Reweaving the Past to Revitalize the Future: Indigenous Women's Arts from the Northwest Coast

Part of the 2024-25 Art History Lecture Series

This lecture considers new works by contemporary Indigenous women artists as acts of repair. For over a century, academic literature skewed toward monumental carved and painted works created primarily by men. Nineteenth century art historical hierarchies of value related to gender, ethnicity, and use marginalized artistic practices associated primarily with women. Weaving, beading, and regalia making for community use and for sale maintained Indigenous ways of knowing and being through the darkest years of settler colonialism. Contemporary artists of all genders embrace a diversity of media, methods, and markets, yet these historical biases continue to shape the economic, social, and cultural aspects of Indigenous art practices, often to the detriment of female and non-binary artists. Tlingit artist Shgen George and others are creating new bodies of work that counter settler narratives and assert balanced ways of knowing and being that contribute to community care and the healing of historical traumas for future generations.

About Megan A. Smetzer

Megan A. Smetzer is an art historian at Capilano University located on the unceded territories of the Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), xʷməθkʷəỷəm (Musqueam) and SəỈílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples. Her research considers the ways in which contemporary Northwest Coast Indigenous artists draw on deeply rooted community-based knowledge to unsettle the legacies of colonialism and foreground Indigenous beauty, resurgence, and power. Smetzer’s first book, Painful Beauty: Tlingit Women, Beadwork, and the Art of Resilience was awarded the 2024 Charles C. Eldredge Prize for outstanding scholarship by the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Images

• Shgen George (Tlingit)  weaving a child size naaxein robe. September 2024. Photo by Megan A. Smetzer, courtesy of the artist.
• Shgen George (Tlingit). Sit (Glacier) bag, 2014. Courtesy of the artist.
• Debra Sparrow (Musqueam). Blanketing the City 1, 2018. Courtesy of the Vancouver Mural Festival.