Jaune Quick-to-See Smith
1940 - 2025
Updated: March 3, 2026
Jaune Quick-to-See Smith was a Native American artist and curator who used her art to tell stories about Native life, history, and the land.
Jaune Quick-to-See Smith was born on January 15, 1940, in St. Ignatius, on the Flathead (Confederated Salish and Kootenai) Reservation in western Montana, and she belonged to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, with Métis and Shoshone family roots. For more than 50 years she created paintings, prints, collages, and public artworks that often mixed Native symbols with modern images to talk about Native identity, unfair treatment of Native peoples, and caring for the environment. One of her best-known works, Trade (Gifts for Trading Land with White People), uses maps, newspaper clippings, and bright red paint to ask viewers to think about how land was taken from Native nations and how Native cultures are shown in popular culture. Smith described herself as a "cultural arts worker," and she organized many shows of Native artists, created public art like a floor design at Denver International Airport and a history trail in Seattle, and worked to support Native students and communities until her death on January 24, 2025.