Kokum scarf history and meaning: the Cree name, the Ukrainian хустка, and the evidence behind each story

Published 28 September 2026 · BABA & KOKUM

What is a kokum scarf? The short answer

A kokum scarf is a thin, square printed cloth with bright flowers on a coloured ground, widely worn today by Indigenous people as regalia, as a shawl, wrapped around the wrist and tied over the hair. Ukrainians know the same kind of factory-printed kerchief as a хустка (khustka); Ukrainian Canadians may also call it hustyna, hutska, khutska, babushka scarf or baba scarf. The English name carries a Plains Cree word inside it: kôhkom, "your grandmother". The history of the kokum scarf between these two communities is told in families on both sides, and the only peer-reviewed study we found records that exchange as stories handed down. (Avery Shtykalo & Gabrielle Legault, Canadian Journal of Indigenous Studies 1(1), 2025, 104; itwêwina, Plains Cree Dictionary, University of Alberta.)

As for the meaning of the kokum scarf, the same study gives the most accurate one-line answer: "The meaning of each scarf varies depending on the wearer—whether Ukrainian, Indigenous, both, or neither." (Shtykalo & Legault, 2025, 104.) Our longer page, The Kokum Scarf: what is documented, walks through the evidence quote by quote. This guide answers the questions people type into search, and shows how to sort any scarf story into three piles.

What is documented about the kokum scarf

Documented means a dated source with a name on it. Seven facts about the scarf pass that test:

1. The flowers were on the Prairies first. Naturalistic floral design is documented in Métis work from Red River by the 1830s, some six decades before Ukrainian settlement began; Dakota and Cree people called the Métis "the flower beadwork people". (Patrick Young, "Métis Beadwork, Quillwork and Embroidery", Gabriel Dumont Institute.)
2. The printed kerchief is a factory product of the nineteenth century. The Ternopil Regional Museum of Local History holds a factory-made printed тернова kerchief dated to about 1860. A 1999 paper from the Kharkiv Historical Museum dates kerchiefs of manufactured silk, wool and cotton cloth to the 1870s, and says that by the early twentieth century the factory kerchief was becoming the main headdress of girls and women. (Pro Te, 7 December 2023; V. V. Bulychova, Kharkiv Historical Museum, 1999.)
3. Ukrainian settlement began in 1891. Ivan Pylypiw and Wasyl Eleniak landed at Montreal on 7 September 1891, and families from Nebyliv and Perehinsk followed in 1892. (Paul Yuzyk, MHS Transactions, 1951–52.) See the 1891 chapter.
4. 2018: the #KokumScarfCampaign. Tala Tootoosis created it and asked women to send in pictures of themselves in ribbon skirts and kokum scarves. Her own account of the scarf: "My grandmother wore them they're from the trap lines. It was just something they wore to keep their hair back while they chopped wood or skinned an animal. I always seen it as a symbol of strength." (Ntawnis Piapot, CBC News Saskatoon, 1 December 2018.)
5. 2022: the solidarity wave. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Indigenous people across Canada and the United States posted portraits in kokum scarves. Jayroy Makokis, of Saddle Lake Cree Nation: "It gives us pride. We feel very powerful with our scarves on our head." (NBC News, 1 March 2022; Kalle Benallie, ICT, 9 March 2022.)
6. 2025: a peer-reviewed article. Its authors report "a distinct lack of formal research in this area" and recognize "multiple histories, each shaped by perspectives and relationships." (Shtykalo & Legault, 2025, 105 and 108.)
7. 2026: a silk scarf made in Ukraine. CBC reported in April 2026 that Brianna LaPlante, an artist from Fishing Lake First Nations in Saskatchewan, and Andrian Makhnachov, a Ukrainian living in Regina, designed a kokum scarf together, made of 100 per cent silk at a factory in Ukraine. Makhnachov told CBC it sold out within hours and that 35 per cent of the proceeds went to support Ukraine. (Louise BigEagle, CBC News, 29 April 2026.)

What is remembered in families

Remembered means a story told by a named person about her own family or community, with no date or document behind it. The trading and gifting stories belong in this group. The photographer Sandra Semchuk, a Ukrainian-Canadian from Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan, recalled Cree and Ukrainian women in her community trading scarves for moccasins, or giving a scarf in thanks for knowledge shared; she told this to researchers in the summer of 2023, and the record gives no year for the trading. (Shtykalo & Legault, 2025, 108.)

Patty Krawec, an Anishinaabe and Ukrainian writer, puts the Indigenous side of that memory plainly: "Many of us don't even know how they came to us, we just know that they did." And: "Long before we wore them in solidarity with Ukraine, we wore them in solidarity with our grandmothers and with each other." (Rampant Magazine, 14 March 2022.)

Leah Hrycun, a Ukrainian settler scholar who was then a doctoral student in Native Studies at the University of Alberta, warns against reading too much into them: "These are lovely stories, but they're really a very romanticized, very ephemeral view of the relationships between Indigenous peoples and Ukrainian settlers." (The Breach, 9 March 2022.) On the same prairie, an 1881 amendment to the Indian Act made First Nations farmers on reserves need a permit to sell their grain; our chapter Neighbours, and the law between them sets it out.

What is still unknown

Unknown means the question is real and the answer is unpublished. The biggest one is the route: across the academic, museum, Indigenous-press and national-media sources we read, none names the mill, importer, wholesaler, catalogue or store that brought the scarves worn on the Prairies. A scarf purchase found in a homestead-era general-store daybook would be the first documentary evidence of it.

Documented, remembered, unknown: the table

The Ukrainian хустка: names and patterns

The Ukrainian name for the scarf is хустка (khustka); хустина is a common variant and хусточка the diminutive. Regions had their own words for a bought wool kerchief: тернова and шалянова in the western oblasts, хустя and шмата in the Lemko region, турпан in Podillia. (Vinnytsia Regional Universal Scientific Library, "Ой хустина, хусточка!".)

• Тернова. The name comes from the French manufacturer Guillaume Louis Ternaux, who introduced a fine wool cloth made with goat down. In the late nineteenth century, in the western Ukrainian lands under Austria-Hungary, a kerchief cost as much as a villager earned in twenty working days. (Halyna Zavisha, Ternopil Regional Museum of Local History, in Pro Te, 7 December 2023.)
• The pattern. Cashmere shawls in the Kharkiv museum are black, burgundy, red, green or cream, with dense plant ornament around the edge that thins toward the centre. The Ivan Honchar Museum in Kyiv holds a factory wool kerchief with a floral block print from Pokuttia, first half of the twentieth century, inventory КН-21274. (Bulychova, 1999; Ivan Honchar Museum.)
• How it was tied. A married woman hid her hair as fully as she could, and a girl showed hers; after the first years of the twentieth century, women and girls alike mostly tied the kerchief under the chin or at the back of the head. (Oksana Kosmina, Локальна історія, 11 August 2022.)
• The motifs' names. In folk tradition, embroidery motifs had plain everyday names such as ружі, павучки, вишеньки (roses, little spiders, cherries), and the women who embroidered shirts mostly saw them as decoration, says ethnologist Oksana Kosmina. Ethnologist Volodymyr Shchybria adds that by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, ethnographers "recorded no knowledge or interpretations about the meaning of the symbols." (Kosmina, interview, Київщина 24/7; Shchybria, RBC-Ukraine, 15 May 2025.) More in Print and embroidery: two different objects.

So a kokum scarf pattern is easy to recognize: floral designs on a bright-coloured ground, printed on thin cloth, and on many older shawls the flowers crowd the border and thin toward the middle. Any meaning beyond that belongs to the person wearing it.

How people wear the kokum scarf today

Indigenous people wear the kokum scarf as regalia, as a shawl and wrapped around the wrist, and it is sold at Indigenous markets; in Ukrainian-Canadian communities it appears in dance costumes, as cultural attire and at Ukrainian and Roman Catholic churches. (Shtykalo & Legault, 2025, 104.) Tala Tootoosis remembers her grandmother wearing one to keep her hair back at work, and Jayroy Makokis speaks of "our scarves on our head".

Universities use the scarf in reconciliation teaching. At the University of Calgary, graduate students in the Werklund School of Education displayed kokum scarves on trees around the Education Tower and Classroom Block, each with a poster carrying a student's message or a QR code; in that program "the scarves are employed as a tool to respond to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada's 94 Calls to Action." (University of Calgary, 2 August 2024.) On Wednesday 30 September 2026, the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, the colour Canadians are asked to wear is orange; our news note on September 30 lists the national gathering and the Ottawa events.

Why you can check every line of this project

• A named source sits under every claim, and the full list is on our sources page.
• On 1 September 2026 we audited all 51 pages of the site against our research base; four pages came down, and the list of what we withdrew is public.
• Every Indigenous voice here is quoted by name from a published source.
• We state our status plainly: no Indigenous community or organization has endorsed or partnered in this project yet.
• The game is free, asks for no account, and every flower card in it names its source.

Kokum scarf questions, answered