Our Story
BadAss Elder
Named for a real elder. Built for everyone who earned their scars.
Where It Began
There was a real person behind this brand.
BadAss Elder began with Thomas R. Louttit — a respected Elder, Knowledge Keeper, firekeeper, teacher, pipe-carrier, mentor, and keeper of Miitig Healing Lodge. His humour, strength, presence, and lived experience sparked the feeling behind this brand. He moved through the world with a kind of quiet force that most people spend a lifetime trying to manufacture. He didn’t perform strength. He just had it.
Thomas is not a mascot. He is the reason this brand exists at all. The elder character in BadAss Elder is fictional — built to carry the spirit of that energy without misrepresenting the man. The character is fictionalized so the story can travel without distorting the person.
“The character is fictional. The feeling is not.”
Who Thomas Is
A life rooted in healing and service.
Thomas R. Louttit is a respected Elder and Knowledge Keeper from Moose Factory. A Residential School Survivor, he has lived through foster care, kept his language, and worked for decades as a helper to many. He has supported men, families, students, and communities through cultural healing, traditional teachings, counselling, ceremony, and spiritual guidance.
His work is connected to Wabano Centre for Aboriginal Health, where he has served as a Knowledge Keeper for the men’s circle. He has served as a National Elder for CUPE. He is keeper of Miitig Healing Lodge. In 2016, Carleton University awarded him an honorary Doctor of Laws for his decades of leadership and service to community.
That kind of life cannot be reduced to a logo. It carries humour. It carries survival. It carries pain, healing, responsibility, and love.
Where It Became Personal
How the shirt happened.
I met Thomas through a Wabano men’s healing circle. I would bring my dad with me, and over time Thomas became more than someone I listened to — he became part of a healing story in our family.
The original BadAss Elder shirt started as a birthday present for Thomas. It was not planned as a brand. It was a way to honour him — with humour, respect, and truth.
His daughter later said it became his favourite shirt. The one he wears everywhere. The one they can hardly get him to take off.
That is when the idea became bigger than a shirt.
The Shirt That Started It
Before this was a brand, it was a feeling on a shirt.
It was raw, personal, and direct — because the idea itself was direct. Some people carry a presence you cannot fake. This brand is what happened when that attempt took hold.
Why the Name
“BadAss” is not a gimmick.
Elders in Indigenous communities carry a weight most people don’t see. They’ve navigated systems designed to erase them, held families together through rupture, kept languages and stories alive when institutions tried to bury them. They did not survive by being meek. They survived by being relentless — with love, with humour, with grit.
“BadAss Elder” is about honouring that. Not softening it. Not making it palatable. Calling it what it is: tough, warm, real, and hard-won.
What We Make
Apparel that carries something.
We make clothes for people who have lived a life and aren’t apologising for it. For the ones carrying their history in their body — in their hands, their laugh lines, their posture. For the ones still here and still going.
The first drop is hoodies and tees. Six pieces. Each one built around a real feeling: healing, humour, survival, and standing back up.
“For the ones still healing, still laughing, still standing.”
What We Stand For
Story over stereotype.
We do not trade in cultural clichés. There are no decorative motifs borrowed without meaning, no imagery used to signal “Indigenousness” as an aesthetic. What you see in this brand comes from a real relationship — a real person who shaped real people who built this.
The power of BadAss Elder comes from specificity: a specific elder, a specific story, a specific emotional truth. That specificity is what makes it real. That’s what we’re protecting.
“BadAss is not a gimmick. It is what survival looks like with humour still intact.”
We believe representation is strongest when it’s honest. We’d rather make one true thing than a thousand well-designed imitations.
Giving Back
Giving back to healing.
As BadAss Elder grows, our intention is for a portion of proceeds from BadAss Elder products to support Miitig Healing Lodge and healing work connected to community, recovery, wellness, and rebuilding.
Miitig Healing Lodge is connected to the work of Thomas R. Louttit — to healing, ceremony, land-based education, and community recovery. Supporting it is not a marketing decision. It is a direction we are building toward.
Learn about Miitig Healing LodgeA brand by
Elder Energy Apparel
Elder Energy Apparel is the parent company behind BadAss Elder. Our mission is to build brands rooted in real stories — premium apparel that honours the people and relationships that shaped us.
The First Drop
For the ones still healing,
still laughing, still standing.
Premium hoodies and tees rooted in resilience, humour, healing, and earned wisdom.