"For me, Native beaded earrings have always been like my super hero cape. I put them on in the morning and I feel seen. I feel strong. However, too often, Native beaded earrings are not always the most comfortable nor easy to wear every day.
This led me to start Cheyanne Symone in 2018 when I saw a need for Native beaded earrings that I could comfortably wear every day. I wanted earrings that were subtly chic while still making a statement in my daily life.
Cheyanne Symone is a combination of my identity as an indigenous Haliwa-Saponi woman, environmental scientist, and artist."
- Brittany C. Turner
Founder/ artist/ scientist
Chief Marketing Officer
Kate is an energy professional skilled in systems thinking. She leads marketing and data at Cheyanne Symone. Kate and Brittany met at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor while pursuing their graduate degrees. Together, they worked on a team that developed an energy plan for the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians. From the start, their strengths have complemented each other. Kate’s day job is as an Energy Analyst for an efficiency-focused mechanical engineering firm headquartered in State College, PA.
Artisan and Beader
Rebecca is a Two-Spirit artist from the Little Traverse Bay bands of Odawa Indians pursuing a degree in Sociology from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. She is the artist behind Queerkwe Designs where the purpose of her work is to create representation for LGBTQ and Two-Spirit Indigenous folks.
Artisan and Beader
Claire McWilliams is a student at Colorado State University studying Environmental Engineering. She is also an artist and Navajo/Diné woman, from the Tangle People Clan and born for the White Clan. Claire started beading at the beginning of the pandemic, drawn to the intersection between art and culture. Claire’s greatest influence is nature and its geometry, and her camera roll is usually full of pictures of her cat, the moon, and rocks she finds outside. She is the creative force behind Nishlthi.
Artisan and Beader
Natani Notah is an interdisciplinary artist and a proud member of the Navajo Nation. Her current art practice explores contemporary Native American existence through the lens of Diné (Navajo) womanhood. Notah has exhibited her work at institutions, such as Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (BMoCA), Marin Museum of Contemporary Art (Marin MOCA), Wattis Institute of Contemporary Art, Tucson Desert Art Museum, Longmont Museum, Mana Contemporary Chicago, apexart NYC, / (slash) art space and elsewhere. Notah has received awards from Art Matters, International Sculpture Center, and the San Francisco Foundation. Her work has appeared in Artforum, Art in America, Hyperallergic, Forbes, and Sculpture Magazine and she has completed artist residencies at the Studios at MASS MoCA, Vermont Studio Center, Grounds for Sculpture, Headlands Center for the Arts, and Kala Art Institute. Notah holds a BFA with a minor in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Cornell University and an MFA from Stanford University. Currently she is a 2021-2023 Tulsa Artist Fellow.