Photo project brings dignity to people

Page 18

The Lost Identification Project is more than putting names to pictures, it's restoring dignity to people.

Shirley Bruised Head, education officer for Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump, near Fort Mcleod, Alberta, began thinking about the project almost three years ago. Bruised Head became aware of the unnamed photographs of Native people that are housed in the archives of the Provincial Museum, in Edmonton.

"One of my pet peeves is opening a book and seeing pictures of Indians with no names," said Bruised Head.

Bruised Head developed the idea of displaying the named photographs after Head Smashed in hosted the Nicholas De Grand Maison portraits in 1997.

"I thought it was really something that people recognized some of the people in the portraits ," she said.

Working in conjunction with the Provincial Museum, Provincial Archives, and Department of Historic Sites, Bruised Head helped choose 62 photographs of Plains Indians, mostly of Blackfoot people and some Stoney people, to be displayed in a Head Smashed in gallery this summer.

With half of the pictures mounted and half in albums, Bruised Heads wanted to choose photographs that weren't already in books.

Entitled Lost Identification Project : A Journey of Rediscovery, Bruised Head hopes "rediscovery" will not only come to the nameless faces in the photographs, but also to their descendants.

"I'm hoping that if people come to take a look, that if they see family they'll tell their stories. That's where the rediscovery comes in," she said. Bruised Head feels it is very important for native people to develop their own stories, histories about what occurred from certain events. The stories need to be heard from Native people, she said.

Bruised Head would like to see more than just names given to the photographs. She would like personal histories and small stories regarding the person or event depicted along with the identification of tipis and implements. The photographs range from the early 1800s to 1956.

Bruised Head notes that this show will be the first time the Provincial Archives will have used such a method to identify people in photographs. Past practice has been to invite people to view photographs on a one-on-one basis.

After the display finishes at Head Smashed in at the end of October, it will travel to Brocket, to be viewed by the Peigan Nation, and then to Standoff, to be viewed by the Blood Nation. There's also the possibility it will make its way across the border, into northern Montana. Bruised Head is hopeful that the stops in the First Nation communities will garner more information.

In choosing which photographs to display, Bruised Head says she looked through hundreds of nameless faces. She saw many breath taking" photographs, including some taken by professional photographers.

The lack of names was a sign of the times, because Native people were seen as "a curiosity". They were images in postcards or on calendars. people didn't need to know the individuals," says Bruised Head.

"I hope by naming these people, we can give them back their humanity, their individuality. It's very sad, but those were the times," said Bruised Head.

With the information gathered, Bruised Head would like to put together a genealogy of the Blackfoot in Canada. She sees the new knowledge as a start of a history book.

If the exhibit is successful, she's hoping that another $12,000, that was received through the provincial government to do this display, can be accessed again for more projects such as this one to be undertaken that could restore the dignity to people, who now, are only nameless faces.