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Vivian was raised in the Nose Creek settlement north of Grande Cache in NW Alberta.  She lived a traditional lifestyle of hunting and trapping with her family.  She is of Cree and Iroquois descent and is a member of the Aseniwuche Winewak Nation, a unique Indigenous community set in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains near Grande Cache, Alberta.  Her ancestors were part of the people forcibly moved from the Jasper area when it was turned into a National Park in the early 1900s.

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Sometimes described as a master bead artist, Vivian comes from a long line of bead artists; her grandma Adelaide was a skilled crafter as was her mom Emily. She has been sewing for as long as she can remember.  Her mother, a skilled bead artist taught her all about beadwork.  Vivian keeps the vintage beading patterns that were saved on birchbark!  At a very early age, maybe 4 or 5 years old, she began sewing and beading on the bits of hide her mother had from her work.  Her mom, Emily, had her bead straight lines of beadwork first, then curves, and when she got those right, she moved on to moccasin vamps.  Because she was her mother’s shadow, she learned how to tan hides as well.  The natural method of brain-tanning hides involved the fleshing, scraping, tanning process and smoking of the hides.

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Her father Roland taught her hunting, fishing and trapping.  She began by hunting grouse and rabbits and trapping squirrels, martens and weasels.  He taught her how to track, hunt and skin big game animals, such as moose and elk, too.  She tagged along when he hunted as often as possible.  She says she “helped” with the skinning and butchering when he got a successful hunt.  She thinks she might have been mostly in the way, but she learned. 

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Vivian continues to live a traditional lifestyle practicing everything she was taught by her parents.