Author details cultural and economic significance of Tlingit beadwork

In the late 1990s, Megan Smetzer was an art history graduate student at Williams College in Massachusetts who hadn’t yet settled on a topic for her thesis. Having grown up in Fairbanks, she was interested in Athabascan beadwork. So she met with Aldona Jonaitis, who was then director of the Museum of the North at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and now a lifelong friend.

“I opened this drawer and I saw this style of beadwork I was not familiar with,” Smetzer recalled recently of that fateful day when she discovered the subject that would become an enduring focus of research. She asked Jonaitis what it was, and the museum director told her it was Tlingit beadwork. “I said, ‘How do I not know about this history?’ So that led to my research question. That put me on this path.”

For Smetzer, that fascination has never subsided. More than two decades after she first began her studies, she published “Painful Beauty” in 2021. The book places Tlingit beadwork in the context of its history as an art form, and as a source of empowerment for women, a means of resistance against American colonialism, and a basis for cultural revival and preservation.

More recently, Smetzer’s work earned the 2024 Charles C. Eldredge Prize, which is awarded annually by the Smithsonian American Art Museum for outstanding scholarship in the field of American art. “I was completely shocked and amazed,” Smetzer said of the honor.

Smetzer, who earned her PhD in art history, visual art and theory from the University of British Columbia, is an art history professor lecturer at Capilano University in North Vancouver. She said her book grew out of her master’s thesis, but reaches far beyond her academic studies, adding that her publisher, University of Washington Press, helped her turn her initial treatise into a book that celebrates both a living tradition and its historical roots. “I’m really grateful for that, because the book I published would not have been the book I have if it had been based more closely on my thesis.”

The exhaustively illustrated volume first introduces readers to Tlingit society. Then it explores the way beaded works were sold to tourists who began arriving in the Southeast shortly after the American purchase of Alaska. Next it documents the use of beads on Tlingit regalia, especially during what is known as the “Last Potlatch” in 1904, which preceded a lengthy period of cultural suppression. From there it proceeds through the middle decades of the 20th century when beading was a source of economic sustenance for Tlingit women. And finally it moves into the modern era to show how contemporary beaders are maintaining and furthering a tradition that has been handed down for generations.

“This book came out of wanting to connect these amazing beautiful cultural belongings that were often in museum collections with really important cultural knowledge from community members,” Smetzer said of her decision to merge Tlingit beading history with present day practitioners. “I think it’s really bringing together all of these different threads and creates this history that hasn’t really existed in this form before.”

Smetzer said that at the time she embarked on her studies of Tlingit beading, little research had been done on the topic. Many museums held impressive collections of beadwork from a multitude of Native American cultures, she explained, and the majority of Indigenous artwork that museums keep was made by women. But past art historians tended to focus on items made by men while bypassing the vital contributions of women. And with the matrilineal society of the Tlingit, where ancestry and identity are traced through the mother’s side of the family, this was a particularly significant oversight.

“Beading was dismissed,” Smetzer said of the attitude long held by what were, until recently, the male-dominated fields of museum collections management and art history. “It was also made for sale, so was never considered something that was authentic until just a couple of decades ago.”

As the first American tourists flowed into Alaska late in the 19th century, Tlingit women discovered that many would purchase beaded items as souvenirs of their journeys, Smetzer said, explaining how the artworks became a source of income for families caught in the midst of cultural and economic upheaval following the arrival of a new governing authority. This led to a misunderstanding of the role that the art form played in Tlingit society.

“Beading was not considered authentic or traditional because it was made from seed beads which were imported and from cloth also imported,” Smetzer said. “But what that neglects is the thousands of years of histories of embellishment which used all different kinds of beads made from Devil’s Club, for example, or made from shells.”

Furthermore, she added, “because women’s roles were not very well understood by ethnographers and missionaries and others who were coming in, beading gave them a little bit of a way to challenge these institutions in ways that weren’t really recognized.”

This lack of recognition continued well into the 20th century, and wasn’t exclusive to Alaska Natives.

“In the 70s, beads and feathers were incredible stereotypes about Indigenous people,” Smetzer said. “It was very diminishing.”

Meanwhile, however, that beadwork, both for adorning regalia and for commercial sale, was quietly sustaining Tlingit customs, and was key to the cultural revival that came into fruition during the latter decades of the 20th century and that persists today. “It still continues to be an economic outlet for artists, but it’s so much more than that. It’s an expression of the resurgence of Indigenous cultural practices more widely.”

In her research for the book, Smetzer looked to modern beaders to understand the role that the art form plays in contemporary Tlingit society. “As a non-Indigenous person, as a non-Tlingit person, I’ve always tried to approach this as a non-expert,” she said. “I am always learning, no matter what it is. I have certain skills that I can bring to the research, the archival work, those sorts of things. But I always try to be a listener as much as possible and then go from there.”

She said Shgen George of Angoon was one of the first people she reached out to. “I spent some time with her, looking at her work, and then I got invited to meet all the the ladies in that community who are beaders and had lunch with them, and sat with them when they were beading. That to me was the thing that was the most valuable about this book. Being able to speak to contemporary artists and bring their voices in.”

She said it was these contacts that sustained her during her long years of working on the book. When she sometimes felt discouraged, she’d tell herself, “I have to do this because I owe it to the community who shared this information with me.”

The work paid off, and Smetzer expressed gratitude for everyone who helped bring “Painful Beauty” to print. “I’m really grateful to all the people in Southeast Alaska and beyond who shared knowledge with me, who cheered me on, who supported me through the times when I was sure this wasn’t going to happen.”