Pride and Dignity

Luminace: Aboriginal photographic portraits

In the early 1820s, American portrait artist George Catlin, began a tradition whereby the Plains tribes would become the focus of North American monumental portraiture of Aboriginal people. This tradition lasted into the first decade of the twentieth century through the work of American photographer Edward S. Curtis. While living and working in Philadelphia, Catlin was jarred by the appearance of a visiting delegation of Indian leaders from the Western Plains. Dressed in their finest clothing of buckskin, eagle feathers, moccasins and facial paint, they created quite a contrast on the streets of Phildelphia. Catlin was so impressed by this sight that from 1830 to 1836, he travelled the Western Plains to record these "picturesque and noble Red Men" ² by painting and drawing hundreds of portraits and scenes of Aboriginal life. Catlin's dual portrait of Assiniboin man Wi-jun-jon (Fig. 4) forms a poignant road sign of the impending tidal wave that would engulf the Plains tribes at the conclusion of the American Civil War in 1864. Wi-jun-jon's transformation and Catlin's record of it remains current today, serving as a metaphor for the dual realities of many Aboriginal peoples caught between the traditional and contemporary worlds. Within my own photographic practice, the use of juxtaposition through the diptych format plays a role in revealing the disparities inherent in my life as an urban Iroquoian and photographer.

Clearly, Catlin had opened the door for a succession of strategies that would use Indians for commercial or academic gain: Buffalo Bill and his Wild West Shows, P.T. Barnum's circus, dime store novels, Hollywood Westerns, anthropological fascination with Plains warrior societies, countless books about old-time Indians and even the Boy Scouts.

Catlin's late 1840s European exhibition tour of The Indian Gallery began to use live Indian performers. One of those Indian performers was George Henry (Fig. 5) , a well-educated Methodist minister who organized a travelling dance troup in 1845 and took them to England where he met and joined Catlin's show. While performing the war dance and demonstrating the "act of scalping" ³ for audiences, Henry used his Ojibwa name Maun-gua-daus (Great Hero). He is also one of the earliest Aboriginals to be photographed.

Source

Figure 4 - Wi-jun-jon (The Light), son of an Assiniboin chief, going to Washington, D.C., and returning to his home. Photographer: George Catlin, ca. 1831. National Archives of Canada

Source

Figure 5 - Maun-gua-daus (George Henry), Chief of the Ojibwa Nation, ca. 1846- 1848. Photographer: Unknown. Daguerreotype. National Archives of Canada

 

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