Stateside Podcast: Native rethinking for archival photos

By Anna Spidel

Published November 16, 2022 at 11:13 AM EST

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This studio portrait follows the “pictorialist” style popular at the turn of the century. This style frequently featured blurred focus leading to romantic, dreamy images such as this one. Photographs like these aligned with beliefs held by non-Natives about mystical, stoic, and fading Native Americans. Consider this stylized photograph of O-hi-yesa or Charles Eastman, who was a physician, author, activist, and one of the founders of the Boy Scouts of America.

Grace Chandler Horn / Pohrt Collection | UM Clements Library

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Group portrait of three unidentified Crow Indian women wearing mixtures of western and traditional clothing including bead necklaces gathering water in buckets.

Fred E. Miller / Pohrt Collection | UM Clements Library

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Sophie Assiniway is wearing western clothing and hoeing up potatoes near her home in Middle Village, Michigan.

Grace Chandler Horn / Pohrt Collection | UM Clements Library

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Here John Young Bear (front right, smiling) and his friends in Chicago seem to have significant agency in posing, and possibly requested the photo. Perhaps they desired to remember this specific time of their lives, signaled by the broad smile of John Young Bear and his relative ease. This photograph might show Native people in a way they chose rather than as symbols created by Euro-American beliefs.

Unknown / Richard Pohrt, Private Collection

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This image shows Does Anything with his wife and daughter inside a tent. Does Anything can be seen lying down and reading.

Frank A. Rinehart / Pohrt Collection | UM Clements Library

When cameras were first made available to the public for personal use, many Native Americans were not able to access the then-advanced technology. Because of this, many early photos of Indigenous peoples were taken by white people who were able to own and operate the cameras. Often, these pictures were taken without the consent of the people being photographed and used without their knowledge.

To examine the long and complicated history of photography of Native Americans, an exhibit at the University of Michigan displays photos of Anishinaabe people in a unique way.

"We acknowledge that the collecting and purchasing of photographs of Native Americans, even if done in the context of a publicly accessible institutions, keeps the ownership of these objects in the hands of our institution, as opposed to living ancestors or specific tribes, and thus perpetuates some facets of settler colonialism," the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan says about its exhibit. "Photography can be a tool of colonialism, as well as a tool of sovereignty and self identification."

The exhibit, titled “No, not even for a picture”: Re-examining the Native Midwest and Tribes’ Relations to the History of Photography, is on display now at the University of Michigan’s main library.

On today’s Stateside podcast, an exhibit curator discussed how she approached the project and the importance of recognizing the stories behind these photos.

GUEST:

Lindsey Willow Smith, exhibit curator and graduate, University of Michigan History and Museum Studies

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Music in this episode byBlue Dot Sessions.

The University of Michigan holds Michigan Radio's license.