Connecting to Indigenous Place Based Identity Through Art
Connecting to Indigenous Place Based Identity Through Art
Courtesy of Community Memorial Museum of Sutter County and Matika Wilbur
On June 9th, 2018 the Sutter County Museum in Yuba City, California will open an incredibly moving, articulate, and insightful exhibition: Natural Wanderment: Stewardship, Sovereignty, Sacredness. This special exhibition has been developed by Swinomish and Tulalip (Washington) photographer Matika Wilbur. Each image in the exhibition has been carefully selected from Wilbur’s ongoing documentary photography project: Project 562 – an effort to photograph over 562 federally recognized Native American Tribes in the United States.
Project 562 is an inspiring artistic adventure unfolding the living history of North America’s ancient peoples. Over the last five years and 250,000 miles, Matika Wilbur, one of the nation’s leading photographers, has journeyed tirelessly to hear the stories and imbibe the culture and wisdom of the original peoples of the land. From Alaska to the Southwest, Louisiana to upper Maine, to date she has acquired portraits and compelling narratives from over 400 tribal communities. The stunning and unprecedented work of Project 562 has been featured in national and international media, attracted scores of thousands of visitors to galleries and museums in the U.S. and around the world, been awarded leading creativity grants, and drawn invitations from leading universities and institutions. Wilbur’s artistic mission has caused intense conversation and transformative awareness about the vibrant, multifaceted identity of Native Americans she is brilliantly exploring.
With over 100 federally-recognized tribes, California has the largest Native American population and some of the most distinctive tribes of any U.S. state. However, most published material concerning California Natives promotes an unjustifiable and outdated version of Californian history, overtly glorifying the mission experience from a colonized lens. The indigenous perspective, experience, and contribution are mostly excluded from state and national dialogues, or, when included, are represented in false and demeaning ways.
In contrast, the collection of 40 narratives shown in Natural Wanderment offer compelling affirmation for our first peoples and transformative awareness for progressive audiences seeking genuine, positive images and connection with Californian and other Native Americans. Each image reflects Wilbur’s consummate craftsmanship, showcasing her subjects in vital mutualism with the lands on which they live and which they steward.
Wilbur has encountered in every visit to tribal nations long-standing struggles of activists, seed-keepers, wild rice harvesters, elders, and other culture bearers to maintain and re-establish indigenous rights to natural places and resources. From the Apache struggle to maintain access to their sacred prayer place, Miccusookee’s fight for the Everglades, Lummi’s opposition to coal trains, Paiutes in dire battles for water rights in California, Southwest tribes’ organized protests against fracking and sacred despoliation . . . the list goes on.
Wilbur says about Natural Wanderment: “I’m able to share these remarkable portraits and narratives before the end of this total project, as it is crucial that these diverse Native Americans’ values and purposes be known right now. And I’ve featured the land itself, places of breathtaking beauty and wonder that inspire me to keep going in this long and demanding journey I’m on. The show is inspired by the peoples I’ve encountered and how I felt (and wrote in my journal) watching a sunrise above the Bonneville Flats in Utah – ‘Never had the earth been so lovely, nor the sun so bright, as just now.’
To learn more, please email Museum Director Jessica Hougen at jhougen@suttercountymuseum.org or visit www.suttercountymuseum.org. To learn more about Project 562, visit www.project562.com or follow on instagram at @project_562.
SIDEBAR:
The Community Memorial Museum of Sutter County shares local stories to strengthen community bonds, to inspire celebration of our diverse cultural heritage, and to demonstrate how understanding the past prepares us for the future.
This is the new mission statement of the Community Memorial Museum of Sutter County, located in Yuba City, California. Sutter County overwhelmingly identities as conservative. At the same time, it is an exceptionally diverse county, including significant Hispanic and Asian (particularly East Indian) communities.
This conservatism contrasted with our diversity gives Sutter County a very interesting dynamic. The Museum strives to be a place of belonging for every member of our community, thus the mention of our diverse cultural heritage in our mission statement. We at the Museum truly believe that our diversity is what makes us strong, not just in Sutter County or California but in the United States. To capitalize on this strength, we need to have an understanding of our neighbors. This is a community need that we try to meet.
While we have a permanent exhibit on the Maidu Nisenan and their history in Sutter County, we feel it is very important that the general population has an understanding that Native Americans are not relegated to the past. They are people alive in the here and now, engaged in the modern world while honoring their culture and traditions.
As a rural community particularly connected to the land, the Natural Wanderment collection is particularly apt for the Community Memorial Museum to exhibit. Many of the people who live in Sutter County can count back the generations of their family who have worked the land, and they feel a strong connection to that land. Our hope is that this exhibit elicits a deeper understanding of the importance of land stewardship in preserving our planet for future generations.
