Who gets to tell the story?

Posted by: Rebecca Durkin

I was cautious when I first heard that with our upcoming Peoples of the Plateau exhibit, we were going to display the turn of the century photographs of Native American subjects taken by a white man who felt he was documenting a “vanishing” race. In this Sunday’s thoughtful Pacific Northwest Magazine cover story found in the Seattle Times, art critic Sheila Farr mines this same apprehension, and with insight from Roberta Conner (director of the Tamastslikt Cultural Institute, Pendleton, OR) and Steven Grafe (curator of the traveling exhibit), comes to some very helpful conclusions for anyone who plans to see the exhibit and decide for themselves what is the significance of these images to our understanding of history.

Acknowledging the colonialist overtones in his practice, Farr and Grafe still give credit to Moorhouse for his progressive habit of recording the names of people and places in his photographs, an effort not often seen in the work of his contemporaries. Not only do these identifications make the photographs more useful as a historic document, but they also imply that the subjects are real people and places, not just stereotypes and romanticized landscapes.

At the Burke, we’re balancing the Moorhouse presentation with an exhibit of Plateau objects from our own collection. Titled This Place Called Home, the companion exhibit presents the story of the same Native American subjects, but in their own voices, as told through their cultural materials and taped interviews.

I’m excited to see the shows open this weekend and compare the stories the two shows are telling. Will This Place Called Home serve as a test of sorts for the authenticity of the images in Peoples of the Plateau? And how will the historic photos in Peoples of the Plateau inform the context with which we look at the cultural materials in This Place Called Home?

As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts. The exhibit opens to the public this Sat., Jan. 26.

- Rebecca

Photo: Dr. Whirlwind, Cayuse Tribe, circa 1905, photograph by Lee Moorhouse. From Division of Special Collections and University Archives, University of Oregon Library System. On view in Peoples of the Plateau, Burke Museum, Seattle, Jan. 26 – June 8, 2008.