TAMMIE DUPUIS

In 1891, the Bitterroot Salish people were forcibly removed from the Bitterroot Valley in Montana and forced to walk 103 miles North to the Flathead reservation. This work commemorates and continues to count the years and this journey though the physical world and through time.

 

This work is also meant to confront the viewer, to force them to move around it in the gallery space, to reclaim that space, if only temporarily, as Indigenous land. Each row is comprised of thirteen beads; a call-back to the lunar calendar that the Bitterroot Salish people followed. The design of yellow beads within the red is a nod to the use of dashes in ledger art to indicate foot steps.

 

Long Walk will continue to grow as each year a new row of beads is added.