4 | NATIONAL INDIGENOUS PEOPLES DAY
JUNE 2026
Ones to watch A look at some up-and-coming Indigenous entrepreneurs business leaders
Another one of the lawn games Nina Waste Events offers.
Rayel Smoke works the Sinko lawn game
BY GEOFF KIRBYSON
Rayel Smoke started the company she couldn’t find when she was planning her wedding two years ago.
The 32-year-old needed help with an Indigenous blanket ritual, a part of the ceremony she hoped would help her feel closer to her Ojibway roots. But when she started researching companies that specialized in that kind of thing, she came up empty. “That was my light bulb moment,” she says. “I was looking online for somebody who could teach us. We didn’t have a lot of guidance. There was nothing.” She turned to her older sister, Tannis Smoke, and said, “maybe we can be those people.” In May 2024, they became those people, launching Niña Was . te Events. Well, almost. The long-term goal is to provide a variety of products and services for weddings, including Indigenous centrepieces, decor, teachings, symbols and ceremonies. But while researching rentable wedding items, they happened upon lawn games. “We thought we could do something bigger with this,” she says. Having grown up crafting together, they started building their own Indigenous-themed lawn games, including chess, checkers and dominoes, as well as some rebranded and rejigged ones — Shuffle instead of Scrabble — to avoid any copyright issues.
(Left to right) Edwin Peters, Rayel Smoke and Tannis Smoke of Nina Waste Events.
Michael B. Monias of Monias Consulting & Projects.
Proud to celebrate working with our partners to create opportunities for Indigenous youth for over twenty-five years. www.wasac.ca
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