Viola LeBeau
Viola LeBeau is a Queer Native artist, writer, and the current Land Acquisition Coordinator for The Circle Law Group, a Native American woman-owned law firm. She is a member of the Hammawi Band of the Pit River Nation, and a descendant of the Cahuilla, Maidu, and Cheyenne River Lakota.
Through a multidisciplinary practice, of sculpture, fiber, video, and sound, LeBeau engages processes of rematriation, continuance, and queer Indigenous relationality. Engaging basketweaving as both material practice and epistemological framework, she considers how forms emerge through reciprocity and transformation. Influenced by her work within the legal realms of land return, her artistic practice often examines how colonial policy continues to shape Indigenous access and belonging, often reworking legal language and documents into sculptural form.
Raised in Sacramento, home to the Nisenan, and a guest on the traditional Puebloan lands of the Tanoan and Keres-speaking Peoples in Santa Fe, New Mexico, LeBeau received her BA in Sociology and Studio Arts from Mills College and is pursuing an MFA in Studio Arts at the Institute of American Indian Arts, while continuing to aid in the facilitation of the return of Indigenous land to Indigenous people.
