Joni Olsen is the granddaughter of the late Laura Olsen a skilled Coast Salish knitter and innovator. Joni was born and raised in the Tsartlip First Nation where she lives with her husband and three children. Even though Joni has completed a university level education and commits her time to intergovernmental relationship building, recognition of W̱SÁNEĆ rights and title and systematic change, she has a personal goal to re-open her home based business Salish Fusion Knitwear in 2022. Joni creates modernized knitwear and home decor for her business using light weight, Canadian made sheep’s wool. Joni also support other knitters by selling wool and buying and selling their handmade goods. Innovating new products while sticking to her roots, Joni’s products are a fusion of the old and the new.

Joni Olsen Participated in the Visiting Artist Program in 2012

Inspired Tunic (Exhibition Installation Image to Come)

I wish I was a weaver. My ancestors were weavers but historical events have made me a knitter.

Touring the Field Museum in Chicago in the fall of 2013 I felt a little like Ace Ventura did in the film When Nature Calls when Ace walks into ’the room of death’. The purpose of my visit to the museum was to research and learn from the woven works of Salish ancestors that were collected by anthropologist Franz Boas for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. I was unable to push aside the strong feelings that my people and our belongings, were stolen and displayed for someone else’s pleasure. To this day I am frustrated and sad. This feeling, this reality of loss, does not only pertain to the objects in museums, but to the teachings that allowed for their creation, too.

I want to know how to weave like my ancestors, where to harvest, and how to process the materials. I want to be able to make that tunic I saw in the museum!

So here it is, created the only way that I know how.