(light piano music)
- [Steven] I'm at the Portland Art Museum.
With Wendy Red Star, an artist who produced
an extraordinary series of annotated photographs.
- [Wendy] I was doing research on two images
of Medicine Crow and what I found was
that they were delegation portraits taken in 1880.
And Medicine Crow and five other chiefs
traveled to Washington DC to meet with the president
discussing land and territory.
The Pacific Railroad was going to be placed
through our territory.
- [Steven] These peace delegations,
different Native Americans would travel
to Washington for negotiations.
- [Wendy] I had been seeing images of Medicine Crow
being used for giant murals and for Honest Tea
and it made me wonder, do they know who Medicine Crow is?
Do they even know that it's his name
and do they know why he sat down to take this photograph?
And I can say that, probably not.
- [Steven] So these were images that were appropriated
for commercial use.
Their meaning was transformed for other purposes.
And there's a kind of devaluing of these people
and of the culture that they represent that results.
- [Wendy] As a Crow woman who grew up
on the Crow Indian Reservation, I am viewing these men
as something totally different
than a non-native person or a non-Crow.
- [Steven] So these were images
that were constructed by Anglo-Americans,
these were not constructed by the Native Americans.
- [Wendy] No, but the beauty of looking at these portraits
is you can see their personality and their style
creating this tension between the white photographer's
perspective and that government perspective
and their own individuality and their own pride too,
of showing who they are and who their nation is.
- [Steven] And for photographs from 1880, they're really
sharp, they convey a lot of visual information.
But you haven't left the photographs alone.
The figures are enlivened by these annotations
with arrows and outlines accentuating who they are
and what they're wearing with a level of detail
that invites the viewer to spend time looking.
- [Wendy] If we look at this full length portrait
of Medicine Crow looking at this thing
that looks like a bow, it's called a hair bow.
In order for him to wear that he had to do
a certain war deed, in this case it was
to overcome an enemy and to slice their throat.
- [Steven] So this was a vehicle for you personally
to investigate Crow history, but more specifically
the history of these individuals.
- [Wendy] I wanted to show the viewer
that these are real people.
These aren't just a symbol of the native spirit or a chief.
I wanted to show that this is much more complicated
than this aesthetically pleasing image.
- [Steven] And I think that was especially important
because C.M. Bell, the photographer who was responsible
for these images, is sometimes criticized
for not having even identified the sitter.
Sometimes failing to identify
the nation that the man came from.
And so you're reasserting their individuality,
their place within their own society,
in a way that restores them to our common history.
- [Wendy] They didn't really care about them
as individuals, they were more specimens
and their material culture was collected and put
in natural history museums because native people
were viewed as part of the natural world.
It kinds of gets you into the thinking of the time
that these native indigenous people
were put in that position
so that it was easier to then dehumanize them.
- [Steven] So you're taking something
that was intentionally ethnographic and making it fine art.
- [Wendy] I actually know their descendants
and I participate in Crow culture,
so they're familiar to me.
They are real people to me.
- [Steven] So some of your annotations are very specific,
iconographic references, this means this.
But some of them are commentary, some of them are humorous
and all of it becomes therefore very personal.
- [Wendy] It is very personal.
So yeah, there are some funny things.
With this Two Belly image,
I can kick your ass with these eyes.
- [Steven] (laughs) Looks like he can.
- [Wendy] But also in the same sense, I know his descendants
who have written on the image,
Eloise Plenty Hoops and John Adams.
- [Steven] So just as their clothing writes their history
on them, the history that you've recovered,
you've written back into these images.
- [Wendy] This is why I love art.
For me I look at art as a way for me to learn
and this body of work took me
on this incredible educational adventure.
I didn't realize that they had to do
these four specific things in order to become a chief.
The feather that you'll see on Chief Plenty Coups
on the back of his head, that meant that he was the first
to touch an enemy within battle.
- [Steven] A kind of counting coup.
- [Wendy] And his name's Chief Plenty Coups.
If they have the white ermine on their leggings,
that meant that they stole a horse within an enemy camp.
So they did these deeds which weren't easy
and that is what they're trying to tell you.
Chief in Crow is bacheeitche, which means good man.
- [Steven] So these are really accomplished men,
they're men that have reason to be really proud
of their positions and the kind of acclaim
that they would have had within their own society.
But here, in Washington, more than 1,000 miles away
from their home, they're representing those accomplishments,
they're representing their identity
within this alien environment.
- [Wendy] From Montana, they had to take a wagon train
with horses, through the snow, to Utah.
So from Utah they went to Chicago.
And they actually became very ill,
because this is the first time
they've been around so many people.
And then from Chicago they were able
to connect to Washington D.C.
And this trip they actually spent several months
in Washington, which is a tactic that the government
liked to use for getting native people to sign documents.
Make them homesick, or just show them all your military
and they'll become afraid and realize they have no chance.
But the fact that they've brought all of their regalia
shows that they knew that they needed
to show their best to the president.
- [Steven] In many of the images, you actually
have the sitter speaking their name in the Crow language
and so they are themselves reasserting their identity.
- [Wendy] For me the damage done to indigenous people,
the erasing of who they are, was very important
to bring that back.
So it was really important for me to have them assert
themselves, like, this is who I am this is my name
and I'm here to ensure the future generation of Crow people.
(upbeat piano music)