COUNTERPOINT

Emergence from the Shadow: First Peoples' Photographic Perspectives

Canadian Museum of Civilization

Hull, Quebec, Canada

October 23, 1999-January 2, 2001

It has long been accepted that the photographic gaze marks a site of aboriginal subjugation in North America. From images produced for midnineteenth-century geological and ethnographic surveys to Edward Curtis's romanticized portraits of a "vanishing race" to the Hollywood western, photographic and filmic images of native North Americans have proven themselves to be effective vehicles for promulgating stereotypes and enacting colonial power. The camera's power appeared so intractable to native communities that prohibition seemed to be the only viable form of resistance. In one celebrated example in 1975, the Hopi (Pueblo) nation banned photography outright rather than having sacred ceremonies further exposed to and sensationalized by legions of gawking "snapshooters" and postcard merchants.

With this history in mind, it is difficult to imagine that anthropological photographs could be recouped and even prized by aboriginal viewers as valuable links to their past, but that is precisely one of the key messages underlying "Emergence from the Shadow: First Peoples' Photographic Perspectives." This intelligent and multi-faceted exhibition attempts to reclaim the aboriginal subject through new readings of historical material and contemporary interventions.

Organized by photographer and curator Jeffrey M. Thomas, a member of the Onondaga tribe of Six Nations, "Emergence from the Shadow" constructs a bridge between two ideologically and historically divergent practices: early twentieth-century ethnographic images made under the auspices of the former Geological Survey of Canada (GSC, the precursor to the Canadian Museum of Civilization) and contemporary photo-based work by six socially engaged aboriginal artists: Barry Ace, Mary Anne Barkhouse, Rosalie Favell, Greg Hill, Shelley Niro and Greg Staats. In varying ways. the contemporary artists address the politics of racial representation by responding to photographs from the anthropologists' negatives selected by Thomas. These enlarged historical prints form a broken wall through the center of the exhibition space, at once delineating and connecting the two halves of "Emergence from the Shadow."

The binary organization of the exhibition reflects Thomas's own photographic practice. His work is well-known, in part through Ali Kazimi's 1997 documentary Shooting Indians: A Journey with Jeffrey Thomas. Thomas, who has been active as a photographer since the late 1970s, has regularly examined the dualities in aboriginal experience and representation. In the series "Strong Hearts" (1981 -85), for example, he juxtaposed portraits made at various pow wows of aboriginal dancers in ceremonial costume with the same figures in "street dress." For the ongoing series "Cold City Frieze," which he initiated in 1997, Thomas combines photographs of Euro-Canadian monuments depicting First Peoples, with the image of an lroquoian wampum belt. This work, recently exhibited at the McCord Museum in Montreal, provides an aboriginal counterpoint to institutional images of a native "other." In solo exhibitions, Thomas has also paired his work with historic anthropological photographs--in effect, providing a point of departure for his own reworking of the native image. Additionally, Thomas's interest in historic images led him to curate two earlier exhibitions for the National Archives of Canada: "Aboriginal Portraits from The National Archives of Canada" (co-curated with Edward Tompkins, 1997) and "Pride and Dignity" (1998).

The present exhibition arose out of Thomas's experience researching photographs made for the GSC. As a boy, he had heard about anthropologists from the GSC visiting the Six Nations reserve in southwestern Ontario where he spent part of his childhood; Thomas was, in effect, searching for visual evidence of that community in the archives. He likened the experience of going through the collection of glass plate negatives to "finding an old photo album in the attic." [1] Rather than being drawn to images recording traditional activities such as basket weaving and snowshoe-making, Thomas was more intrigued by what he terms fieldwork portraits-likenesses of individuals or small groups made by anthropologists as part of their interview process.

Anthropological fieldwork portraits, dating from 1912 to 1949, make up the first half of "Emergence from the Shadow." They are the work of four anthropologists affiliated with the GSC: Charles Marius Barbeau, Sir Francis Howe Seymour Knowles, Harlan Ingersoll Smith and Frederick Wilkerson Waugh. Each gathered information among the First Nations. Waugh studied Iroquois, Mohawk and Ojibwa groups in central Canada; Knowles worked among the Iroquois of southern Ontario and western New York; Smith researched First Peoples of the Plains, Plateau and Northwest Coast; and Barbeau, one of the most influential anthropologists and folklorists in Canada from the past century, documented the Huron peoples in Qu[acute{e}]bec and Ontario as well as native groups on the west coast. For all four of these figures the camera was just one tool among many--including the tape recorder and calipers--used in calibrating and documenting the physiological characteristics, customs and environments of their native subjects.