Fashioning identity
From tradition to the runway, trailblazer Delina White celebrates her Native culture through fashion. ‘I’m living my dream’
By Ella Roberts
Delina White stood behind a standing rack of clothing, sifting through her designs for the night as anticipation swirled in the air backstage at Quincy Hall event venue in Northeast Minneapolis. Models slipped into their Victorian gothic-themed designs while makeup artists airbrushed once-bare faces. A white fold-up table was stacked with red Gatorade, Dunkin’ Donuts coffee and trays overflowing with fresh veggies, fruits and sub sandwiches. On the ground, Jada Samuels, Mille Lacs Anishinaabe, assembled a necklace made of sticks that she’d wear walking down the runway later during the show.
“I’ve never modeled before,” Samuels said. “I’m nervous but excited.”
Meanwhile, designers Delina White and her daughter Sage Davis were out by the runway, choreographing each step with their models. White’s voice rings out with gentle guidance, urging her models to connect with the audience with intense, extended eye contact, to exude confidence with heads held high and shoulders back. She says to pause for 8 seconds at the end of the runway for cameras to click. Like a basketball coach in a locker room speech, she reminds them to take their time and enjoy the moment because they’ll only be up there for 2 to 3 minutes. White’s pride radiated as she watched her models effortlessly glide. “She’s amazing. Isn’t she beautiful?”
Each spring, Minneapolis becomes a global hub showcasing Indigenous fashion, anchored by a runway show and an artisan market featuring international designers representing Native nations. White, the designer behind IamAnishinaab, uses this annual event to increase opportunities for all Native creatives, including DJs, musicians, hair stylists and make-up artists. The staging, lighting and audio-visual media professionals. And models.
In 2023, Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flannagan, representing Governor Tim Walz at the Northern Lights fashion event, designated April 25 as Native Nation Fashion Day with an official proclamation from Minnesota. Communities across the U.S. and Canada are encouraged to unite by wearing their contemporary and heirloom pieces.
Tonight’s theme is “messengers, protectors and great mysteries.” White’s ribbon skirts, metallic cape and deer hoove high heels tell the story of the folktales her parents and grandparents told her as a child to keep her safe. Like Bigfoot the healer, the little people in the woods that her grandma used to make clothes and shoes for and the leech creature in Leech Lake that travels into Canada.
White’s journey begins and ends on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation. From learning under her grandmother’s beadwork expertise, making clothes for her Barbie doll when she was 6 years old and quitting her full-time job at 50, her journey has led her here–holding her phone up, recording with a grin on her face, capturing her Native contemporary designs adorning the bodies of Ojibwe women.
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White knew she would be a fashion designer since age 6. She’d dress her Barbie doll with handmade clothing and items like a beaded bandolier bag, glam it up with makeup, and perfectly combed its hair.
Today White says she essentially gets to do the same thing, but now she dresses real people.
“I don’t have a teaching license but through my clothing, I educate people about the Native culture of the Great Lakes Region because that’s who I am and that’s where my knowledge is, White said. “I cannot separate that from who I am. So when I make my clothing it always has the foundation of my Anishinaabe culture.” — Delina White, fashion designer
White’s love for fashion began under the guidance of her maternal grandmother, a skilled beadwork artist. Raised in a traditional reservation two-room, tar paper shack of the early 1970s on Leech Lake, with no running water or electricity, White found solace and inspiration in the vibrant colors and intricate patterns of traditional Native beadwork. It was here, amid the simplicity of reservation life, that she says her creative spirit took flight.
“We lived that lifestyle and it was very beautiful,” White said.
At 15, White attended modeling school. She remembers obsessing over magazines like Cosmopolitan and Vogue. Despite her love for design, her parents simply saw it as a “hobby” and not something to be taken seriously. To please her parents, White earned her bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Management from Bemidji State University. For two decades, she says she dedicated herself to serving her tribe, the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe in various management, director and administration roles all while designing and making clothes for her family and friends on her homelands.
Her last role was as a grant writer for Leech Lake Tribal College.
In 2014, fueled by a grant from the MN State Arts Board, White embarked on a mission to revive and reinterpret traditional Native clothing. Armed with a deep understanding of her Anishinaabe culture and profound respect for her ancestors, she set out to create garments that not only adorned the body but also told a story — a story of resilience, survival and cultural continuity.
“I don’t have a teaching license but through my clothing, I educate people about the Native culture of the Great Lakes Region because that’s who I am and that’s where my knowledge is,” White said. “I cannot separate that from who I am. So when I make my clothing it always has the foundation of my Anishinaabe culture.”
From the sound taffeta fabric makes when the model walks down the runway, to the dark black lipstick that turns into a warm red at the center, White thinks about every tiny detail, considering the message her art communicates to her audience.
“There is no place I would rather be than here. I’m living my dream. This is it for me.” — Delina White, fashion designer
“Every time I wear something of hers, I just feel better,” Flanagan, White Earth Nation, said during the Native Nations Fashion Show April 25, who walked the runway as a model that night.
Having lived in Milwaukee, Texas, Chicago, and Minneapolis after a failed relocation program, White found her true home back on the Leech Lake Reservation when she was 27 and hasn’t left since. Today she resides in her paternal grandmother’s house by Agency Bay.
“I was proud of her to see her live out her dreams and I thought ‘I wanna do it too.’” — Sage Davis, doctoral candidate at the University of Minnesota
“There is no place I would rather be than here. I’m living my dream,” White said. “This is it for me.”
After overcoming substantial debt, White now lives debt-free without an income, sustaining herself by embracing a simpler life, cutting wood for warmth and prioritizing her health to remain independent.
“It was very scary jumping the job track from having a steady income and a check coming in every week to do something that I was passionate about,” White said.
Davis, one of White’s seven kids, remembers what it was like to watch her mom pursue a full-time career in design.
“I was proud of her to see her live out her dreams,” Davis said. “And I thought ‘I wanna do it too.’”
Learning from her mom, Davis began beadworking at 6 years old. As a 10-year-old, Davis started tagging along with her mom to markets, selling and making beadwork with White. Here is where she started to understand the business side of things. Throughout her childhood, White instilled humbleness and classiness into Davis, challenging the status quo that young Davis thought she wanted.
Growing up in the 90s Davis remembers wanting to wear what everyone else was wearing, but White leaned more toward dressing her in the timeless pieces. Davis wanted to look glamorous, but her mom knew that wasn’t really her style.
Davis even struggled with her name growing up, wishing she had a name more like Victoria. But now, she can appreciate it.
“My mom already knew who I was. I think she’s really awesome for that. For understanding who I am before I even know who I am,” Davis said.
Davis remembers going to Claire’s with her mom and gawking over necklaces with the words “hot” “sexy” and “cute” on the chains. She wanted one. But White looked at her and said, “Why would you get that necklace when you can just be that?”
“So many things of what I know was learned as a child and that stems from my mom and how I was raised.”
In 2015, the two put on five fashion shows together, along with Davis’ sister Lavendar Hunt.
Davis followed in her mother’s footsteps. After earning a degree in communications, Media, and Rhetoric and working as an admissions counselor at Bemidji State University for three years, Davis decided to quit her job and pursue a career where her interests in linguistics, education and fashion collided.
Now she is a doctoral candidate at the University of Minnesota studying apparel where she is working on her dissertation surrounding the Ojibwe language and fashion and what the contemporary idea of fashion means in the native culture.
After graduating in May, Davis plans to move back home with her 13-year-old son in June.
While initially daunted by leaving their steady jobs, the two pursued their passions, advocating for Native entrepreneurship and urging support for individual businesses. White encourages others to dream big despite the lack of support on the reservation, aiming to foster social capitalism and empower her community.
As an advocate for Native entrepreneurship, White says she is dedicated to creating opportunities for her fellow artisans and designers. Her fashion shows serve as platforms for emerging talent, fostering collaboration, networking and economic empowerment within Native communities.
“There’s a lot of us that don’t realize we are, say fashion designers, but we’re at home and we’re sewing our dance outfits,” White said. “You can’t go to Target or Nordstrom’s or Kmart and get yourself a jingle dress or get yourself a traditional women’s dress, whatever it may be. Somebody has to make it.”
This is where White steps in. To encourage others to get their work on the runway to be seen because “nobody can do it like you” she tells them.
White is excited to see more Native designers coming out. What’s really important, she says, about Native designers is that you’re getting something authentic. Something that is “culturally appropriate, not appropriated,” she said.
At nearly 60 years old, Delina shows no signs of slowing down. Her dream is to continue expanding her fashion empire, while also nurturing the next generation of native designers.
Ella Roberts, 22, graduates from Bethel University in May with degrees in journalism, organizational and relational communication. A writer, editor and reporter, her passion for writing has led her to report for Bethel’s student news, the Clarion, on a tropical farm in Florida and stories in Guatemala.
This story was part of a partnership between Bethel University’s journalism program and ICT editors Kevin Abourezk, Dianna Hunt and Dalton Walker.
Featured Artisan Marketplace vendors
- Rebecca Mousseau, Dakota Dress Maker
- Creative Native Beading
- Rabbit, Bird & Bear Fine Arts & Gifts
- C. Ruby Designs
- Beads Bling & Buckskin
- Bineshi-ikwewag
- Indigenous First Arts & Gifts
- Lakota Made
- IamAnishinaabe
On behalf of her traditional woodland style beadwork, White is a recipient of:
- First People’s Fund, Artist in Business Leadership
- 2019 Minnesota’s Star Tribune’s One of Six Artists of the Year
- 2019 5-Wings Arts Council Master Artist Award
- 2019 Region 2 Arts Council, Anishinaabe Arts Initiative Fellow
- 2017 Native Arts & Cultures Foundation Mentor Fellow
- 2015 MN State Arts Board, Traditional and Folk Art Award
- 2010 Bush Foundation Fellow
