About the Artist
Shanai Matteson is a visual artist, writer, and cultural organizer. She lives in rural Palisade, Minnesota, where she grew-up. Shanai is currently working to help organize cultural and community space at Akiing / Welcome Water Protectors, a pipeline resistance camp established by Indigenous women during the movement to stop the Line 3 oil pipeline. As a non-native woman whose family settled less than a mile from Akiing, Shanai sees her activist work here as a kind of service and repair, and a way to encourage a just transition for Indigenous and rural communities in the deep north. As an artist, Shanai creates visual and literary work to honor the complex and interdependent nature of identity, action, material, and memory.