Creative Native Beading

My name is Renee Belanger and I was born and raised in Superior, WI but have made my home in the Twin Cities since 2008.

I am a proud Red Cliff (Gaa-Miskwaabikaang) tribal member. I grew up not very connected to my Native side but around 2015, I started to feel a call to start a journey of reconnecting. Prior to that, I wasn’t an enrolled tribal member. I was able to get enrolled in 2017, a luxury I know not all Indigenous peoples are able to have. It is an ongoing journey of reading, listening, and coming to realizations of things I wasn’t aware of growing up in a very colonized world. I am aware of the struggles that I DIDN’T have to deal with being that I am very white passing with the addition of my French and Irish heritage as well.

In June of 2021, I decided to start learning how to bead earrings. It was the most amazing thing I’d ever learned how to do. I caught on very quickly and it was the only thing I’ve ever done that felt like it came easy to me. I truly believe I found my calling and it’s been the absolute greatest connection to my Native roots that I could have ever hoped for. It requires patience, discipline and focus (things I’m not very good at outside of beading, ha!) while at the same time being completely meditative and calming.

Nothing has given me greater joy than to be able to create pieces that I can share with others.