Fortney: Tsuu T'ina beauty leads by example | video
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It’s a question that would rattle even the most thick-skinned among us. When people pose it to Cree Big Plume, though, she handles it with grace and good humour.
“They’ll stare and ask me, ‘What are you?’ ” says the 24-year-old with a serene smile. “I usually answer first by saying, ‘I’m a human being, nice to meet you.’ ”
One can excuse the occasional questioner, especially when he or she is a just a child. Big Plume, after all, is a vision to behold. Her diminutive stature — she stands at barely five feet — may initially make her hard to single out in a crowd. Once spotted, though, one can’t help but be taken aback by her almost ethereal beauty.
“I have green eyes and light skin,” says the proud member of Tsuu T’ina Nation, which is adjacent to Calgary’s southwest limits. “So I look a bit different.”
Still, it is a world of which she is very much a part, and one she is hoping to inspire as she heads in May to the preliminaries of Miss Universe Canada, the beauty pageant that determines which young Canadian woman will represent her country at the annual Miss Universe pageant.
“I want to let the younger generation know that if you just be yourself, it’ll take you a long way,” she says in a recent interview at the Tsuu T’ina Nation band office, where she works as a treaty researcher in its land claims department. “I want my community to know that they can be more.”
While some might brush off her cheerful words as obligatory beauty pageant banter, Big Plume has long proven that she is much more than, well, another pretty face. As a member of Tsuu T’ina Nation, she has been involved in numerous initiatives such as its youth committee — work that in 2008 won her a citizenship award on the nearly 300-square-kilometre reserve.
“My parents, my whole family, made me who I am,” says the daughter of Josephine and James Big Plume, the latter a political force both on the reserve and across the country. Her grandfather and former Tsuu T’ina chief Gordon Crowchild, who died earlier this month, was remembered at his memorial as an esteemed leader who excelled at everything from rodeo competition to increasing opportunities for aboriginal youth. “They all taught us kids the importance of hard work and giving back to the community.”
Despite her outward beauty, Big Plume didn’t grow up planning to enter the pageant world. “Princess Diana was my role model,” she says with a smile, “but I was a tomboy, riding horses.”
At the urging of her older sister Vanessa Big Plume, at age 16 she signed up for a modelling course at Calgary’s famed Patti Falconer International Model and Talent Agency. “I thought it would be good for her confidence,” says her sister, the Tsuu T’ina Nation executive director of legislative procedures.
She also felt it would give Cree an opportunity to hone her leadership skills in her community. “Sometimes our youth are on an island,” says Vanessa. “Sometimes it’s good to protect that island, but they also need to be part of the world.”
After finding out in December that she’d made the Miss Universe Canada preliminary stage, Big Plume has been busy fundraising on the reserve to help offset the costs of the 10-day May visit to Toronto, as well as practising her ladies’ fancy shawl, a contemporary take on the Native American dance tradition. “My cousin Teddy Manywounds is designing my evening gown and my auntie Rhonda Esler will be sewing it,” she says of the combined efforts to get her pageant-ready.
She has many steps ahead in the pageant process, including her goal of making the cut at another event, the Miss Canada Globe, in 2016.
Big Plume, though, is already looking well beyond that experience. She’s applying to Mount Royal University this fall, with a dream to run her own veterinary clinic. “I’d also like to open a chain of aboriginal animal shelters,” she says. “Along with human poverty, there is a lot of animal poverty.”
So while she may not have heard the last “what are you?” question, it’s clear that Cree Big Plume has no doubts about who she is and where she’s going. “I want to help my community grow and also be a part of the Calgary community,” she says. “There’s so much I hope to do.”
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