Bio

I am a Northern Ute artist, photographer, writer, researcher, and substance use disorder counselor whose work grows from lived experience, memory, dreams, land, grief, and the enduring strength of Indigenous story. My creative practice brings together photography, digital mixed media, beadwork, and writing as ways of remembering, witnessing, and reclaiming stories shaped by intergenerational trauma, addiction, loss, survival, and recovery.

I hold a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Institute of American Indian Arts and a Master of Fine Arts from the Savannah College of Art and Design. I earned my Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership through the University of Washington Tacoma Muckleshoot Tribal College Indigenous Educational Leadership cohort. I am also a Licensed Substance Use Disorder Counselor working within my tribal community, where my clinical practice continues to shape how I understand addiction, grief, family, culture, and healing. I have been accepted into the Master of Social Work program at the University of Utah, where I continue building a path toward Indigenous-centered trauma, grief, addiction, and recovery work.

My art and writing live beside my scholarship. Much of my current creative work grew from my doctoral dissertation, where I explored Indigenous Storywork, visual art pedagogy, land-based knowledge, memory, dreams, and Indigenous epistemologies as pathways toward healing and recovery. Rather than separating research from lived experience, I bring them into relationship. A photograph becomes testimony. Beadwork becomes memory held by the hands. A dream becomes knowledge. A story becomes a place where grief speaks and healing begins.

I write from what I have witnessed, carried, lost, remembered, and survived. I return to family stories, ancestral memory, addiction, recovery, land, kinship, and the quiet moments that remain in the body long after an experience has passed. Through this work, I seek to reclaim Indigenous narratives from deficit-based stories that have too often defined our people through trauma, addiction, statistics, and loss. I want our stories to hold the fullness of who we are, including our grief, beauty, humor, resistance, spirituality, love, memory, and continued relationship with the land.

For me, art is more than representation. It is a form of Indigenous Storywork. It carries what spoken language sometimes struggles to hold. Through image, bead, memory, and written word, I return to the stories beneath the surface and ask what they still have to teach us. My work follows those stories home, toward healing, recovery, reconnection, and the right to tell our own stories in our own ways. This is how we release the seeds. 

Planting the Seed: Indigenous Healing Through Storywork, Art, and Pedagogy

I offer presentations, workshops, and community conversations centered on Indigenous healing, Indigenous Storywork, visual art, land-based knowledge, addiction recovery, grief, and lived experience. My presentations draw from my doctoral research, professional work in substance use treatment, and my own artistic practice as a Ute woman.

Through storytelling, photography, digital mixed media, beadwork, memory, and cultural knowledge, I explore how Indigenous pedagogy creates pathways toward reconnection, belonging, and healing. I invite tribal communities, educators, universities, behavioral health programs, conferences, and organizations to contact me about presentations, workshops, speaking engagements, and collaborative learning opportunities.

If you are interested in bringing Planting the Seed to your community, classroom, conference, or organization, please contact me to discuss presentation topics and scheduling.