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Angela Andrew is an Innu elder from Sheshashui, Labrador. Angela was born in the Labrador interior at Tsiashkushit, on the banks of the Churchill River, in 1946. As a child, she lived the life of her people when they were still living in the country in tents for the months at a time, fishing and following the animals for their fur and food. When they came to Sheshashui and the North West River trading post in the spring and summer, mothers would sew some extra (loose) tea into a traditional teadoll for the girls to play with and take into the country with them in the fall when they returned to their hunting and trapping grounds away from the tidewater. Before returning in the spring, the girls would have to give up their dolls long enough for the reserve of tea to be removed from the doll (replaced by leaves, moss or rags).Angela learned this craft from her mother and grandmother and began sewing her popular little teadolls while she was still a teenager. For nearly 5 decades she has been making her characteristic white, canvas-dressed hunter dolls and the brightly-clad mothers and babies. Filled with aromatic tea and smoke-tanned moccasins and faces, these traditionally-dressed Innu dolls are a prized possession of many doll collectors the world over.

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