The Road to Your Name Podcast

Road to Your Name
Season 8, Episode 8
Guest:  Jesse Brant of Sapling & Flint — From Firefighter to Goldsmith/Slilversmith
This episode was recorded in December 2025

EPISODE DESCRIPTION

In this episode, Lisa visits with Jesse Brant, co-owner of Sapling & Flint, a jewelry business rooted in Six Nations of the Grand River. Jesse — known professionally as Yonenyà:kenht, meaning "transparent stone," after the Herkimer diamonds that grow in the Mohawk Valley — is a trained goldsmith who specializes in Herkimer diamond and wampum jewelry, working alongside her twin sister and business partner Dakota Brant.

Jesse's path here wasn't a straight line. She wasn't an art student in high school. She competed at Miss Indian World as a teenager. She spent seventeen years as a firefighter, including five as a platoon captain, all while building Sapling & Flint on the side until the business outgrew the side. What started as a couple of sisters selling their work at powwow tables in 2015 has become a jewelry manufacturer with a storefront in Ohswé:ken's Iroquois Village Plaza and customers ordering from around the world.

This conversation covers the craft itself — wampum cutting, gold and sterling silver work, lab-grown diamonds and the ethics of sourcing — as well as Jesse's hopes for building a silversmithing community at Six Nations, and a goal she's not shy about naming out loud: a future collaboration with a major luxury house.


WHAT WE TALK ABOUT

- How Jesse, a self-described non-artist who took science and math in high school, ended up enrolling in the jewelry arts and design program at George Brown College — at her late mother Terry Lynn Brant's suggestion
- Competing in Miss Indian World in Albuquerque as a teenager, representing Six Nations, and how the experience pushed her toward beadwork for the first time
- Getting into George Brown's competitive program with only a handful of self-made beadwork pieces to show in her interview
- Studying Kanien'kéha at Onkwawenna Kentyohkwa for two years after finishing her jewelry diploma
- Her parallel career as a Six Nations firefighter for seventeen years, including five years as a platoon captain
- How the pandemic — and the arrival of her two children — pushed Sapling & Flint from a side project into a full-time business, as online orders kept coming even while the physical world shut down
- Learning lapidary and wampum-cutting skills informally, including time spent in mentor Audrey Maracle's basement workshop before Jesse could afford her own equipment
- The 2017 opening of the Sapling & Flint storefront in the Iroquois Village Plaza in Ohswé:ken, a space that once housed Shawana Jewelry
- Why the sisters named the business Sapling and Flint, drawing on the older Mohawk creation story names for the Creator and his twin brother — a fitting echo, since Jesse and Dakota are twins themselves
- The division of labor that makes the partnership work: Jesse focused on making, Dakota on the business and marketing side, including targeted promotions timed to lacrosse games for the Creator's Game collection
- A tour through Sapling & Flint's collections: the Creator's Game (lacrosse sticks), Haudenosaunee Traditions (Five Nations belt designs), Four-Legged Leaders (deer, moose, and caribou antler pendants), Trade Silver, and the birch bark–inspired Karhá:kon collection
- Working primarily in sterling silver and in 10K and 18K gold for wedding rings, with custom engagement ring designs developed in collaboration with a CAD designer based in Los Angeles
- Jesse's reasoning for choosing Canadian, green-energy lab-grown diamonds over mined stones, and her frank take on why "conflict-free" natural diamond marketing doesn't hold up — including the history of First Nations communities displaced by diamond mining companies
- Teaching the next generation: summer students, a nephew currently learning the trade, and Jesse's hope to formalize community workshops into something like a silversmithing society or gathering — one she'd like to see include other Iroquoian nations' silversmiths as well
- Naming Six Nations silversmithing legends and mentors, including Floating Canoe, Anthony Green, Larry McKenzie, and Audrey Maracle
- How the sisters incorporate Kanien'kéha words directly into their collection names and product descriptions as a mark of authenticity
- Jesse's biggest goal for the brand: a collaboration with a major international luxury house like Tiffany's
- Where to find Sapling & Flint's work and Jesse's own behind-the-scenes content


GUEST

Jesse Brant (Yonenyà:kenht) — Mohawk Nation, Turtle Clan, Six Nations of the Grand River. Co-owner of Sapling & Flint. Trained goldsmith with a Diploma in Jewellery Methodology from George Brown College. Specializes in Herkimer diamond and wampum jewelry, learned through both formal training and mentorship from local wampum cutters and silversmiths. Former Six Nations firefighter and platoon captain (17 years). Member of the Canadian Jewellers Association. Co-recipient, with her twin sister Dakota Brant, of the 2022 Young Aboriginal Entrepreneur Award.


RESOURCES MENTIONED

- Sapling & Flint — saplingandflint.ca
- Sapling & Flint storefront — Iroquois Village Plaza, Chiefswood Road, Ohswé:ken
- Instagram: @saplingandflint (business) and Jesse Brant Jeweller, "Behind the Benchpin" (Jesse's personal content)
- TikTok and Facebook: @saplingandflint
- George Brown College — Jewellery Arts and Design program, Toronto
- Onkwawenna Kentyohkwa — Mohawk language immersion program
- Canadian Jewellers Association
- Aboriginal Legal Services — aboriginallegal.ca
- Support the show: click Donate at the top of the ALS homepage
- Facebook: Road to Your Name


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Road to Your Name is produced by Aboriginal Legal Services and hosted by Lisa VanEvery, Mohawk Nation, Wolf Clan. Recorded on Haudenosaunee territory with technical assistance from True Seed Media. Nia:wen for listening.