Chelsee Pettit Built an Indigenous Empire From a Triangle

"Detachment is a good thing. When you release things, it's because you're allowing yourself to carry more. Sometimes carrying it all isn't actually the best way to get what you want."The triangle changed everything.Walking through downtown Toronto in June 2021, Chelsee Pettit thought she saw someone wearing Indigenous syllabics on their shirt, those distinctive shapes that form the writing system for many Indigenous languages across Canada. For the first time in her life living in the city, she felt represented."I was shocked to see Indigenous languages being worn," she tells me over Zoom, her voice carrying the weight of someone who's built something from nothing. "I thought, 'Holy, somebody thinks Indigenous languages are as cool as Korean or Japanese across a shirt.'"But as she got closer, reality hit. It was just a triangle."I felt disappointed. But I'm a very solution-oriented person. Immediately I was like, 'I need to become an Indigenous Nike.'"Three days later, aaniin was born. That first week? $3,000 in sales from a crappy Shopify site, zero followers, and a story posted on Instagram about a triangle that wasn't what it seemed.The $70K ProblemBut let's back up, because Chelsee's origin story isn't the sanitized entrepreneur fairy tale you're...