faith fits With Action for
Linda Lundström has found a Christian faith that includes peacemaking and seeking to bless First nations people. By Lisa Hall-Wilson
Twenty years ago Linda Lund- ström was near the peak of her fame as a Canadian fashion de- signer. Her Inuit-inspired winter coat La Parka was the top style
choice for urban and suburban women.
Over three decades she produced more
than a hundred fashion collections and
won more than 30
awards. More recently, as she worked to
counter the wrongs
against aboriginal
people she witnessed
in her youth, a friend
helped her recognize
in Jesus Christ the eternal source of forgiveness and healing.
Lundström was born in 1952 in Red
Lake, Ont., about seven hours northwest
of Thunder Bay. She grew up in nearby
Cochenour, a mostly immigrant community of 300 people attached to a nearby gold
mine. Her parents were Icelandic and
Swedish.
As a young girl she was fascinated by
the First Nations women who attended
church with their children, including
some who lived on traplines during the
week. These mothers saw nothing wrong
with discreetly nursing their babies during
the service.
At age 12 Lundström overheard her
mother and the Women’s Auxiliary at the
church discussing how to help the “
Indian” women fit in better – by teaching them
how to make little rolled sandwiches and
coconut balls.
“I’m at the back,” she recalls, “and I
stand up and say, ‘Don’t you think it would
be a good idea to ask them what they
could teach us?’” Her mother smiled, but
others gave her cold glares. The meeting
co-ordinator gave her a dismissive reply.
It’s a memory that helps Lundström
explain why she walked away from her
faith, disillusioned. Around the same age
she learned the houses on the outskirts of
town where some Native families lived,
although they looked like her own on the
outside, in fact lacked plumbing, electri-
city and even drywall.
She left home to build a career in fashion. Linda Lundström Inc. ( www.linda-
lundstromworks.com) employed more
than a hundred people, achieved over $13
million in sales, and operated three retail
stores in the Toronto area.
For a decade she repressed the bad
feelings she had from growing up in Red
Lake, but they came flooding back one day
as she nursed her own child and remembered the Native women nursing theirs in
church.
She decided to make reparations,
starting with a contest for Native artists
to submit artwork she would use on her
La Parka coats. She chose a few of the
designs, some arriving in ballpoint pen
on scrap paper, and had them computerized for embroidery purposes. One of the
winners was the now well-known artist
Abe Kakepetum, whom she’d first met at
school in Red Lake.
“When we first put Native art on La
Parka, it didn’t sell,” Lundström shrugs.
“I didn’t care.” She continued to solicit designs from Native artists despite the lack
of sales. Five years later La Parkas with
Native art were selling equally with the
undecorated ones.
“Every time I used a beautiful piece of
Native art on my La Parka with a beautiful
hang tag telling their story, the guilt and
shame that had happened one drop at a
time was dealt with one drop at a time,”
Lundström says.
Next she lobbied the school in Red
Lake to offer Native Studies. She facilitated
Native language education, provided further economic opportunities, and set up
the Kiishik Fund with her own money to
see these efforts were financed.
In the early 1990s she replaced the faux
fur in her designs with beaver fur, because
she’d learned Native trappers were struggling because of falling fur prices. It was
