Our People, Our Land, Our Images: International Indigenous Photographers

Whether probing personal identity or exploring the world around them, twenty-six indigenous photographers present images that are fresh, provocative, iconoclastic, surprising, and in the broadest and deepest meaning of the word authentic. Their works range from the artful studio portraits of Benjamin A. Haldane (Tsimshian), who photographed Native communities throughout southeast Alaska and British Columbia in the late 1800s and early 1900s, to the cutting-edge digital photographs of contemporary Native artists. Their cameras variously capture startled eyes, hidden laughter, misappropriated icons, and neon signs of cultural change. The vision makers presented here have, in the words of editor Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie, taken on the honorable and weighty responsibility of continuance the responsibility of the artist to speak from the heart with passion and integrity, the responsibility of the photographer to make us see the world afresh.