Gail Tremblay (December 15, 1945 – May 3, 2023) was an American writer and artist from Washington State. She is well known for having woven baskets from film strips that depict stereotypical subject matter of Native Americans, such as Western movies and anthropological documentaries.  She received a Washington State Governor's Arts and Heritage Award in 2001.

Background
Tremblay was born on December 15, 1945, in Buffalo, New York. She identified her father as being of Mi'kmaq and Onondaga ancestry. According to genealogical records, for generations her paternal ancestors resided along the Saint Lawrence River in the province of Quebec, Canada. In an interview on Daybreak Star Radio, Tremblay said her great-grandfather once lived in Kahnawake near Montreal. 

She received her BA in theater in 1967 from the University of New Hampshire and an MFA in English (Creative Writing) from the University of Oregon, Eugene in 1969.

Writing and education career
Tremblay was a faculty member at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington and taught courses in English, art history, and Native American studies. She began her faculty appointment at Evergreen in 1980 and taught her last class in 2018 in the newly finished fiber studio at the Longhouse. She is recognized as an accomplished poet.  Tremblay has also written exhibition catalog essays about other artists, including, "Speaking in a Language of Vital Signs," for the 2008 exhibition catalogue, Joe Feddersen: Vital Signs at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University.

Visual art

Tremblay combined historical Native American techniques and materials with mainstream artistic expression, such as her woven pieces and baskets, created from experimental materials such as exposed film. Her poetry and art were inspired by the cultures of Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands. 

Tremblay's great aunts taught her basketry techniques and forms in the eastern woodlands tradition, which she reinterpreted through the use of film stock and film leader as materials. Tremblay's art draws from Native American history, Indigenous cosmologies, literature, Western movies, and other pop culture references. For example, she created a basket using red and white film leader entitled, And Then There's the Business of Fancydancing, inspired by Sherman Alexie's film, The Business of Fancydancing (2002), where the main character, a Spokane man, has a love relationship with a white man. As she said, "I chose to use Porcupine Stitch because there are so many difficult and prickly relationships between characters in this film.” Tremblay's woven basketry with film also includes When will the Red Leader Overshadow Images of the 19th Century Noble Savage in Hollywood Films that Some Think are Sympathetic to American Indians (2018), a basket woven using 35mm film from the movie Windwalker (1981), which was acquired by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 2021.

Artweek reviewer Marcia Morse writes, “Gail Tremblay addresses the troubled history of her own indigenous heritage in And Then There is The Hollywood Indian Princess (2002). Using the Northeastern Woodlands fancy-stick basket weaving, Tremblay wove with, not brown ash and sweetgrass used by Northeastern tribes, but recycled 16 mm leader and film on sexually transmitted diseases, elegantly subverting multiple stereotypes.”

Exhibitions 
Tremblay staged many solo exhibitions and participated in numerous group shows. Her notable solo shows include Gail Tremblay: Fiber, Metal, Wood (1988), Museum of the Plains Indian, Browning, Montana; The Empty Fish Trap Installation (2004), Evergreen State College Gallery, Olympia, Washington; Gail Tremblay: Twenty Years of Making (2002), Daybreak Star Cultural Center, Seattle; Reframing Images, Conceptualizing Indigenous Art (2013), Froelick Gallery, Portland, Oregon;and Art of Gail Tremblay (2017), Eastern Washington University Downtown Gallery, Cheney, Washington.

Notable works in public collections 

 Basket (c. 1990), Portland Art Museum, Oregon
 Strawberry and Chocolate (2000), National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
 In the World of White Line Fever... (2001), Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Salem, Oregon
 And Then There is the Hollywood Indian Princess (2002), Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Salem, Oregon
 Waiting for the Return: 5 Fish Traps (2002-2003), Marian Gould Gallagher Law Library, University of Washington School of Law, Seattle (Washington State Arts Commission)
 A Note to Lewis and Clark's Ghosts (2004), Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Salem, Oregon; and National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
 The Ghost of Salmon (2004), from Canopy End Structures (with Rick Bartow, Ken Mackintosh, and Lillian Pitt), Rosa Parks Station, TriMet, Portland, Oregon
 Hunting for the Red Queen on the Big Night Out (2008), Evergreen State College, Olympia, Washington (Washington State Arts Commission)
 An Iroquois Dreams That the Tribes of the Middle East Will Take the Message of Deganawida to Heart and Make Peace (2009), Whatcom Museum, Bellingham, Washington
 And Then There's the Business of Fancy Dancing... (2011), Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, Little Rock
 In Great Expectations, There is no Red Leader (2011), Portland Art Museum, Oregon
 It Was Never About Playing Cowboys and Indians (2012), Denver Art Museum
 When Ice Stretched on for Miles (2017), Brooklyn Museum, New York
 When will the Red Leader Overshadow Images of the 19th Century Noble Savage in Hollywood Films that Some Think are Sympathetic to American Indians (2018), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
 When There Is No Category for a Film in a Native American Language on Oscar Night, Clearly It Is in a League of Its Own (2021), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Publications 
 Night Gives Women the Word (Omaha Printing Company, 1979)
 Close to Home (University of Nebraska, 1981)
 Indian Singing in 20th Century America (CALYX Books, 1990)
Farther From and Too Close to Home (CreateSpace Independent Publishing, 2013)

References 
14. https://daybreakstarradio.com/2022/12/gail-tremblay-interview/ Daybreakstar Interview December 05, 2022 

1945 births
2023 deaths
American people who self-identify as being of Native American descent
American women academics
Artists from Buffalo, New York
Basket weavers
Evergreen State College faculty
University of Oregon alumni
University of New Hampshire alumni
Writers from Buffalo, New York
Writers from Olympia, Washington
American women installation artists
American installation artists
20th-century American women artists
21st-century American women artists
20th-century American women writers
21st-century American women writers
Artists from Washington (state)