BIO
Tammie was born and raised in Northwestern Montana on the Flathead Reservation. Her father was Qlispeʼ (Upper Pend d’Oreille) and Séliš (Bitterroot Salish), and her mother descended from non-Indigenous settlers who arrived on the reservation in the 1920s. Situated between these two cultural lineages, her aesthetic navigates their intertwined and often fraught histories while exploring her own experience as a mixed-blood person.
Working through both Indigenous and non-Indigenous modes of making and seeing as well as those shared across those communities, her practice spans a wide range of materials and processes, including paint, wood, fabric, resin, hair, bone, paper, and beads. As an artist, her work moves between processes rooted in both of her traditions. Each material is considered for the lineage it carries—how its cultural origins, uses, and stories interact. Through these materials, Tammie explores the thresholds where her cultural experiences converge, seeking forms of connection that feel resonant and accessible to both Indigenous and non-Indigenous viewers.
Tammie earned her MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston in 2022 and her BFA from Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle in 2019. She also holds a BS in Anthropology and Archaeology from Montana State University in Bozeman. She currently lives and works in Bremerton, Washington.
