Shanai Matteson is an artist, writer, arts activist, and cultural community organizer. She lives in rural Palisade, Minnesota, where she grew up. Matteson explores legacies of resource extraction, and she is currently working to organize cultural and community space at the Water Protector Welcome Center, a resistance camp and community established by Indigenous women who are leading the movement to stop the Line 3 tar sands oil pipeline. As a non-Native woman whose family settled in this region, she sees her work here as a form of service and repair, as well as a way to encourage a just transition to a healthier culture and economy. Matteson works with a variety of rural and urban communities to create collaborative public art projects, documentaries, creative writing and print work, and social spaces.

shanai.work | @shanai_matteson