How Trump’s trade war is impacting Canadian Indigenous artists
Third-generation Oneida silversmith Ben Sickles traveled over 4,500 miles from Nova Scotia to exhibit his work at this year’s Santa Fe Indian Market. At his booth in the shade of Santa Fe’s Cathedral Park, Sickles had silver earrings, cuffs, and one large medallion necklace for sale.
“[My work] is derived from the trade silver that came from Europe in the 1760s to Hudson Bay,” Sickles said. “Traded for furs and other goods.”
These days, Sickles pays cash for his silver, and it doesn’t come from Europe.
“I have to import it all from New Mexico because Canada doesn’t really have what we need,” he explained.
Since March, Sickles’ orders from that American supplier have been slapped with a 25% tariff. On top of that, global uncertainty has sent the base price of silver surging close to record highs.
“It’s $65 an ounce for me to buy it in a sheet form, plus the import fees,” Sickles said. “It’s almost impossible to stay in business now.”
Sickles picked up a small pair of silver earrings from his booth stamped with the eastern woodlands double curve motif. A year ago, he would have priced them around $80. He’s had to raise that to $100 to account for rising material costs and said his sales at this year’s market were down.
Some of Sickles’ silver earrings. He’s had to raise prices to account for climbing material costs.
Savannah Peters/Marketplace
“Everybody’s hurting, right? You can’t fill a bag of groceries for 100 bucks,” Sickles. “So they look at my jewelry and that’s a bag of groceries.”
The threat to his business is so significant that Sickles is considering investing in a rolling mill and other equipment to manufacture his own sheet silver.
The prestigious Santa Fe Indian Market draws over 1,000 Indigenous artists from more than 200 tribal nations each year, including First Nations, Inuit, and Métis artists from Canada. But this year, Trump administration economic policies complicated things for those traveling from north of the border.
A few booths down from Sickles, Inuit painter Jessica Winters wasn’t making many sales, either. But she connected with some Americans and curators interested in commissioning her paintings, which feature nature and crafters at work in her community on the northern coast of Labrador.
“It’s a lot of pictures of my family working with their hands. I have a huge family of crafters. And just scenes from normal life in an Inuit community,” she said.
Inuit painter Jessica Winters said she wasn’t making many sales at this year’s Santa Fe Indian Market.
Savannah Peters/Marketplace
Winters wasn’t yet sure if her cross-border commission deals would be complicated by tariffs, but said the trade war has disrupted her business in another way.
“I have a printmaker who’s this guy who just works out of his basement, who’s been doing it for 50 years,” Winters said, but he imports his paper into Canada from the United States. “When the tariffs hit, his paper prices skyrocketed, and he ultimately decided to close shop.”
Winters is searching for a new partner to make prints of her paintings so she can continue selling them in her community at an accessible price. Her originals are priced in the thousands. So far, she’s striking out.
“It could be worse. At least I’m still Canadian,” Winters said with a laugh.
These Canadian artists didn’t pay a tariff when bringing their work across the border to the Indian Market, thanks to a carveout for handmade art. That’s according to a consultant they worked with, Wendy Diltz of Atlantic Trade Winds Agency.
“I can tell you a bigger concern was traveling to the U.S.,” Diltz said.
Early this year, Atlantic Trade Winds was working with a dozen Canadian artists who planned to exhibit in Santa Fe. Ultimately, only five made the trip. Diltz advised those artists to delete social media and keep their travel plans under wraps.
“Normally, I would have reached out to museums or buyers, but we didn’t want anything out there prior to their entry,” Diltz said.
That meant her artists missed out on marketing their work in advance, but Diltz said they felt caution was necessary to avoid drawing the attention of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Mixed-media artist Shane Perley-Dutcher is Maliseet from New Brunswick. His tribe’s traditional territory straddles what’s now the U.S.-Canada border. Still, he had concerns.
“Yeah, being the color I am, I had to worry crossing the border,” Perley-Dutcher said. “Everybody that I told I was coming, they were worried for me.”
But Perley-Ductcher said Santa Fe Indian Market was a can’t-miss opportunity to grow his business.
“I mean, this is such a big, big support to the artists that we have to come here,” he said.
And the risk paid off. Perley-Dutcher went back to Canada with two first-place ribbons for his metal woven baskets and some big sales under his belt.