Pride and Dignity

Luminace: Aboriginal photographic portraits

My interest in historical photographic practice began in the early 1970s when I encountered the work of Edward S. Curtis. His monumental 20-volume work The North American Indian, published in the early twentieth century, ignited my desire to learn about Aboriginal history. Curtis' powerful Indian icons and white society's merchandising of the sterotypical Indian provided a paradox. Just as George Catlin had started out with good intentions towards Aboriginal people, Edward Curtis was also on a mission to photographically preserve the vanishing core of Aboriginal society, its elders, the last generation to have experienced cultural autonomy before the imposition of reserve life. Catlin succumbed to merchandising of the Indian when his exhibitions began to fail. But the merchandising of Curtis' work began long after he died. During the early 1970s, there was a resurgence of interest in his work. Suddenly, Curtis photographs were everywhere from books, calendars and posters to museum exhibitions and postcards to T-shirts (Fig. 6). When I looked at a Curtis portrait, I was drawn to the person, I thought about the family elders I knew, I thought about history and about how little I knew, and I wanted to know about the person and era.

Today, Curtis portrait of Blackfoot man Kyaiyi-stamik (Fig. 7)is usually seen without any supporting information, such as Curtis' descriptive caption or text, leaving Bear Bull open to be seen as a simple anachronism. I wanted to know more about the man  --  the history behind the knot of hair over his forehead; his role in his community; living conditions on his reserve; what he did for a living and I wanted to see his family. Essentially, I wanted an environmental portrait  --  a view that showed the relationship between the sitter, the land and his community. But Curtis made it very clear that a contemporary documentary view was not part of his vision for The North American Indian:

"I made one resolve, that the pictures should be made according to the best of modern methods and of a size that the face might be studied as the Indian's own flesh. And above all, none of these pictures would admit anything which betokened civilization, whether in an article of dress or landscapes or objects on the ground. These pictures were to be transcriptions for future generations that they might behold the Indian as nearly lifelike as possible as he moved about before he ever saw a paleface or knew there was anything human or in nature other than what he himself had seen." ⁴

The Curtis portrait of Bear Bull was designed, through the use of profile and open space, to illustrate the top knot over his forehead. Curtis' brief caption provided the following information: "Illustrates an ancient Blackfoot method of arranging the hair."⁵ In Bear Bull's community the top knot was a signifier of his role as a spiritual healer, its origin reaching back into Aboriginal history. Bear Bull was also a cultural historian who Curtis used to describe the warrior society structure. Looking at his profile, the deep lines in his skin reveal a roadmap to that ancient society, a place of pride, dignity and autonomy. Bear Bull's portrait should also be read along with the social realities facing his community at the time. Bear Bull was born in 1859 between the Battle River and Saskatchewan River and this portrait was taken ca. 1900 when he was living on the Piegan Reserve, in the soon-to-be established province of Alberta. His world was disrupted, first by smallpox and fur and whisky traders; followed by government and railway survey teams; then the loss of the buffalo herds, government treaty delegations, the reserve system, settlers, farms and cities. As a result, his family and community were torn apart by government policies of assimilation and his children forced to pass through the dark corridor of the residential school system. Museum field teams descended upon Bear Bull's community to collect and preserve, in white museums, the words and artifacts that were representative of his vanished world. Bear Bull may still have functioned as a spiritual healer but under all of these pressures, the warrior societies, the key focal point in the Blackfoot male social structure, collapsed and the Sun Dance ceremony, the core of Blackfoot society, was outlawed by the Canadian government.

Figure 6 - Odawa pow-wow spectator wearing a t-shirt with Edward S. Curtis portrait of Cheyenne man, Half-moon, 1993. Photographer: Jeff Thomas. Collection of the author.

Source

Figure 7 - Kyaiyi-stamik (Bear Bull), a member of the Blackfoot Nation, Alberta, 1926. Photographer: Edward S. Curtis. Photogravure. National Archives of Canada

 

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10

Copyright/Sources