Centring Communities of Knowledge: Beading Histories in Tlingit Aaní and Beyond

From the initial explorations of an artistic practice little known beyond Tlingit Aaní (Southeast Alaska) to the writing of an award-winning book, Megan Smetzer's research has been grounded in different communities of knowledge. When she began her research as a resident of Green College, this community contributed to the intellectual context through which she engaged with complex intercultural histories as a non-Indigenous scholar. Time spent with Tlingit artists and elders over many years deepened her commitment to writing Indigenous women’s histories that centre the community-based knowledge and worldviews so generously shared with her. Painful Beauty: Tlingit Women, Beadwork, and the Art of Resilience weaves these threads of knowledge together, creating a matrilineal history of creativity, beauty, and power.

Megan A. Smetzer was born and raised in Fairbanks, Alaska on the ancestral lands of the Dena people of the lower Tanana River. She currently lives and works on the unceded territories of the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil Waututh peoples in Vancouver, British Columbia. Smetzer is a settler art historian who researches and writes about the indigenization and circulation of cultural belongings, primarily made by women, within and between Indigenous and settler communities along the Northwest Coast and beyond. She is particularly interested in the ways in which contemporary artists draw on deeply rooted community-based knowledge to unsettle the legacies of colonialism and foreground Indigenous beauty, resurgence, and power.

After earning degrees from Smith College (BA), Williams College (MA), and the University of British Columbia (PhD), Smetzer held a Research Fellowship at the Canadian Museum of History. She taught at the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University and Emily Carr University of Art and Design before joining the faculty at Capilano University. At Capilano, Smetzer teaches a wide range of courses, including Fabric and Society, Northwest Coast Art, Canadian Art, and Vancouver Art & Architecture. Smetzer has also worked as the Acting Curator for Western Ethnology at the Canadian Museum of History, as a consulting editor for the Bill Holm Center for the Study of Northwest Native Art at the University of Washington’s Burke Museum as well as collaborated with social practice artists on environmental art projects related to birds and bees.

Smetzer is deeply grateful to the Tlingit artists and elders from Lingít Aaní (currently known as Southeast Alaska) who have generously shared their knowledge and perspectives over many years. These relationships have been essential to Smetzer's award winning book Painful Beauty: Tlingit Women, Beadwork, and the Art of Resilience, the first to be written on this topic.