An essay/teaching resource I have been working on since late 2019, early 2020 focusing on the history of photography and Indigenous Peoples is finally published. You can access the resource on the Newberry Library’s Teaching Resource page. I also included a section on contemporary Native photographers.
Here is an excerpt:
“When we think of “Native American/Indigenous Photography,” it is rarely associated with Native American or Indigenous photographers; instead, we often think of photographs created of Native People by white photographers. Native people and photography did not get along for many years. In fact, cameras were, and one can argue, continue to be, an intrusion on Indigenous life. Tourists visit Native and Indigenous communities and immediately take out their cameras to photograph them. In Tuscarora photographer Rich Hill’s essay, “In Our Own Image: Stereotyped Images of Indians lead to New Native Art Form,” he writes, “Photography and Indians have gone hand in hand for over a century, creating cultural stereotypes in our minds every time we hear the word “Indians” (9). Hill further elaborated in this essay how many photographs from the nineteenth to twentieth centuries were taken for outside interests, by people outside of the communities of Indigenous people. Images from these centuries continue to make their way into popular media today; but we are seeing more contemporary Native-produced photographs creating historical interventions and flipping negative narratives into positive, critical ones.”
