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SPRING 2021 17 CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE >> "We started the Storyboot Project about 10 years ago and the impetus for it was that we'd done a lot with mukluks — I certainly didn't invent them — and we had a debt to repay there." Fewer people were participating in that part of the culture and it wasn't thriving. The company wanted to be part of the solution. "We provide an avenue for these artists to get their product onto a global stage and, just as importantly, make sure that they are compensated fairly for these one-of-a-kind works of art," he says. "From our perspective, we're almost a social impact that happens to have a business attached rather than the other way around, because they're so intertwined." Currently, the company works with about 50 artists. McCormick says lives have been changed through the Storyboot Project. "It's pretty lucrative for some of them; these mukluks are works of art, a part of their culture they've put hundreds of hours into making and selling across the world, and I'm very proud they're priced accordingly to bring economic benefits to them, and that just shows a lot of respect and appreciation for the culture and for the artist," he says. That impact is something he doesn't take for granted. "I think that making a change for individual lives creates the bigger change that we're looking for," he says. "It's a really positive setting and it's really based on sharing their pride, their ingenuity and their skill in celebration with Indigenous and non-Indigenous people alike — and I think there's some reconciliation in there." He feels that the Storyboot Project and Storyboot School can contribute in small but meaningful ways to the enormous tasks of truth and reconciliation and to the hard work being done by other organizations. "You start with the truth part. We're still living with the real impacts of colonialization and we all have to recognize that and we all have to acknowledge that," he says. "Then the reconciliation part is, 'Let's listen to our Indigenous people; let's share from their perspective.' It changes the dynamic a lot, and I think that part of reconciliation is kind of a two-way share — not just coming from one side as it has traditionally." Storyboot School has been offered across the country. Photos courtesy of Manitobah Mukluks Storyboot School is a charitable foundation set up primarily to teach mukluk-making to Indigenous youth across the country. The Storyboot Project is the platform that enables Indigenous artists to sell mukluks through Manitobah Mukluks' world-wide distribution channels — and to receive all the revenue from those sales.

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