Last December, Native American photographer Matika Wilbur embarked upon a journey with a staggeringly ambitious goal — over the next few years, she hopes to photograph members of every single Native American tribe. There were 562 recognized by the federal government when she started (and 566 now), hence the project’s title: Project 562.
On the most basic level, her photography simply and elegantly seeks to answer an immeasurably complex question: what does it mean to be Native American today? There’s no neat or easy answer to that query — not that American mass media has tried particularly hard (or at all, really) to come up with one. When representations of Indigenous people and cultures do appear in pop culture, the depictions tend to be either ridiculously stereotypical, shallowly and thoughtlessly appropriated, or they wander into the realm of offensive sexualized caricature with no connection to reality at all — an especially horrific tendency when you consider the fact that Native American women are raped and abused at epidemic rates. So, despite Johnny Depp’s heartfelt insistence, Native children have nothing to look up to or identify with in his Tonto, and despite Chanel’s tepid apologies, putting a model in a fashion headdress during a Cowboys & Indians-themed runway show is not “a tribute to the beauty of craftsmanship.”
“I believe that the way that we’re continuously misrepresented in mass media does have an effect on our younger generation,” Matika tells me over the phone when asked to explain the motivation between Project 562. “It does shape the consciousness. It does set up a racist experience for my theoretical children and my nieces and nephews. If I can be a part of changing that, I’d like to be.” Misrepresentation is far from the only issue with how Native Americans are depicted in the media — there’s also the problem of visibility. Indigenous people are frequently and inaccurately portrayed as a dwindling population, as people of the past. In a recent TED Talk, Matika put it thusly:
Between 1990 and 2000 there were 5,868 blockbuster-released films. Twelve included American Indians. All of them showed Indians as spiritual and in tune with nature, ten of them as impoverished and/or beaten down by society, ten as as continually in conflict with whites. However, the image of the professional photographer, the musician, the teacher, the doctor — they were largely absent.
What’s interesting is how this image manifests itself into our psyche. You see, when this image is shown to a young Native person, they report feeling lower self esteem and depressed about what they are able to become or likely to become. Shockingly, when shown to the white counterpart, their self esteem is raised.
“How can we be seen as modern, successful people if we are constantly presented as the leathered and feathered vanishing race?” she asks. It’s not a rhetorical question — it’s something her work looks to solve, in part by “counteracting these images to create positive indigenous role models for this century.” When asked what she hopes to accomplish, she replies, “I hope that it can be about the people I photograph, an offering for the people. I really think that we’re capable now of healing ourselves of the historical inaccuracies and traumas around Native America and this country.” Project 562’s Kickstarter page — which was funded last week, exceeding its $54,000 goal by a whopping $159,4161 — echoes this intention:
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