Reweaving History

Nowhere has the stereotype of indigenous Americans as barbarian been as poisonous as in film images from the first half of the 20th century. But Gail Tremblay has an antidote. Steeped in traditional basketry techniques she learned from her aunts, the Onondaga and Mi’kmaq writer and mixed-media artist references cinematic narratives in her basket works, challenging those tropes with an alternative storyline.

Tremblay began combining two seemingly discordant art forms while co-teaching a Third World and feminist film theory class in 1985 at the Evergreen State College, in Olympia, Washington, where she still teaches. “I loved film as a material,” she says. “I liked the recycling aspect of it.”

Tremblay uses green, blue, yellow, and often red film leader – the length of film attached to the end of a filmstrip to make threading it through a projector easier. She has acquired much of her material from libraries that have emptied their film collections in favor of DVDs.

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