Artists and elders draw holiday shoppers to Grand Portage craft fair
The Grand Portage Christmas Craft Show is a long-running holiday tradition that filled the Grand Portage Lodge & Casino’s banquet room with more than two dozen local and regional vendors on December 6. It was also a fundraiser for the Grand Portage Elders group.
“Grand Portage Elders have been a part of the Christmas Fair since the beginning,” said Agatha Armstrong, vice chair of the Grand Portage Tribal Council.
Formerly known as the Elder Advisory Committee, the group is now known as Gichi-ayayaag Maawanji’idiwag which means ‘Elders Gathering’ in Ojibwemowin, “in keeping with our language revitalization,” said Armstrong. “We raise money to do things for the elders.”
This year included a mix of longtime local participants and new arrivals. “We have a lady who came down from Canada with leather goods, moccasins and so forth,” Armstrong said. “One of our favorite vendors from the Duluth area is Round Lake Traditions, which does a lot of Native American clothing. But for the most part, they’re local people here.”
Thunder Bay-based artist Lori Anishnabie uses natural materials to make jewelry and other craft items. She sells handmade pieces made from birchbark, agates, sea glass and other materials she collects around Lake Superior.
Anishnabie is known for jewelry made from fish leather. “It’s like a week-long process,” she said. “You skin the fish, descale it and then put it in a willow bark solution. You change the solution every day. At the end of the week you take it out and rub it each time. Then it comes out as leather.”
Some of her earrings include “pearls” found in the heads of sheephead fish. “They’re bottom feeders, so the sediment from the lake bottom forms these pearls in their head,” she said. Anishnabie makes them into earrings.
One piece on her table featured a preserved luna moth on a painted rock. “This is the actual body,” she said. “The antennas I hand-painted because they were too fragile to stay intact.”
Anishnabie said she feels a strong connection to Lake Superior even though she grew up near Lake Nipissing in Ontario. “This is my lake,” she said.
Find photos from the event and full interview audio below.
Chuck Olsen December 9, 2025
