Beading a Nation, Beading a People: The Role of Métis Women’s Beadwork in Crafting Culture

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Crafting Culture: Thingselves, Contexts, Meanings" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The embodied act of crafting can bring into being a physical representation of relations and ways of being in the world. In 1945, ethnologist John C. Ewers reported that the Sioux word for the Métis in Canada translates as "the flower beadwork people". With influences from their First Nations and settler ancestors, Métis beadwork has come to be recognized as a stylistically distinct artwork of its own and a means through which Métis women craft their relations to their kin, both human and non-human. Archaeological evidence of beadworking activities may be regarded as one of the diagnostic features of potential Métis sites. In this paper, we explore how the beadwork of Métis women has contributed to the crafting of Métis culture and how it demonstrates the complex web of relations through time and space that help define the Métis Nation, past and present. We trace the development of beadwork as a craft and the concurrent rise of the Métis Nation within the context of the 18th and 19th century Canadian fur trade. The subsequent coalescence of a distinct Métis beadwork style continues to be practiced by contemporary Métis beaders and artists, echoing ancestral relations and connecting past and present.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Crafting Culture: Thingselves, Contexts, Meanings

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23062