08/16/2023
For the past 30 years Betty has been studying the healing arts. She developed a course in 1984 that she taught at Northern College in Northern Ontario. The course was entitled Assertiveness Training for Woman. It was an overwhelming success and she taught it for three years. In 1991 Betty began her career as a professional artist she concentrated her art in representing native women and spirituality. Her artwork has a special connection to the land and the culture of the James Bay Cree. Both have served as the backdrop against which she has spent over thirty years evolving and developing her own distinct style of Indigenous artwork.
Through her art Betty attempts to represent the strength and beauty of the feminine when it is grounded in the Great Spirit- women as sacred, dignified, and self-defining spiritual beings.
She is most productive in solitude, alone with her tools. Her artwork gives expression to the peace that she experiences when she enters this sacred space of creation. While she has had success throughout North America and beyond, her artwork has been especially well-received by her people, the James Bay Cree. She often tells the story that if her artwork is beautiful, it is only because she has spent her life trying to capture and reflect the beauty of the James Bay Cree people, the beauty of their culture and the beauty of the land. In 1995 she was introduced to traditional ceremonies beginning with the sweat lodge teachings and fasting. She successfully finished four years of sun dancing, became a Reiki Master and a sweat lodge carrier. In 1998 she was introduced to the cedar bath ceremony by her friend and teacher Lillian Pitiwaniquat from Birch Island in Northern Ontario. In 2013 she revisited the cedar bath ceremony with her friend and co-worker Candace Newman they were both given the teachings by Josephine Wood from Treaty Three. That is when they started introducing the ceremony in Southern Manitoba. They began their journey learning, performing and teaching the cedar bath ceremony.
Betty has recently been introducing the cedar bath teachings to the Mushkegowuk Tribal Council where she taught woman from the remote first nations along the coast of James Bay.
Betty considers sharing these teachings with woman as one of her greatest accomplishments.
Its opening up ways that woman can respond to the healing of our people. It is a kind and gentle ceremony and yet so powerful an experience for both the client and the practioner in her workshop she shares the beauty of uniting with the grandmother of the cedar bath who guides her through the ceremony. The healing is the result of this symbiotic relationship the practioner develops with the Cedar Grandmother.
Betty is a Mother, Daughter, Sister and Grandmother. She divides her time between the Province of Ontario and Manitoba where she spends time with her sons, their partners, and of course her beautiful grandchildren.
