Christine Dunbar is a jeweller and graphic designer from Yellowknife, NT, with family connections to Inuvik and Aklavik in Inuvialuit Settlement Region, NT, as well as Utqiagvik (Barrow), Alaska. Dunbar creates beaded earrings, bracelets, bolo ties, pins and other wearable items under the label auntie.beading online, as well as stickers that she designs and sells.
Dunbar began teaching herself to bead in 2020 as a way to occupy her time during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the practice rapidly became an important part of her life. “I’ve been beading every day since then,” she says, using it both to have fun and to relax. [1] “Beading has changed my life completely. I don’t know what I was doing before.” Her early efforts were predominantly fringed earrings, notably variations on a butterfly wing pattern in many different colours. Dunbar later taught herself the flat stitch and caribou fur tufting and began incorporating those techniques into her work as well as expanding into other wearable items. However, earrings remain her creative mainstay and favourite thing to create—“they are 90% of what I make,” she says, adding “I just love making them and I love wearing them.”
The earrings she creates often incorporate pink—Dunbar’s favourite colour—but always contain at least some gold, whether in the beads or the hardware. “I think it just adds a unique touch to the beadwork,” she says about this quirk, admitting that she personally loves gold everything. But beyond these constants her palette can vary widely from neutrals to neons, and Dunbar enjoys getting out of her comfort zone to try out palette requests from others. She is highly inspired by the colour palettes of other Indigenous beaders, such as Skye Paul and Shawna Davis. Dunbar also admires the work of Yukon-based designer Heather Dickson, both for her colours and her wide reach into the mainstream with celebrity clients. Her education—Dunbar holds a Bachelor of Ecosystem Management from Lethbridge College in Alberta and is currently working on a Masters at Wilfred Laurier University in Waterloo, ON—has become another important inspiration in her beaded work, with many of her pieces inspired by the ecosystems in the North, such as swallowtail butterflies, wildfowl or cloudberries.
Her work with stickers grew as an extension of her beading; Dunbar saw other jewellers using Procreate for beading templates as well as their own stickers, and used online tutorials to teach herself how to use the software to create stickers with a northern focus. She sells both the stickers and her beaded creations predominantly through in-person markets, including multiple years at the Yellowknife-based Folks on the Rocks Festival and a month-long pop-up shop, Kalihwíy̲o̲ market, that she participated in in Kitchener, ON, in 2024. She prefers to sell this way because it allows her to save up her stock as well as to travel and meet artists in person. Dunbar hopes to do more markets in future, as well as to create earrings for influential Indigenous people in Canada—a goal stoked after Inuvialuk model Willow Allen wore Dunbar’s earrings in Vogue in 2023. Her work has also been included in two group exhibitions: Beaded Nostalgia (2022) at Bill Reid Gallery in Vancouver, BC, and Spring Break Up (2024) at La Guilde in Montreal, QC. “I get a lot of joy in making earrings,” Dunbar says about what drives her to keep creating. “I won’t ever stop beading.”