she is happy with the situation. “That sun is really workin’ good,” she says and laughs.
“It’s relaxing for me doing all this work,” she says. “But I sit here for two or three hours and boy, it’s hard to get up.”
And true to form, we watch Oshanee work from her chair for the next two and a half hours straight.
Her hands are strong and wiry, yet graceful as she sews and cuts at a rapid pace. They look as leathery as the as the tanned hide that she expertly manipulates. Occasionally her arthritis will act up in them, but that does not stop her.
She tells us stories while she works, as she’s used to having visitors and used to being the center of attention.
When she speaks in English, she speaks it with a slight accent and rhythm that alludes to the other two languages that she is fluent in: Salish and Kootenai.
Her daughter-in-law Christine Kenmille jokes that Oshanee can sit around playing solitaire — her other past time besides work — and swear in three different languages. This draws a laugh and smile from Oshanee.
Oshanee also enjoys watching TV in between working. Her favorite shows are “Days of our Lives,” “Seinfeld” and “ÎEverybody Loves Raymond.”
“That Raymond!” she says and laughs.
Oshanee has been honored with numerous awards including a lifetime achievement award from the Montana Arts Council and a Governor’s Arts Award. She has also had a building named after her at Salish Kootenai College where she has taught hide tanning since 1980.
For her 85th birthday, Salish Kootenai College president Joe McDonald sent Oshanee and a couple of friends to New York City, as Oshanee had always said she wanted to see the Statue of Liberty. On her refrigerator she has several photos of the trip. There’s one of her looking up at the statue smiling and another of her in a New York Yankees cap with silly Statue of Liberty glasses smiling.
Also on her refrigerator is a picture of former boxing great Muhammad Ali accepting a pair of gloves Oshanee made for him. Ali would later make a donation to Salish Kootenai College in Oshanee’s honor. Former Presidential candidate Al Gore also has some of Oshanee’s work.
Oshaflnee gives away many of her pieces when she's not selling all over the world. She never seems to have to look for business, as customers from all over get her phone number by word of mouth and call her up looking for her unique works.
Orders are always stacked up, keeping her busy. Dresses take several months to make and cost $2,000 each whereas a pair for a pair of moccasins she might charge $50 to $100.
In fact, while she’s sewing the bag, she receives a phone call from a man who she has never met who wants to her to make him a vest.
After the call she hangs up the phone and jokingly exclaims, “money, money, money, money!”
Her work is especially visible at pow wows on the Reservation, where her trademark design is often prominently displayed on the feet, hands, and bodies of her people from young to old.
Oshanee was asked several years ago to lead the women dancers in the tribe at pow wows, which she loves to do.
“It’s a big honor,” Oshanee said. “I’m just happy to be able to see everybody.”
Oshanee waits quietly in the first row of the bleachers at Kicking Horse Job Core for the pow wow to begin. It is still more than an hour before the pow wow will start with Oshanee leading the women in the Grand Entry. Still, Oshanee likes to be there early to take everything in.
Young and old walk up to her all night long to pay their respects. She has a smile for every one of them, particularly the young children who seem especially happy to talk to her.
Oshanee says she uses humor to speak to children.
“I’m so funny and joke around so much,” she says. “That’s why I have so many kids who are my friends. Most of my friends are all young.”
“Some people can’t take jokes. I figure out who does and who doesn’t joke. But if they do, then we go to town.”
As the drums begin to beat, the Grand Entry is about to begin. The men are lined up first. A group of six elder men lead the way holding the American flag and the Salish Kootenai flag. They begin a procession that will take several minutes to wind all the way around the basketball court inside the stadium.
Oshanee emerges leading the line of women and girls. She is wearing a royal blue satin dress that gleams in the lights and runs down to her calves. Her upper body moves slowly and with a purpose, but her feet fly to the beat. Jingling bells on her feet sound as she spring with each step.
Oshanee was born March 16, 1916; the last of 12 children. Times were tough for her family who lived in Arlee, MT as they often did not have much money to get by. Oshanee had excema when she was seven years old, so she couldn’t go to school, she had to go to the hospital.
When she was able to attend boarding school, she only knew how to speak in Salish. It was at boarding school where she was mistakenly given the name that she still sometimes goes by in English: Agnes.
At first Oshanee would not tell us the story, because she said it’s just too sad for her to think about. However, later she decides that she will tell us.
The sisters at her Catholic boarding school did not know by what name to call her and asked one of the other girls who knew her what to call her.
“The sister came to me with the girl and pointed at me and said ‘this one, what is her name?,’” Oshanee said. “The girl said ‘Her? That’s Agnes.’”
“My real name in English translates to Virgina ... I feel bad, but it’s OK. Now, after I tell people the story they call me Oshanee instead.”
Left an orphan at in her early teens, Oshanee says that she has a lot of sad stories, but she does not like to tell many of them.
By age 14 Oshanee married her first husband Edward Stasso, who was Kootenai. From him she quickly learned how to speak the Kootenai language and from his mother she learned the art of tanning hides. But Stasso would die of tuberculosis before the couple had even been married two years.
Oshanee was later wed to her second husband Joe Mathias. But he too died in a landslide while building Kerr Damn in 1937. She has also survived her third husband Camielle Kenmille.
Over the years, the times were often tough for Oshanee. She remembers a trip that she and her second husband took to Washington in 1933.
While attending a pow wow, her family and a few other families that were staying with her lost all of their money gambling.
“We were there for 10 days and everybody went broke,” Oshanee recalls. “Four families in a tent. We didn’t have anything to eat.”
“A white lady came by and said I hear you make gloves and paid me a dollar and a quarter for them.”
Oshanee and her husband then used 75 cents to buy groceries to feed the four families and the remaining 50 cents she gave to her husband to gamble.
“He came back winning $14, so everybody had money,” Oshanee said.
Oshanee and her husband then split the money with the other families, had a feast and were able to all afford the gas to get back home to Montana.
“That’s my story,” Oshanee said. “I like that story because that was really something ... None of ‘ems alive now ... they’re all gone.”
Oshanee said that one of the biggest regrets she has in her life was marrying her third husband.
“He left me with four kids and he never helped me,” she said. “Back then this is what got me by: making moccasins and gloves.”
Oshanee spent that portion of her life living with her children.
They would scrape up enough money by tanning hides and fashioning clothes by night and doing odd jobs in the day.
When I had my kids and needed to comfort them, I would hold them with one hand and sew with the other, she said.
In her life she has seen many of her loved ones pass away before their time.
She remembers losing a grand daughter that she raised in 1979.
“She would be 42 now,” she says.
In 1983, in one week’s time she lost a daughter-in-law, a niece and a grand son.
Oshanee does other things to keep her mind off of sorrow.
“I’m sad every morning, so I smoke a cigarette and drink coffee,” Oshanee says.
She also finds solace in her religions which she says bring joy into her life.
But it is her work and her faith that help her the most.
“(My art) is a good way to keep me busy and happy,” she says, while threading her hand bag. Her hands don’t ever seem to stop moving.
