Honestly our prices aren't even high considering the huge a…

Every time I see a bead artist break down their pricing, they always give themselves "minimum wage", which as we know is less than half of an actual living wage. We deserve a living wage for our art, but I know none of us actually gets that

Beadwork is my full time job, I've charged up to 200$ for a single piece because I need to make rent and pay bills and some of these large pieces take me days or even a week to complete.

I give myself minimum wage for my labour, I don't charge for the hours I spend packing and shipping orders, Etsy takes a cut, and I still have to charge upwards of 100$ for many pieces because beadwork is hard fucking work. It's a slow process, literally one bead at a time.

I constantly struggle with balancing paying myself a fair wage, keeping my work accessible, not giving people a lowball idea of what beadwork actually costs therefore undercutting other artists... its not easy.

We ALL deserve a living wage for our labour, we deserve to not be paying costs like that out of pocket, but peoples' image of what these things "should" cost is totally skewed by a bunch of factors.

People devalue our work because it's feminized labour. They devalue our work because it's done by Indigenous people. And they devalue our work because corporations have egregiously underpaid workers making shoddy products then passing those stolen "savings" onto the customer.

Our work can and often does last lifetimes. There's beadwork in families including my own family that is half a century old or more and still in pristine condition. We as Indigenous people know how to make things to last.

And allllll of these factors, including basic fucking decency, is why you should never criticize an Indigenous bead artist's prices, because I can all but promise you they are still undercharging no matter what the listed price. Tip your local bead worker today.

This thread is inspired by: https://t.co/cX42wOpDwT

if you can't afford Indigenous made earrings i spend actual time making by hand, maybe go buy cheap earrings from the dollar store or smth because... pic.twitter.com/iHfRhtBX91
— mango \u2606 (@pamiuqtuq) January 4, 2021

Honestly our prices aren't even high considering the huge amount of work that goes into what we do. What we deserve is to actually be well paid and then get some reparations on top of that lmao

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