Really, one of the things I love about art is that it provokes and evokes. Okay, those are two things, but they are connected. 
Recently, an issue regarding the appropriateness or "okay-ness" of using photographs of cultural items (regalia items) on wearable art made me think of one of my favourite quotes on photography.  It is from Tuscarora artist and visual historian Jolene Rikard. She states, that photographs are not real life but may haunt you into seeking life. It is a personal favourite because it gets to the heart of a question that anyone needs to clarify if they are to critique photography in art:

What is the relationship between photographs and reality? 

Is a photograph just an indexical trace of something that happened in the past? Is it just empty vessel that can be used to trap or capture a person, thing or event that was at a different time and different place meaningful--culturally or spiritually? Is a photograph only supposed to signify or represent something that is "out there"? If you were to answer "yes" to these last few questions, I would say that you may be both affording too much agency to a photograph, and limiting it's potentialities.

The idea that a photograph merely represents something/someone else is connected to a realist and representational paradigm that was made popular through colonial pursuits of documenting, collecting, essentializing, and organizing Indigenous Peoples and their culture: Of what is refered to as "salvaging the savage". A colonial perspective of photography would suggest that a photograph has the power to capture the essence of a person or a sacred cultural item in its entirety. The agency of the power of the photograph and it's maker is privileged over the agency of the subject of the photograph itself. 

Now one of the problems I see with affording this type of power to the photograph, as an Indigenous woman who carries sacred items, is that the significant meaning and value of these items may only be understood through real life experience. Therefore, a photograph will never represent or reflect the relationship I have with a sacred item --this, I need to live out in my own way every day. If it did, all I would need to do to take care of my spiritual health would be to fill my house full of images of things and people (actually some people do this, but that should probably be left to another discussion). 

Then what is the relationship between photography and reality? Well, the photograph itself is the result of a complex, ever changing relationship between its maker, the apparatus and other material equipment needed to make the photograph visible, and the viewer or consumer. The relationship is not fixed, but emergent. It changes across time and place. It changes from one context of viewing to another. So as fixed and stable as a photograph may appear, there is really nothing permanent or stable about it.
 
If photographs do not represent or capture one reality, what they can do is evoke particular experiences that challenge us to reflect on multiple realities. Hence, my reference to a photograph's potentialities.   This is why some people can look at, let's say, a colonial photograph and "see" both assimilation and perseverance. 

Now, I'm not arguing that it is right or okay for a company to exploit Indigenous culture just to make huge profits. I'm not in support of a billion dollar conglomerate like Victoria Secret or American Eagle mass producing First Nations imagery on panties or muscle t-shirts (on a side note I'm also not in support of the exploitation of labour involved in producing said clothing); however, I do think that an Indigenous artist intentionally using a photograph of a cultural item in their arts process to produce a new material art object that will take on a life, form and meaning(s) of it's own is something entirely different.   

To me, I see an intentional choice to visualize and materialize an Indigenous presence, which is very significant given how Indigenous Peoples and issues relevant to their way of life are rendered invisible through colonial (visual) narratives and myths. If anything, I see the potential of, as Rickard puts it, "haunting (our Indigenous) People into seeking life"... and maybe even life through seeking those cultural items photographed. 



 

 

There seems to be a general consensus among scholars interested in material culture studies--that is-- the need to give "things" in society, what Bruno Latour would call, "a social thought." While scholars differ in their understanding of what this means and what this process entails, a "new" materialist or object-oriented approach would argue that in order to give things a social thought, one must replace the notion that objects (everything from shoes to paintings) are just a backdrop to human action with the understanding that objects are active participants (or actors) in society. As actors, things have agency over our thoughts and actions. 

Given my own cultural and academic background, as soon as "agency" enters the picture, my thoughts veer towards specific situations and structures that relate to, for example, hegemony, power, colonialism, but also, resurgence, revival, and decolonization.  Specifically, I always ask myself how can our material culture today contribute to studies of our own history of colonization and decolonization as Anishinabeg people?  

It is relatively easy to find writings that address this question. However, I find that these critiques hold a literary bias that is mostly concerned with how the colonizer REPRESENTS our Indigenous identity and culture--how stereotypes are created and used to cement historical and  contemporary colonial  beliefs of who Indigenous Peoples are, what they know, and what they have. Most people in my family and circle of friends are familiar with at least one popularized example of cultural appropriation and misrepresentation (e.g. recent hipster fashion trends, athletic team brands, etc.)     

While this scholarship is important, it has left a void that I believe can be addressed through the marriage of materiality, contemporary colonial and decolonial theory, and methods that focus on Indigenous Peoples' daily activities and life experiences . What I suggest is an approach to our material culture that allows the object to assist us in relating to one another and in learning,  telling and re-telling our own histories, which have been subjugated by dominant historical colonial narratives and myths. 

What do I mean by this?  

I have a good example. 

Last week at our Anishinabemowin language class, our community Kitchi-Anishinabwekwe raised a copy of our new language dictionary during her opening remarks. She held it in her hand as she spoke. She spoke about her history of being in residential school as a little girl. She spoke about the difficulty of learning the English language because her mouth "would just not move the way it needed to" (in order to make the right sounds). She spoke of how terrified she and the other children were of the English books because no matter how hard they tried, they couldn't do it... how they were just handed these books with no help or instruction from the teacher... and how the teachers would beat them when they couldn't do it. Another Kitchi-Anishinabekwe spoke of her little sister's experiences during her first year at residential school. She spoke about how her little sister was afraid and pretended to read by just doing what the other children were doing... holding the book up. She spoke of how she watched her little sister get physically reprimanded because her book was upside down. 
 These kitchi-Anishinabekwewag spoke of books as prison and punishment. 

Since then, I "look" at my books through the filter of her story and books now mark me in a very different way.