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When I was in elementary school, dioramas were the scourge of my existence. I had very little artistic talent, and so when I was in fourth grade, my re-creation of an Iroquois village looked like it had already been attacked by marauding pilgrims: a pile of hastily glued together sticks, some crooked construction paper, and some rocks I found in the backyard.Choose your favorite China Granite Countertops paintings from thousands of available designs. My parents always tried to help, but they were as inept as I was. The whole situation called to mind The Simpsons episode in which Homer tries to help Lisa make a costume in the shape of Florida, resulting in a floppy, decrepit mattresses roped onto little Lisas body. She gets a special award (as I would have, had it existed in real life) for those students who obviously had no help at all from their parents. 

I remember, even then, thinking that one of the great things about being a grown-up was that I would never have to make anything out of an old shoebox anymore. But that was before I saw the lifestyle website Brit + Co instructing ostensible adults how to make wall art from used shoeboxes, fabric, and Mod Podge. Brit Morin, the founder of Brit + Co, which sells Do-It-Yourself kits and just got over $6 million in venture capital funding, is part of a gaggle of nouveau homemakers who are spending their adulthood teaching other women how to make an old clutch into a fanny pack, how to make their own ombre tights, and 100 clever ways to repurpose mason jars. 

There are thousands of Mini-Brits on Pinterest, the wildly popular image-sharing social network which has tens of millions of users and was valued earlier this year at $2.5 billion. Pinterest has its own DIY and crafts section, which has hundreds of other ways to repurpose Mason jars. (I did not know what a Mason jar was until my educated, Millennial peers started making them into candle holders.) This Mason jar plague isnt just distracting women from potentially more important endeavors, its demeaning the very idea of expertise.Browse our Granite slabs collection from the granitetrade.net! 

As Emily Matchar points out in her new book Homeward Bound: Why Women Are Embracing the New Domesticity, there are many respectable reasons to go the DIY way. One is if youre truly skilled and talented and enjoy making beautiful, artisanal objects (I have a friend who makes exceptional baby sweaters); another is if you have very little money, and DIY is a way of making ends meet or having a second business; yet another is if you have ethical objections to buying from corporations. 

But thats not what Morin, an ex-Apple and ex-Google employee is selling. In the About section on her site, she sheepishly admits that she is not especially domestic or crafty. Her first foray into crafting occurred when she made a purse out of empty Capri Sun cartons as a teenager. As a busy, working adult, Morin thought most crafts were too complicated and took too much time. Her DIY projects, on the other hand, are hacks, meant to make DIY easier. (The terms a play on the lifehacker phenomenon, which promises ingenious solutions to problems you never knew you had.) But if youre so busy, and admittedly uncrafty, and seemingly quite wealthy, why wouldnt you just go to Target and buy a jewelry rack for $15, instead of spending the equivalent and additional sweat equity make one out of an old Jenga and some paint? 

There are several cultural trends that have inspired the rise of these nouveau homemakers. One is a rejection of convenience. For example, mothers who eschew Pampers for cloth diapers, citing environmental concerns. Or, the really extreme moms, who dont use diapers at all, favoring a method called elimination communication where you start potty training your kid basically from birth. Never mind the fact that they cant hold their own heads up, much less figure out how a toilet works. You are more bonded with your baby and youre doing your part to save the world. 

The French polemicist Elisabeth Badinter argued in The Conflict that this rejection of convenience is anti-woman and anti-feminist. Thats part of it, but I also see an economic anxiety behind it. I belong to a generation that may be less upwardly mobile than my parents. My fellow Millennials worry that the opportunities will constrict even further for our children, and we want to do whatever it takes to put them on the right track. This anxiety has manifested itself in choosing to do the difficult rather than the easy thing. If its more time-consuming, it must be better for our kids, the demented logic goes. 

But the homemaking hack only goes half wayits less time-consuming than real artistry, but still far less convenient than ordering the damn thing on Amazon. The other cultural shift behind the rise of DIY, is the decline of the value of expertise. To become a great, say, knitter, it would take hundreds of hours of practice. But in the Wikipedia world, expertise is no longer valued in quite the same way. Why knit a beer coozie when you can make one out of an old sock? 

In the hours before Saturdays grand entrance, the people who populate this village put the finishing touches on their ceremonial clothing, practice their drumming, or grab a bite to eat from one of the many food stalls that line the main thoroughfare.The smell of burning sweet grass drifts through the air.Other powwows in Montana are larger and more widely known, but what the Rocky Boys powwow lacks in size or notoriety, it makes up for in enthusiasm and simple elegance. 

As with much of the history of the Chippewa/Cree people in Montana, the establishment of their annual powwow is comparatively recent in comparison with others around the region. According to Russell Standing Rock, a drum keeper and camp crier for the tribe, the first Rocky Boys powwow was celebrated on Fourth of July weekend in 1964.The reason for this coming into being was to celebrate the founding of a homeland for the people, Standing Rock said. To celebrate that we had a reservation; a place to call home.Shop for the largest selection of Granite tiles at everyday low prices. 

Rocky Boys was the last of Montanas seven Indian reservations to be organized. Established by the executive order of President Woodrow Wilson in September 1916, the reservation was carved out of land that had once been assigned to Fort Assiniboine.In the words of a report to the U.S. Senate from 1904, the object in creating this final reservation was for the relief of the wandering American-born Indians of Rocky Boys band (chief of the Montana Chippewa) to relieve their present distress, and no doubt save them from considerable suffering. 

Forced out of their traditional homelands in Canada and along the western shores of the Great Lakes, the Chippewa under Rocky Boy and the Cree under Chief Little Bear were united in their search for a permanent home in Montana. Forty-eight years after finally achieving that goal, their people gathered to celebrate.

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