Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: And now, to one woman’s mission to photograph every Native American tribe in the United States. Matika Wilbur has spent a decade documenting indigenous culture for her photo book, “Project 562.” And she’s joining Hari Sreenivasan to discuss how social and political issues are affecting Native American life.

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HARI SREENIVASAN, INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Christiane, thanks. Matika Wilbur, thanks so much for joining us. You are the author of “Project 562.” And if I get this correct, this was, what, back in 2012 that you decided to start on this adventure, not knowing really how big it is going to be, and you have tried to, what, catalog the 562 federally recognized native nations. I mean, I think that number right there is probably going to be a shock to a lot of people. So, what gave you this interesting idea?

MATIKA WILBUR, PHOTOGRAPHER, “PROJECT 562”: Good afternoon, relatives. My name is Matika Wilbur. I’m from the Swinomishand Tulalip tribes where I am coming to you from today here in (INAUDIBLE) Country. And, yes. So, I am the creator of “Project 562,” which stands for a number of tribes, when I started the project, there are now 574. So, you know, that number is contentious and always changing based on the plenary power of Congress. So, yes. I, in a massive effort and undertaking into taking in 2012, left my home and my family and sold everything and hit the road to visit over 500 tribes in what is now known as the United States. And I traveled for eight years. And my big girl. That’s my RV. She likes to back it up. And, yes, we had a great adventure. I went to over 400 different travel communities. And I — you know, from the Bering Sea all the way to seminal country, to what is now known as Florida. I went to every state. I logged hundreds of thousands of miles and made lots of friends and relatives along the way.

SREENIVASAN: And what gave you the interest to do this? I mean, this is a book of gorgeous portraits, but it’s more than that. It’s also, you know, thumbnail sketch stories of who these people are that you are taking photos of.

WILBUR: Yes. Well, you know, all too often in the public consciousness we have been misrepresented, right, both in textbooks. You know, most textbooks don’t represent native people in a post 1900 context. Therefore, people’s first introductions to native identity is either through Disney representations like “Pocahontas,” where people actually leave thinking that native people can hear the colors of the wind, or, you know, from tales of white male heroism, like Lewis and Clark, who, you know, participated in the sex and slave trade with Sacagawea. But we’ve erased these tales the of native women and of native people in general, and we’ve created this American historical amnesia that celebrates notions like Thanksgiving, which we do every year. Instead of telling the real history of what happened in this country, the story of indigenous dispossession of land, of stolen labor, you know, from enslaved people from Africa and instead, we’ve told a story that completely dilutes the horrible reality of genocide. Over 80 percent of college kids believe that Native Americans are extinct. And the extinction narrative has been re-told over and over and over and over again, right? There’s over 10 million native people in what is now known as the United States. You know, we’ve done things like — we’ve been a part of the growth of this nation. We’ve contributed to the collective consciousness in more ways than I can count. And so, many of the — much of the shaping of this nation was done in concert with indigenous peoples, but that has not been celebrated.

SREENIVASAN: I want to talk — I’m going to go through a few photographs. Let’s just start with kind of the cover here. You’ve got Dr. Henrietta Mann, a Cheyenne member. She’s the cover of the book. And I have to imagine that this — writing this and taking these photos was also an opportunity for you to, well, kind of learn at the footsteps of these folks who were experts in lots of different fields. And even inside, considering you have another, Dr. Mary Evelyn Belgard. What did you learn from these two women?

WILBUR: Well, both are matriarchs in their own right. Dr. Henrietta Mann is Cheyenne. She’s southern Cheyenne. And, you know, she recently was given — awarded by President Biden and given a national endowment of the humanities. And in his speech, he said, you know, because of Dr. Henrietta Mann we teach American Indian studies across the nation She has been a champion of indigenous education for generations now. And, you know, Dr. Henri went to boarding school herself. She experienced firsthand the horrific reality of the American boarding schools that, you know, are still operating today. This isn’t something that happened a long time ago. This is something that is still ongoing, which is this idea that indigenous people should assimilate into western culture And, you know, the boarding schools had a tremendous effect on our people so, for Dr. Henri to be able to go to boarding school, to experience a place where she remembers marching and never being told that she was loved and experienced extreme hatred for her culture and for her beliefs, for her to survive that and then go on and become a Ph.D. and a scholar and then open tribal schools and work towards championing indigenous education is, to me, an incredible feat, as is Dr. Mary Evelyn Belgard, who you mentioned, who, in our — my conversation with her said to me, you know, Matika, when are we going to stop asking our children to choose between cultural education and western education? I think we’re ready to stop the assimilation process. And Dr. Mary was also a champion of indigenous charter schools in New Mexico so that our young people would have the opportunity to learn in their language, which is so profound.

SREENIVASAN: Yes. You’re not necessarily a news photographer, but you also took several images that are in the book from Standing Rock, and there’s an entire section in the book with different portraits. Why was Standing Rock important for native communities beyond just the area affected by the Dakota Access Pipeline?

WILBUR: You know, one of the greatest realizations that I had along the journey is that I realized that many of our people still identify by their traditional place-based identities. You know, us, (INAUDIBLE) means the people of or we’re the people of the salmon (ph), the people of the tide, the people of the blue salt water, the people that live amongst the four sacred mountains, and these other land-based identities. And so, as I went along my journey, I found that all of our people had these traditional place-based identities and a pedagogy to teach our children how to become a steward and how to be in relationship with that land. And so, you know, Standing Rock was a movement to protect that place-based identity. And, you know, I had this realization along the way that, you know, our people, in all of these different places, are experiencing this environmental holocaust. And solastalgia, where even though we haven’t moved or been relocated, we feel displaced because the face of mother earth is changing so dramatically around us. And so, even if we haven’t left our traditional territories, you know, in places like Cocopah, you know, where the Colorado River used to once flow in abundance is now basically dried up from so much diversion and it damning upriver that the people that used to have their coming-of-age ceremonies by swimming the breadth of the Colorado River can no longer do so. The people that used to irrigate from the Colorado River and grow these luscious gardens are no longer able to do so because the river no longer flows there. So, what happens to these place-based identities, who we are as individuals, when modernization is changing the face of earth — mother earth so dramatically around us?

SREENIVASAN: We have another section in here that really starts out with striking image of Quinahamdi (ph). She’s got a red hand painted across her face and she is protesting abuses against native women. And you say in this section, you say, if you read nothing else in this entire book, read this, native women divert deserve safety.

WILBUR: Well, unfortunately, it was a very often that I would meet native women who had told me their stories of survival and their stories of overcoming some of the terrible things that had happened to them. I remember, you know, one grandma told me about, you know, what had happened to her daughter. Another told me about when she was in the military and she was raped and she came home and she had a child born of rape. And, you know, like what was treated unfairly by both the military and by her community because of that, what had happened with that child. I spent a number of months hearing stories from indigenous women who had been violated, who were — in those stories, were taken to Congress when there was an effort to reform the Violence Against Women Act. And so, this is what we know to be true. Three out of four native women experience sexual assault or domestic violence in their lifetime, you know, that is an outrageous egregious number. You know, we have thousands of women that go missing every year. And it should be a public health emergency, a public health crisis, you know? But native women’s bodies have been disregarded. And the safety and the health of indigenous peoples is all too often overlooked.

SREENIVASAN: Another stat that kind of leapt out at me as I was thumbing through this was that suicide is the leading cause of death for Native American youth. And one of the women you profile, Crystalyn Lemieux, she’s a suicide prevention coordinator at the Cook Inlet Tribal Council. What did she tell you about this?

WILBUR: Crystalyn talked to me about the need to create a road to healing for our young people, that it’s so important for our young people. One of the things that she said that really stuck with me is that suicide has a spirit of its own, and that we don’t name suicide often in our communities, because the power of that spirit and the power of naming it, that we’ve chosen instead to use different language to identify that type of death. And, you know, we know that young people most — I think it was pulled like 92 percent of native youth don’t believe they’re going to live beyond the age of 25. And so, you know, we are, in many ways, facing an epidemic of hopelessness with our young people. And so, we need positive representation. Books like this, films like “Reservation Dogs,” representatives like Deb Haaland, you know, so that our young people can see that they can go out into this world and be whomever it is that they want to be, right? But that their reality isn’t rooted and their outcome isn’t rooted in this narrative of poverty or this narrative of hopelessness or this narrative of extinction. They deserve more than that.

SREENIVASAN: Tell me a little bit about Leon Grant.

WILBUR: Yes.

SREENIVASAN: What a remarkable life. I mean, it’s — it is almost, you know, one of these are Zelig type characters and all the different places he’s been and the kinds of impact that he’s had.

WILBUR: Leon Grant is Omaha. I think of him kind of as like the native Forrest Gump in like the best sort of way and that he had many great lives and many vocations. When he was a young man, he was a champion bronc rider. He once rode for like several — like over 50 days straight in Madison Square Garden. When he went back home, he decided that he wanted to go to college. And he went to his parents and he told them, like, you know, I heard they are letting native people into college in Arizona. Of course, this was before schools were integrated and before native people were allowed into college. And he had heard they were allowing that kind of continued education in Arizona. And so, he asked them if he could go to college. And his parents were like, no, you’re going to stay here, you’re going to be a rancher. And so, when they went to town to get some feed, he wrote them a note, he said, I’m going to college. I’ll be back in four years. And he proceeded to walk like over 1,000 miles from Omaha, Nebraska, to Phoenix, Arizona. When he arrived, he didn’t have any money. So, he went to that school. He offered them tobacco. He said, I don’t have money, I don’t have transcripts, but I swear to God, if you let me in, I’ll pay back every red cent. You know, and they let him in. He proceeded to graduate and eventually go on to theology school and then, eventually law school. And then, you know, he worked during the civil rights movement to open the first American Indian center in the country in Phoenix, Arizona at a time when it was very dangerous to be a native person, when we need public — we needed public spaces. And Leon championed those public spaces in a lot of ways. And so, when Leon passed away, the State of Arizona named that day after him for the work he had done for the social justice and civil liberties of indigenous people.

SREENIVASAN: One of the groups that is under attack right now are LGBTQ people, and one of the people that you profiled, J. Miko Thomas. Tell me, what is a Two-Spirit perso?

WILBUR: Miko is an incredible friend and a leader of the Two-Spirit Powwow in the bay area. Traditionally, you know, two-spirit has several meanings depending on which community you would talk to. But colloquially and generally, I might say that a two-spirit person is a person that identifies with having both a male and female spirit, or maybe an androgynous spirit. You know, pre-colonization, our communities celebrated several two-spirit, three-spirit or four-spirit genders. We didn’t just have two genders in many of our societies. Many of our languages were not gendered. Many of our languages were defined by spirit, like Anishinaabe, the language is defined by what has a spirit and what does not, for instance. So, like the entire world view is fundamentally different, right? But many two-spirit people in our societies held special roles in our communities, both power holding roles, politically and also spiritually and also familiarly. It wasn’t quite as taboo or controversial, as it is in western society or in western religious belief systems. We had a different belies about two-spirit people. Of course, colonization changed that. And so, there has been a deep need for us to create safe spaces for our two-spirit relatives.

SREENIVASAN: So, you had this unbelievable opportunity to meet so many different types of native peoples on their land, in all these different contexts, over several years. Looking back now, was there a common thread to your conversations? Is there something that pulled this book together for you?

WILBUR: I would overwhelmingly say that the common thread is that I found incredible humanity, right? We are often told that the world is a very scary place, and this country is a very scary place, right? There’s way too many guns in this country. There’s way too many things that are happening that are very dangerous. So, I don’t want to overlook that reality and that truth. But I have found, on a personal level, when I go to a stranger’s home and I put my hand out and I bring food and snacks and gifts and come in a good way in Indian country, that I have been overwhelmingly supported with kindness and love and goodness. And that humanity that exists is worthy of talking about.

SREENIVASAN: Photographer and author, Matika Wilbur, the book is called “Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America,” thanks so much for joining us.

WILBUR: Thank you so much. It’s a real pleasure to be here.