Alese Louise Machendagoos was born during the summer of 1977, in
a remote community situated in Northwestern Ontario, and raised
in Thunder Bay. Adopted at birth into an aboriginal family of seven
older brothers, she grew up the only sister but still retaining
her aboriginal heritage and identity. Moving to Winnipeg in the
mid 1980's, it was at R.B. Russell High where she learned to express
her artistic abilities in the form of traditional dreamcatchers.