Li bootee mishiwayitay — The Beauty of It All
Daphne Boyer
On exhibition from April 25 to November 22, 2026
Moss Bag Beading, 2021, 244 x 76 cm — 96 x 30″
Visual artist and plant scientist Daphne Boyer presents Li bootee mishiwayitay — The Beauty of It All, a powerful new exhibition that weaves together Métis peoples’ traditional handwork, digital technologies, plant materials, and porcupine quills.
Artist Tour of the exhibition- Saturday April 25, 2026 1:00-3:00pm
Join Daphne Boyer for a tour of Li bootee mishiwayitay — The Beauty of It All. Included with general museum admission.
The exhibition honours Boyer’s great-grandmother Éléanore, itinerant midwife in Red River; her grandmother Clémence, a Michif-French-English interpreter who concealed her Indigenous ancestry to protect her children; and her mother Anita, self-taught naturalist and family archivist whose storytelling and research gave rise to the next generation’s celebration of Métis ancestry.
New habitat-based artworks explore ecosystems that have sustained Indigenous Peoples and all prairie beings since time immemorial. Included are pieces representing the Lac La Biche and Beaver Hills regions in Alberta, and a 6-metre (20-foot) finger-woven sash symbolizing the vast migratory watershed of the Métis Homeland.
Central to the exhibition are two of Boyer’s signature photo-based techniques—digital beading and digital quillwork—which echo the meticulous handwork used to embellish clothing and gear of the Métis people.