10/06/2026
**The Story Behind the Kokum Scarf 🌻💙💛**
There is a deeper story behind the floral print we so often see in Indigenous regalia.
The kokum scarf is part of a history of relationship between Indigenous peoples and Ukrainian settlers who arrived in what is now Canada in the late 1800s. Ukrainian women brought brightly coloured floral scarves, traditionally known as *khustkas*, *hustkas*, or *babushkas*, with them from their homelands. Through relationships between Ukrainian and Indigenous communities, these scarves were exchanged, traded, gifted, and eventually became woven into Indigenous life and dress.
In many Indigenous communities, particularly among Cree peoples, they became known as **kokum scarves** — *kokum* meaning grandmother. Over generations, the scarf took on a meaning of its own. It became connected to our kokums, our aunties, our mothers, our grandmothers, and the women who came before us. It became something we carried with us. Today, kokum scarves can be seen incorporated into regalia, ribbon skirts, dance clothing, and everyday wear.
And that history is exactly why the kokum print has come to hold such a powerful place in Indigenous solidarity with Ukraine.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Indigenous people across Turtle Island began wearing their kokum scarves and incorporating the print into their regalia as a visible act of support for Ukrainian people. It was not simply about wearing a pretty floral pattern. It was about remembering a relationship that existed between our peoples — a relationship built through kindness, exchange, friendship, and helping one another survive in a new land.
For many of us, there is also something deeply familiar in seeing another people fighting to protect their homeland, their families, their language, their culture, and their identity.
Indigenous peoples understand what it means to have our cultures threatened, our languages suppressed, our children taken, and our relationship to our homelands challenged. We know what it means to fight to keep our identity alive.
So when we wear the kokum print in our regalia, we can be carrying **two stories at once**.
We carry the story of our own grandmothers and ancestors.
And we carry a reminder of the relationship between Indigenous and Ukrainian peoples.
For me, wearing the kokum print is an act of **remembrance, relationship, and solidarity**.
It is a way of saying:
**We remember where this relationship came from.
We honour the women who carried these traditions before us.
We stand with the people of Ukraine.
And we will continue to stand beside those fighting to protect their home, their culture, and their people.**
The flowers may have travelled across an ocean, but through relationship they became part of the story here.
And now, when we place that same print into our regalia, we carry that story forward. 🌻💙💛
**Miigwetch.**
