Candid Conversation with Candice English from The Farmer’s Daughter

Podcast audio coming soon!

In central Montana, Candice English is the owner of The Farmers Daughter Fibers in Great Falls. She grew up on a ranch near Browning Montana. She says that people would talk down about the community being one of the only integrated towns on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. After starting her business in January of 2019, she noticed that there were no organizations in the area that tackled the growing national discussion of Native women and girls going missing and being the subject of violence. The Missing Murdered Indigenous Women Movement was formed to shed light on a historically overlooked problem all over the United States and Candice uses her business to help fundraise and bring awareness.  

She also told Ivey that dying yarn connected her to her Indigenous roots in a way that was hard to articulate, “I did a lot of beadwork but I kind of sucked at it. When I was dying yarn, I could invoke some of these spiritual things. It was calling a part of me that I hadn’t experienced before.”   

The conversation also turned to issues of blood quantum and how in crafting communities there can be an over idealization of Indigenous people as well. 

“People will say sometimes that their great-grandma was an Indian Princess. No, she was not. That wasn’t even a thing.” English said while alluding to the many white people who take advantage of Indigenous resources.