Iroqit founder Melanie Squires is prioritizing a hands-on, community-focused approach to business.Jheri Jamieson/The Globe and Mail
Iroqit, a company that makes custom rugby, hockey and baseball uniforms, was started because its founders noticed a persistent problem while coaching a girls’ rugby team based on the Six Nations of the Grand River reserve. Melanie Squires and her daughter, Meagan Wilson, who are part of the Turtle Clan of the Mohawk Nation, were noticing that their players’ kits were not fitting right.
“I would be at games, and the girls, after going into a scrum, would be getting up and adjusting their shorts – pulling [them] down from their thigh and stuff like that,” says Ms. Squires. “I was like, ‘That’s really taking away from what they should be doing.’”
So, using the moccasin-making experience and beadwork skills she learned from her mother, Ms. Squires went to work, designing affordable kits that better fit girls and women of all ages and body types using breathable fabric and flattering, Iroquois-inspired patterns. These initial offerings, which debuted in 2024, functioned as a soft-launch for a brand new company.
Iroqit is a natural evolution of Ms. Squires’ long-time love of rugby. In 2017, she founded Iroquois Roots Rugby, which aims to make the sport more accessible Indigenous youth through free programming, whether that’s playing on a team, attending camp or taking part in one-off workshops. With Iroqit, she hopes to create an appreciation for rugby in First Nations communities near and far — and like the rugby program, bridge non-Indigenous folks to the story of their First Nations community.
Soon after debuting kits for her own players, she began outfitting neighbouring community clubs, including the nearby Norfolk Harvesters, and with the help of a little word-of-mouth promotion, has gone on to collaborate with the University of Toronto men’s and women’s teams, McMaster University, local clubs across Southern and Southwestern Ontario and even some American schools.
Her designs are even being seen farther afield. “We just came back from Ireland with our U16girls team and I created a kit especially for that with the two-row wampum belt… across the chest and other culturally significant things, like having the purple on our uniforms,” says Ms. Squires, noting that purple wampums, white and purple beads made from quahog shells, are specifically significant to her community. “When I’m designing for our girls, I do it myself, and I reveal it to them so that I can see their reactions. I really think it brings them a deeper sense of unity. It [means] they’re playing for all of our nations and our communities together.”
Iroqit’s designs, shown here on the girls U16 rugby players that Ms. Squires coaches, feature nods to her culture, including purple wampums.Jheri Jamieson/The Globe and Mail
Though Iroqit is growing quickly and organically, she prefers to keep her foot off the accelerator. Prioritizing a person-to-person, hands-on approach, she is trying not to get ahead of herself as the business takes off. She runs it and Iroquois Roots Rugby out of the same office, designing, heat pressing and sewing the apparel just steps away from the rugby equipment.
“It’s really just my set of hands right now, dealing with Iroqit, doing all of the designing of the mock ups — every little thing I have my hands in,” she says. “I’m a little nervous to reach more people because it’s a one-woman show over here.”
That’s not surprising. In fact, many Indigenous enterprises want to grow at their own pace, staying enmeshed with their communities while the supports meet them where they are, says Ashley Richard, director of Indigenous entrepreneurship at FlintHub, an incubator program for Indigenous entrepreneurs based out of the University of Waterloo.
“In general, all of the businesses that we’re working with and all the entrepreneurs that we’re working with [are] doing what they’re doing because they want to see their community succeed,” she says, noting this perspective is common among all Indigenous entrepreneurs.
There are real benefits to this approach. According to a 2025 Statistics Canada data, Indigenous-led businesses contribute $56 billion to the Canadian economy, which is almost double what they contributed in 2013 per BDC. This growth can largely be attributed to the launch of new Indigenous businesses, the vast majority of which are small and medium enterprises. That’s why, as the Indigenous Chamber of Commerce Manitoba recently argued, their true impact has to take into account economic development and social contributions, such as “creating jobs, providing training programs, supporting local supply chains and reinvesting profits back into community-based projects, [as well as] promoting sustainable business practices and…prioritiz[ing] social responsibility in their operations.”
That’s certainly true for Ms. Squires. While she carefully plans Iroqit’s next steps, she’s also guiding her girls’ team to new locales and using the business to create new opportunities to tell stories of the Six Nations in those spaces. When she interacts with other rugby folks, people pose a number of questions: What does a First Nations community look like in 2025? What are your socioeconomic issues that you face? Are they stereotypical, are they different? For her, the kits are a gateway to a new conversation.
“When I do presentations, I get to show them where we’re coming from, but I also get to speak on what it is like living here,” she says.
One in a regular series of stories. To read more, visit our Indigenous Enterprises section. If you have suggestions for future stories, reach out to IE@globeandmail.com.