Marcella is an Assistant Professor of Native American Art History at the University of New Mexico, an Indigenous filmmaker, and an interdisciplinary artist working across documentary arts, experimental nonfiction, video, sound, research, and performance. Her creative practice explores memory, family histories, Indigenous knowledge, and the relationships between place, identity, and cultural narrative.

Through experimental film, documentary lecture, archival research, and multimedia storytelling, Marcella brings together personal and collective histories to challenge dominant narratives and create new forms of visual expression. Her work draws from family archives, colonial records, sound studies, and Ojibwe knowledge systems to examine the intersections of memory, land, relationality, and lived experience.

Her documentary and moving image projects explore how archives hold stories across generations. Combining analog film processes, found footage, audio recordings, family photographs, and contemporary media, her work investigates how personal histories connect to broader cultural, ecological, and historical narratives.

Marcella’s work has been presented through exhibitions, screenings, lectures, and public programs that bring together art, scholarship, and community engagement. Her projects create spaces where documentary arts, Indigenous studies, and archival research intersect.

She received her PhD in American Studies from the University of New Mexico, an MA from the University of Washington’s Native Voices program for Indigenous documentary film and research methodologies, a BA in Ethnic Studies from Mills College, and an AA from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Marcella is Gunflint Lake Ojibwe and an enrolled member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior.