The Resource April 2014 Volume 1 Issue 004 | Page 10

W

ith the high unemployment rate on the
Navajo Nation, a person can be discouraged to find
their dream job on the Navajo
Nation. Moreover, owning a
small business and finding the
right clientele, where the poverty rate is high on the Navajo
reservation, can be even more
daunting; however, for Jolene
Bill, from St. Michaels, Arizona,
she is doing just that: owning
a small business, working towards a dream and reaching
clientele. Jolene had found a
unique way through social media to run her small beading
business along with managing
being a single mother, attending nursing school at University
of New Mexico (UNM)-Gallup
campus, and participating in
powwows with her family.

Jolene is of the Red
House People Clan and born
for the Towering House Clan.
Her maternal grandfather’s clan
is Bitter Water, and her paternal
grandfather’s clan is Water’s
Edge. For as long as Jolene can
remember she has participated
in powwows. Jolene’s parents,
Raymond and Josephine Bill,
started her in the tiny tots division when she was about four
years old. The Bill family credits their relatives in Rocky Boy,
Montana for initiating them in
the powwow circle. From those

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April Volume 1 Issue 004

tiny tot dances, Jolene has
graduated to dancing the women’s category and having her
children to dance in powwows
too.

Through powwows and
dancing, Jolene also has many
fond memories of her parents
fabricating her and her siblings’

memory she has is of her father, watching him make Jingle
dress embellishments from tin
“Skoal” cans. Back in the day, it
wasn’t uncommon for the lids to
be made of quality metal tin that
provided the right “jingle” for the
jingle dress. Today, these jingle
dress embellishments can be

powwow outfits. She claims the
process of making an outfit can
take a collaboration of several
family members who are talented in different areas such as
sewing, beading and/or making
specialized items like feather
head-dresses. One particular

easily bought in stores without the chew tobacco stamp
and without the fuss of hunting
down cans.

Since each powwow
outfit is usually more than sewing, Jolene also learned from
her parents how to bead. By

the time she was 13, she was
repairing her own powwow outfit between competitions. The
learning and love of beading
bloomed into her passion of
selling beaded jewelry. Today,
Jolene has continued this skill
and her enthusiasm was clearly evident when The RESource
interviewed her. Her purse was
full of customized beaded jewelry she had recently made and
many bags of different types of
beads in various shapes, sizes
and colors. Each piece was a
beautiful work of art that took
great thought, planning and
time.

As the years passed
and when Jolene became a
mother, she was unable to participate in powwows on a regular basis, but she dedicated a
lot of her time to her children.
Now they too, have continued
the family tradition of partaking
in powwows. She has beaded
outfits for her own children like
her son’s headband, moccasins, and breast plate, and her
daughter’s choker, headband,
and hair ties.

Now that her children
are no longer in diapers, Jolene
has channeled her passion
for higher learning and has
returned to school to pursue
her degree in Nursing from
UNM-Gallup. This pursuit is
not for the faint as nursing pro-