Beading wáwya: Counting coup on cancer

Abstract In November of 2022, I was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. After 26 years in remission, radiation treatments from my first cancer caused another one. In the months that followed my diagnosis, I gained a greater personal insight into both the medical field—their successes and shortcomings—and the power of creative processes to help a battered soul mitigate the pains and difficulties of chemotherapy, side effects, secondary infections and mental anguish. Coming from both an Indigenous and autistic perspective, this paper is an autoethnographic account of wáwya—of counting coup on cancer—and how beading and weaving creates pockets of safety for the self that make up for what the medical field and treatments cannot accommodate.