BARTOSZ HLEBOWICZ

Shadow Catching with the Oneidas

On a photo project in a First Nation community

in Canada

The photography acts like a piece of tape

holding together fragments of experience within and between cultures.

Jolene Rickard

We plant a lot of different plants and we harvest them. And then we pick the corn that we planted

earlier in the summer. And we plant tomatoes and peppers and watermelon, and sometimes even flowers. A

long time ago we couldn’t go to stores to get our food because they were not where we used to live. So, we

had to plant our foods and harvest them for the winter. And we always used to eat plants. But sometimes we

ate a little bit of meat, once in a while. Today we can go to stores to buy our foods. It is still important to

plant, because we don’t want the Creator to be sad or angry. If we forget our ways, he may feel sad or kind of

angry.

That is how a nine-year-old girl from the Oneida “reserve” in Southwold, southern Ontario

described the photo she took of other girls planting various plants close to the ceremonial

longhouse, the center of the traditionally-oriented small group of the Oneida people.

A teenager on an empty sandy road. Dressed in a hooded sweat shirt, Bermuda shorts and a

baseball cup. His shoes look too large for his feet, and that’s probably the young people’s style. On

his right side a small dog walks, and they look like good friends. They are not in a hurry, they seem

to be walking with no particular destination. The photo was taken by a seventeen-year-old girl from

the same Oneida reserve.

The same girl took a photo of a rusty car sitting on the lawn in front of somebody’s house on

the reserve. A 28-year-old woman, a worker at the Oneida Youth Center (a place where Oneida kids

often spend their time, doing homework and surfing the Internet), recognized the car and offered a

description of the photo:

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This is my great-grandfather’s car who is now passed on to the spirit world. When I see this picture I

remember how much he loved his car and how he used to hand-paint it with regular house paint and a regular

paint brush. He would always be out there day and night. My uncle leaves it in the same spot where my

grandfather parked it. It is now rusted because it was over 15 years ago.

The topic of the next photo is Oneida Smoke Dance—a favorite subject for the photographs

taken by a small group of Oneida kids and teenagers during the photo project in the summer of

2007.

Yet another photo shows Oneida Eagle Radio. The teenage girl who took this photo made this

comment:

I’m proud to have a radio station because not many communities have one. The Youth Center has a

radio program there, it is on Tuesdays. They are there for an hour. The other DJs just put their own music on.

But when it is Youth Center's, you can play anything you want, hip hop and R&B... I like all kinds of music,

like even rock’n’roll1.

I would like to describe the idea and realization of a photo project called Bridging the

Distance that I conducted with my colleague Alicja Żroń in two small communities, one in Poland

and one in Canada, during the summer of 2007. Here I will focus on the analysis of interactions

with the local people with whom we cooperated in one of these places — a small Indian reserve2

near London in southern Ontario. The project resulted in a series of photo exhibitions and a book

with numerous color photos taken by kids and photo descriptions (also by kids) published in three

languages: Polish, English and Belarussian.3 However, the book mostly focuses on the project in

the Polish village Nowa Wola (in Podlasie region) and the reasons for it will be explained in the

course of this article.4

Despite the success of the photo exhibitions—in that we reached with them various Native

American communities in the United States and Canada, and in that they did promote some

interactions among them—I have chosen here to concentrate on the discussion of the nature of our

collaboration and the problems that arose at that time. The project was a tough personal experience.

1 The paper version of this article is published in a book Między filmem a teatrem II. Napięcie i poznanie. O

inter-, multi- i transkulturowej komunikacji w sztukach widowiskowych, Sławomir Bobowski, Piotr Rudzki (red.), Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, Wrocław 2014. 2 Oneida settlement is not a “reserve” in a sense of most tribal lands in Canada set aside for the tribes by the

British Crown on the basis of Indian Acts in the past; the Oneidas moving to Ontario bought the land with

their own money. Nevertheless Oneidas themselves in everyday conversations often refer to their land as a

“reserve.” 3 B. Hlebowicz and A. Żroń, Nowa Wola po prostu – Nowa Wola Simply – Н вая В ля а- ,

Michałowo-Wielichowo 2008. 4 The project was funded by the Tokyo Foundation which cooperates with several universities over the world,

including Jagiellonian University in Cracow where I completed my Ph.D. Our project was among those

chosen by the foundation to be implemented in 2007. Alicja Żroń holds Ph.D. in Human Studies, Jagiellonian University, Kraków. Usually, when I write “we,” I refer to Alicja and my experiences, since we two

cooperated during the whole project period. However, for the most part I am trying to present my own

impressions and point of view, therefore often I simply use the first person singular.

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It did not produce quite what we wanted, which was a common artistic action based on mutual

understanding and respect. Although it has been six years since the project took place, some

questions remain on my mind: “why did (or didn’t) he or she do that?”; “what could I have done

differently?”; and “why did this or that go wrong?” They are questions that I believe are the very

essence of anthropology. I share Anthony Cohen’s view of the provisional nature of ethnographic

inquiry: that some words and actions of the people may be interpreted differently after years

because of the author’s accumulated experience and thanks to a longer time distance which perhaps

helps to focus on meaningful details to which one did not pay enough attention before.5 In order to

analyze interactions between the authors of the project and the members of the local community it

will be necessary to narrate several episodes from the time when the photo project was taking

place.

Forgotten community

Oneidas were a part of what is referred to as the Iroquois Confederacy. The Iroquois became

famous after a publication of “League of the Iroquois” by a pioneer of American anthropology,

Lewis H. Morgan, in 1851. The Oneidas of the Thames in Ontario today consist of about five

thousand individuals (of which less than half live on the reserve). In 1840–1845, led by Christian

leaders, they left their homelands in upstate New York and settled on the Thames River. 6 The photo

project in 2007 was my fourth stay among the Oneidas in Ontario. Previously I conducted

fieldwork about their education and identity.7

Oneida is in a certain sense a “forgotten community,” usually unnoticed by the outside world.

It too often witnesses violence connected with social illnesses like alcoholism, drug abuse or youth

5 A. Cohen, “Post-Żieldwork Żieldwork.” Journal of Anthropological Research 4[48] (1992), pp. 339–354

(see p. 346). Previously I attempted to analyze relations between the team members and the members of the

community in: B. Hlebowicz, “Spotkania Oneidów,” in W duchu Szalonego Konia? , Adam Piekarski, ed.,

Wielichowo 2009, pp. 85–104. The present paper unavoidably repeats some of the analysis and conclusions

included in it. See also: M. mijewska, „Małe niezauwa alne światy” [interview with Bartosz Hlebowicz], Gazeta Wyborcza (Białystok), August 2, 2009. Alicja Żroń discussed our project in her article „Budowanie mostu – projekt niedokończony. Most nad oceanem: fotograficzny autoportret dwóch społeczności w Kanadzie i Polsce,” in W duchu Szalonego Konia? , op. cit., pp. 105–120. 6 Oneidas have been endemically factionalised from at least before the American Revolution, and their

divisions have continued until today. Not only do the three major contemporary groups (in Wisconsin,

Ontario, and upstate New York) disagree on many crucial issues, e.g. Oneida identity, tradition, and land

claims, but also each of the groups is strongly divided. More on this topic: J. Campisi, “Ethnic Identity and Boundary Maintenance In Three Oneida Communities,” Ph.D. dissertation, Albany, N.Y., 1974 (on reasons of the Oneidas’ move to Canada and on Christians and adherents to more traditional Iroquois beliefs among the

Canadian Oneidas – see esp. pp. 262–285). 7 B. Hlebowicz, A. Żroń and M. Hyjek, “The Role of Education in Identity Żormation among American and

Canadian Indigenous Communities. Case Studies of Three Haudenosaunee/Iroquois żroups,” SYLFF

Working Papers 21 (March 2004).

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suicide. There are two schools in the community, one run by the tribe with governmental money,

and one run by a small, traditionally-oriented part of the community. The children who took part in

the project came from both schools, but almost without exception they came from traditionally-

oriented families.

My friend among the Oneidas, and a member of the team, was Valerie.8 For several years I

had been keeping close ties with her and her three charming little daughters. I had also stayed at her

place during one of my previous research trips, back in 2004. In her emails there was always a lot

of sad news: someone got killed by a drunk driver, someone committed suicide, someone again

dropped out of the school. The community needs healing—was a recurring message of her emails.

My idea of the project arose thanks to these email exchanges, and Valerie responded

enthusiastically. She also pointed out that the project should serve to bridge the distance between

the generations on the reservation. She thought that the lack of communication between the

younger and the older generations was one of the reasons for the social illnesses on the reserve.

Valerie was our most important contact person in the community. Also, she was responsible for our

accommodation and for assembling a group of young people to take part in the project.

We thought that tradition itself might provide a means of communication on various levels: by

having children listen to the elders about the past, by introducing them to other native communities,

and by having them speak and write about their own photos. Before an important meeting, the

Haudenosaunee (People of the Long House, or the Iroquois) would exchange several belts of

wampum—“the thing that stretches your arms.” Wampum belts were fashioned from purple

(quahog) and white (whelk) shell beads. Such an exchange would symbolize that both sides honor

each other and that a channel of communication had been established.9 We had hoped that the

photos taken by the young people would become a particular kind of wampum which would

channel communication between the generations within the Oneida community and between the

various groups within the community: the majority of the Oneida community in Southwold belongs

to different Christian denominations, but there are also various traditionally oriented groups of

“longhouse people,” often in disagreement over acceptance and interpretation of the teachings of

Handsome Lake, the Seneca prophet of the turn of the eighteenth to nineteenth century.10

We

8 I have struggled with whether I should use the real name of this person or not. She was an official member

of the team and I would not want to treat her differently from other, non-Oneida team members. On the other

hand, she may prefer to keep this minimum of privacy and not be placed so directly in my paper, and this

thought makes me use a fictional name. 9 M. Żoster, “Another Look at the Function of Wampum in Iroquois-White Councils,” in The History and

Culture of Iroquois Diplomacy. An Interdisciplinary Guide to the Treaties of the Six Nations and Their

League, F. Jennings, ed., Syracuse 1985, pp. 99–114 (see p. 104). 10

One of the older Oneidas, a Christian, told me in 2007 that once she approached the traditionalists to learn

from them about Oneida culture. They ridiculed her and for the rest of her life she did not trust these people

anymore.

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hoped that the photos might also facilitate communication between Oneidas and other Native

American communities, including other Oneida groups, and bridge the distance between the people

and the place where they live. We were also curious how the people themselves, especially the

children, would represent their own culture, what they think is important, interesting or disturbing

around them.

Photography seemed the easiest and most attractive method because images are usually

objects of interest. The anthropologists and the photographers have not always been welcomed by

the native communities,11

but this time, by putting the cameras into the hands of the young people,

we attempted to stimulate the young people themselves to act a bit like ethnographers who would

be learning about their own home-place and culture. This was also a method to replace classic

ethnographic interviews with a more neutral approach where participants would speak about their

own photos.

I planned no any sort of salvage anthropology (though I admire Frank Speck), nor did I want

to produce nostalgic images of “vanishing Americans” (or “vanished Americans”), nor to idealize

the people and their lives through particular choice of photo settings, photo techniques or

suggestions as to what children should and should not photograph. I tried to see them—to use the

ironic words of a Comanche author, Paul Chaat Smith—as “plain folks.”12 Most of all, my major

plan was to provide the children with an opportunity to see their own place through some artistic

tool, and we chose the camera’s “eye.” I hoped that this place that too often presents a scenario of

abuse and harm to self as well as others might change into a place that evokes good feelings.

Stretching arms to the others

Throughout our two-month stay on the Oneida reservation we worked with about ten kids or

teenagers. Each of them took part in our activities whenever he/she could or felt like. Forming a

stable group that would work on an every-day basis turned out to be too difficult. Within the first

11

It is not the place here to recount a long story of anthropologists’ and photographers’ involvement with Native Americans. However it is crucial to bear in mind the often pronounced accusations of their being a

tool of the conquest and appropriation of the Indian cultures. See e.g. J. Rickard, “The Occupation of Indigenous Space as ‘Photograph’,” in Native Nations. Journeys in American Photography, J. Alison, ed.,

London 1998, pp. 57–71; R. Hill, “Developed Identities: Seeing the Stereotypes and Beyond,” in Spirit

Capture: Photographs from the National Museum of the American Indian, T. Johnson, ed., Washington D.C.

1998, pp. 139–160; and the famous critique of the role photography and tourism played in “colonizing” Indians in: S. Sontag, On Photography, New York 1978, p. 64. One of the most thorough analyses of

photographing Indians in historical perspective is M. Sandweiss, Print the Legend. Photography and the

American West, New Haven – London 2002, esp. ch. “Momentoes of the Race,” pp. 207–273. See also

footnote 28 in this article. 12

P. C. Smith, “żhost in the Machine,” Aperture (Strong Hearts: Native American Visions and Voices) 139

(Summer 1995), pp. 6–9 (see p. 9).

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few weeks we visited with kids in different parts of the reservation where they were taking photos.

We were also letting them keep our cameras for a couple of days when we were not with them so

that they could take photos of anything they wanted and do so in situations when our presence

would not be disturbing them. We also organized a trip with the young Oneidas to the Munsee-

Delaware reserve in Moraviantown (65 kilometers south-west of Oneida) on June 20 where we

listened to a lecture by Darryl Stonefish, a Delaware historian, who also gave us a tour of the

reservation.

In Oneida we selected twenty-four photos taken by the young Oneidas, constructed wooden

pillars and frames for the photos with the help of two Oneida carpenters who were paid for their

work, and exhibited them in various places within the reservation (in front of Oneida Eagle Radio

station, at the Oneida Fairgrounds, and the Oneida Community Center) and at the neighboring

reserve of the Munsee-Delaware Indians of the Thames. Then we organized two traveling

exhibitions: one to an Oneida community near Green Bay, Wisconsin (July 5-9)13

, and the other

(July 13-17) to various places connected with the Iroquois peoples in New York State: Canandaigua

(a site of 1794 treaty between the young United States and the Iroquois Confederacy of which the

Oneidas have been a part) and Nedrow (south of Syracuse, a reservation of the Onondaga Indians,

the central nation of the Iroquois Confederacy); Six Nations Museum in Onchiota in the

Adirondack Mountains; and Akwesasne Mohawk Indians reservation. In these last two places we

exhibited the children’s photos. In Onchiota kids listened to the lecture about the Mohawk Indians,

and in Akwesasne they took part in a tour of the reservation by a former manager of Akwesasne

Freedom School, Elvera Sargent. In both places they displayed the photos. On the first trip, to

Wisconsin, there were five Oneida kids, one Oneida adult, and Alicja Żroń and me; eleven persons

participated in the second trip: eight Oneida youths, Valerie, Alicja and I.

Us and them

I should recall here several situations from the time of the project as illustrations of our status

as “the others” on the reservation.

For the first few days of the project we were put in the cookhouse next to the Oneida

ceremonial longhouse. We felt it was a bit odd, having no rooms of our own and living where the

Oneidas met and cooked. The lack of bathrooms made us take trips to Valerie’s or to her mother’s

house to take a shower. But the cookhouse is the center of the so-called traditionalists’ life, and we

could observe/take part in various events.

13

Oneidas who now live in Wisconsin left their homeland in upstate New York in 1820s.

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Once a group of non-natives from London, Ontario (the nearest big city), paid the visit to the

Oneidas. They were scientists, artists, and cultural animators who travelled along the Thames

River. Visiting an Oneida settlement was one of the attractions en route. They were welcomed at

the river shore by a bunch of Oneida kids who were taking their photos with our cameras. The

visitors camped outside the cookhouse and in the early morning they were officially and

ceremonially greeted in. We were told to take part in the event too. It was a nice meeting, with an

explanation of how the Oneidas got here in the nineteenth century and about the significance of the

river for them (the longhouse stands just near the river), with tobacco burning and with everybody

shaking each other’s hands and with the leader’s kind greeting to the newcomers—the visitors from

London, not us. There was also a video camerawoman who recorded the meeting with the Oneidas

and who interviewed yet another white person that happened to be in the area. The person

interviewed was a teacher from London who for a few hours worked with the youngest kids giving

them paints and paper to paint on.

Then there was a breakfast, in the cookhouse of course, and several people worked hard to

prepare it, including the three of us. The Londoners paid for their food. “They wanted an event, we

have to profit from it,” one of our hosts explained to us half-joking (later we were asked to pay for

our accommodation at the cookhouse as well).

The “longhouse people” held their annual Strawberry Ceremony a few days after our arrival.

For this day we were asked to leave the reservation. We were aware non-Indians have not been

allowed to participate in the ceremonies in the longhouses of the Iroquois people for several

decades now, but asking us to leave the reserve (which of course we did) seemed to us a rather

exaggerated method of safeguarding the ritual, which we did not intend to observe anyway.

Another important moment was when one of planned exhibitions on the reserve did not take

place. Valerie had an idea about putting the photos on the wooden stands along the road leading to

the longhouse. The idea was excellent because this little road goes through an open space and the

photos could be seen well from a distance, and all who drove to the longhouse would have to drive

through a kind of corridor made of the photos and would have to see them from very close as well.

Even more importantly, we would place the photos the day of the meeting of the traditionalists in

the longhouse, and we would take part in it. Unfortunately, neither the exhibition, nor the meeting

with the people took place: Valerie changed her mind and decided we would only lean the photos

against the wall of the longhouse. I gave up, and lost any enthusiasm in taking part in the meeting.

Now I regret not attending it: perhaps an anthropologist should not have followed his emotions but

let his actions be directed by a cool head and humility. I should have gone there and asked the

people what they thought about the project, whether they wanted to help and, depending on their

answer, try to arrange the exhibition another day. Maybe Valerie was not responsible for this

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sudden change of decision, maybe she was told the people did not wish to have an exhibition

and/or maybe they wanted to talk it over first. We definitely did not speak enough with each other.

The other person whom I got to know during earlier trips, the leader of the traditionalists, who

had provided for us a formal letter of invitation to do a project among the Oneidas,14

and who other

times would talk with me for hours, now barely uttered any phrases. I cannot know why his attitude

changed since my previous visits, but I suspect it was one of the most important factors which

determined the course of our project. Yet the other elderly man with whom I would converse for

long hours during previous visits in Oneida, very knowledgeable about Oneida language and

culture, was outside the group with which we were supposed to work. Evidently his opinions on the

tradition differed from those of the rest of the traditional group. However, we met quite often. Also,

he worked in the tribal radio station and helped us announce the project via radio.

In Southwold we could always count on my friend Robert Doxtator, a member of the

community who in fact had brought me for my first visit to the Oneida community in September

2001. Despite the tragic events that were happening in his family in that period, he always

welcomed us with humor and joviality, and took us for coffee to Tim Horton’s in St. Thomas or

London. These were real moments when our minds could rest. I will always remember a warm hug

of one of the clan mothers when we were leaving the reserve. Her grandson took part in the first

trip, and evidently his impressions were good.

Although we had funds for renting a van, we asked the Oneida authorities to lend us their

tribal van for the trip to Wisconsin. We wanted to see to what extent the community was poised to

support us. If they had complied with our request, we would have used the money we saved to

make larger and more elaborate exhibitions or to provide for more attractions for trip participants

on the way. We made the same request to the traditional school, knowing that they use the van to

bring students to various places connected with Oneida history. None of the institutions was willing

to help. However, we did receive some help from Oneida Youth Center which for example covered

travel insurance for younger participants for the trip to Wisconsin.

“You have to follow the rhythm of the community,” Valerie would tell us more and more

often, when after days of doing nothing we almost begged her to help us organize the work. For

example, there was a condolence ceremony she needed to take part in, there were some deaths in

the community, and we knew our priorities were not theirs. “We have to follow their rhythm,” we

repeated to each other, however, being less and less convinced such a program would work out.

14

The purpose of procuring such a letter was to help us with getting Canadian visas, as at that time it was

required from the Polish citizens going to that state. The letter came, however, too late, but we received visas

nonetheless.

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At the beginning of July we began our journey off the reservation with the photographs and

their authors. The first planned trip was to Wisconsin to exhibit the photos at the festival called

“powwow” on the Oneida reservation near Green Bay. I had arranged it with the powwow

organizers and they secured a big tent for our exhibition close to the dance arena. Two days before

the planned trip Valerie decided not to go, which meant that her daughters (until that moment

working with us in the project) with whom we had established a warm relationship in previous

visits among the Oneidas could not go either. So, just before the departure we had to search for an

official guardian for the children. Valerie’s neighbor, Brenda15

, wanted to go (Brenda’s two teenage

daughters, who worked with us since the beginning of the project, were to go as well), and we

knew that problems could occur as the relationship between Valerie and Brenda were by no means

friendly. I would have preferred a journey without parents, yet we had to have an official chaperon.

Some parents, the friends of Valerie, after hearing that she was not going, decided not to send their

children with us. Yet another one of Valerie’s friends called us around midnight, just a few hours

before the departure. She was angry that her two sons were not going. We were surprised by this

demand since we never even had gotten to know them. At the end, she even wished us to have an

accident on the way to Wisconsin.

However, for the most part the trip went fine. We displayed the photos that we had brought

with us in the tent close to the powwow arena, and we even got to see the Oneida wampum belt in

Chicago. The Wisconsin Oneidas were kind and helpful. Their tribal historian, Loretta Metoxen,

provided a tour of the reservation. There was a little embarrassment during the trip on the

reservation when Brenda announced that she was not going to visit churches. Loretta showed us the

old Presbyterian church and cemetery in Hobart, explaining: “This is the burial place of our

ancestors who were the first to come here from New York and who founded the reservation.” As a

compromise we visited the cemetery, yet we did not enter the church.

The rest of the team learned too late that some of the parents thought the project was about a

group of anthropologists from Europe organizing a trip for kids to go to the Indian powwow in

Wisconsin. What we actually wanted was to organize an ongoing project with the children within

the Oneida reservation and then organize a traveling exhibition for those kids who had worked with

us. After the trips, on and on we heard complaints about why someone was taken for a “trip” and

someone else was not. In small communities, such a situation is not unexpected, but the initial

misinformation probably gave a lot of fuel to the gossips and complaints.

15

I changed the name of a real person.

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Alicja and I often heard ourselves being referred to as “they” by Valerie when she spoke with

others on the phone. The most common expression was: “They changed their plans” —and it was

usually employed when we had told Valerie that what she had announced to the people was not the

same as what we had all decided together in the project.

On the way back from the trip to Wisconsin to Southwold we took the opportunity to stop at

the Chicago Field Museum in order to see the historic Oneida wampum belt.16

We could see the

wampum thanks to the arrangements Loretta Metoxen made with the authorities of the museum.

Brenda and her daughters began to cry when they saw an approximately one-meter belt with violet

and white shells. “It is my sixth visit in Chicago, yet I haven’t seen the belt before. Żrom now on,

whenever we go to Wisconsin we should stop here”—she said. Crying, she asked the museum

worker whether she could offer a pinch of tobacco to the wampum. A nice lady said that of course

it was possible, yet it turned out that Brenda had given the tobacco as a gift to somebody in

Wisconsin and had none left. We had a small bag of tobacco brought from Poland and gave it to

Brenda, yet having examined the tobacco she said that it was not the right tobacco for the offering,

and did not use it.

The quarrels and bad feelings overshadowed the second trip. Dealing with children this time

turned to be too difficult for us. I was unable to control them, some of their rudeness totally

surprised me, and I admit that my reactions were sometimes angry too. Most of all my colleague

Alicja and I realized that we were victims of the conflict between the children’s parents, and we

literally could do nothing about it.

After returning home from the reserve, we started working on the book and website with the

children’s photos and descriptions, like all the team members had decided before starting the

project in the field. To my surprise, when I sent Valerie the link to the working version of the

website with some of the photos the Oneida kids took, she accused me of plagiarism and wrote that

16

In 1995, in compliance with Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act requirements, a

wampum band said to derive from the Oneida was noted as for “repatriation.” Any group demonstrating that this object – purchased by the museum in 1900 – had been taken from them might have it returned. This led

to an as yet unresolved dispute among the three groups of Oneidas (from Wisconsin, New York state, and

Southwold, Canada), as well as several other claimants. The wampum is still kept in a museum safe and

according to the Field Museum will be repatriated to the Oneidas as soon as the competing Oneida groups

find a common solution as to its future preservation (information received during the conversation with Dr.

Helen A. Robbins, repatriation specialist, at Field Museum, July 9, 2007. On a dispute between New York

Oneidas and Wisconsin Oneidas about the ownership of the wampum belt see: “Notice of Intent to Repatriate a Cultural Item in the Possession of the Żield Museum of Natural History, Chicago, IL”, Federal Register

60[40], March 1, 1995, pp. 11109–11110 [http://www.nps.gov/nagpra/fed_notices/nagpradir/nir0017.html]),

and “Minutes Native American Graves Protection And Repatriation Review Committee Tenth Meeting:

October 16-18, 1995, Anchorage, Alaska” [http://www.nps.gov/nagpra/review/meetings/RMS010.PDF]. On

discussion of its origin see M. Becker, “Wampum Out of the Bag: Evaluating Claims by Two Oneida Groups

and Others to a Band in the Żield Museum,” Manuscript on file, Jan. 2008; S. Daniels, “Chief Elijah

Skenandoa brings Oneida Tribal Belt to Wisconsin,” Newsletter of Oneida Cultural Heritage Department 2

(Oneida, Wisconsin), May1997, pp. 1-6.

409

we had no right to continue this work and that our plans were abusive to the children! This

shocking comment made us question the sense of continuing our work: we had hoped that once we

put some photos on the website, the kids would start making their own suggestions as to what to

add and what to change, as well as describing the photos. There was no sense in doing this job

without them. Now, we felt we would need to try to get signed permissions from the children’s

parents so the kids could continue working with us. Maybe I was being too careful—after all we

already had the parents’ signed permissions to bring their kids to Wisconsin as a part of the project,

so it seemed obvious that other parts of the project, obviously less dangerous, would have been OK

with them as well. Asking new permissions was a risk for the project, simply because of its adding

a too formal dimension. Perhaps some of the parents would find it as odd as we did. Anyway, we

sent the permission forms as well as several copies of the Polish journal Tawacin, in which the first

account of the project and photos taken by the kids were published.17

A person whom we asked to

deliver the journals and the forms which we sent her via email, an Oneida, wrote us that the

children were very enthusiastic to see the first effects of the project in print and happy about the

prospect of working on the website and the book. Unfortunately, there were no further answers

from the parents and children. As a result, with no signed forms returned, we ceased working on the

website, and the book about the project we edited—which received very good reviews in local and

national press in Poland18—contains many more photos and their descriptions by the kids from a

Polish village Nowa Wola than from the Oneida. One reason is better communication with the

Nowa Wola community, which included more willingness on the side of children to discuss their

photos. The other reason, though not decisive, may be simply technical: we, living in Poland, could

return to Nowa Wola almost any time we wanted and ask the inhabitants additional questions that

we thought were needed for completing the book.

Distance

1) A project may be healing only when you are able to include and value diversity, and work

with all the parts of the community.19

We believed that referring to tradition would be a good

method to initiate the process of bringing back memory to this place. By bringing the youths to

17

B. Hlebowicz, “To, co sprawia, e wyciągasz ręce,” Tawacin 3(79), pp. 27–30; and eight-page color photos

insert “Bridging the distance – Most nad oceanem” in the middle of the same issue. 18

See e.g. A. Kroh, [review in] Nowe Książki 10, 2009, p. 74; M. mijewska, „Fotograf nie tylko w

kurniku,” Gazeta Wyborcza (Białystok), August 3, 2009; Urszula Krutul, „Taka jest Nowa Wola. Po prostu,” Gazeta Współczesna, July 30, 2009. 19

L. Lippard, The Lure of the Local. Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society, New York-London 1997, p.

290.

410

their elders in order to unearth tribal and family histories, we aimed to enhance a sense of place and

community at the same time. We planned to start the project with traditionally oriented people and,

together with them, stretch our arms towards the others. But our attempts to go beyond the

traditional group mostly failed. Later during the project, Valerie, after one of our attempts to invite

some other children to the project, told us: “You wanted to work with longhouse people, and now

you are trying to get nobody knows who into this project.”

Tying ourselves to a one group brings with it a risk that the other groups inside the

community will remain impartial or hostile towards the project. We were aware of those

limitations, but we did not manage to overcome them.

2) Such a project has the potential to be successful only when everybody is fully informed

about its concept and planned course. A clear statement—made at the beginning of the common

action—of the mutual expectations, as well as duties is a must.20

Before we arrived on the reserve we could count only on Valerie to inform others about the

project, and she said she did advertise it. Also, after our arrival she organized the meetings with the

parents in the cookhouse, but unfortunately only a few individuals showed up. Later we would

learn that those meetings usually took place during other public events in the community. We tried

to make the project known via local radio, and we gave Valerie’s phone number. I do not know if

she received any calls and if she did—considering her unwillingness to have children from “non-

traditional” families working with us—how she responded.

3) Attitude. As Behrend and Kammler have written, we should not come to “the others”

thinking we do a philanthropic social work for them and claiming to know “what’s good for them.”

We (whether in a role of researchers or initiators of an artistic project, or both) are sovereign and

the community to which we come is sovereign—both parts need to be fully aware of that.21

This

means, among other things, respect for each other and readiness to learn from each other. Now I

think that perhaps during the project we too often felt sorry for ourselves for not being shown

adequate appreciation for what we were doing. Expectations on either side were muddled, so

disappointments were inevitable. We had come to them with our new ideas, and their lack of

enthusiasm may have simply indicated lack of interest rather than any bad intensions. Secondly,

because eventually there were (rarer) cases when people did express their satisfaction and gratitude,

which made us see sense in our work.

20

More on “working alliance” see: O. Behrend and H. Kammler, “Fieldwork in a Contemporary First Nation

Community,” European Review of Native American Studies 17[1], 2003, pp. 21–28 (see p. 24). 21

Ibidem.

411

4) Sometimes it is indispensable to have the support and guidance of the community

authorities. In other cases they don’t like to be bothered and try to avoid any involvement. We

realized too late that we put too much confidence in our contact person, and hardly any of her

arrangements worked out. She was not a person of high status within the community, she was just

my friend and a person who in former years had volunteered to help me as a guide within the

community. Maybe some members and/or leaders of the community saw our cooperation with her

as improper? On the other hand, the only elderly person of knowledge and respect who was willing

to work with us was treated as an outsider by the longhouse people, and our contacts with him

might have also put us in a difficult position. This is just a guess. At any rate, letting one person

stand for the whole community was an error.

5) We failed to “root” ourselves, to become “invisible” in the community, despite good past

experiences and acceptance on the side of the community in previous years. In the summer of 2007

we understood just how much we were strangers. Understanding each other—and I think this

applies to individuals more than to abstract “cultures”—is the basic condition of common action.

The problem of “representing the other” can be tackled only after this first one is solved.

6) It turned out to be very difficult to move within a small community that was both tied and

divided by many bonds and stories; where being a friend of one person sometimes meant being an

enemy of another, of which one may not even be aware. At the beginning of our stay we did not

know many of the past events and power balances within the community, including tensions

between the closest neighbors. Especially painful was Valerie’s last minute decision to not go with

us to Wisconsin. This meant that not only her three little daughters were not going either, but also

that some parents—Valerie’s friends—decided not to send their kids, and so we were forced to look

for an almost completely new group of youths that would go with us on the 2000-kilometer

journey, having only a day to complete this task! Fortunately the Oneida Youth Center helped us

complete the group.

7) The project proved to be an exercise in experiencing “the other.” To counterbalance some

of the predicted tensions, I strove to have someone from within the community as a member of our

team. I wanted to diminish the division between the ethnographers and the people “researched.” We

all were supposed to be responsible for the project. Unfortunately, while we were there, I believe

we were “inserted” by our Oneida team member into the stereotype of the “white men” who came

with ideas for the “savages.” This unexpected turn from the role of participant and co-author to a

critic and enemy was especially painful and disastrous for the project. I honestly do not know the

exact reason for this change. I may only be guessing. For example, it may be that she (and maybe

others) was afraid that photos without context were dangerous. “Without context” means taken

from the reservation and then shown or published somewhere else. That we, the strangers, may use

412

them, consciously or not, in an improper way, that maybe something that the community would not

like to reveal would be revealed. Or it may mean that photos would simply lose their context and in

new “frames” become something else, something that the Oneidas would not appreciate and could

not control.22

On the other hand, the photos were taken by the kids, who got permission from their

parents to work with us. And these were the kids who would, if they wanted, shape the website and

the book about the project. Of course, this would not block the possibility of appropriation of the

photos by “others” (that is by ourselves, or by our societies); but again, doing a common project, all

the participants should have assumed the good will of the rest of the members, otherwise working

together would not have made sense.

8) “Coolness.” The project was “cool;”23 some of the children liked taking the photos, there

was even a moment when one of them demonstrated despair when the other participant, obviously

less committed, “offered” to “just leave them all (the photos)” in one of the places where we

exhibited them. And later, when Alicja and I were leaving the reserve after the end of the project,

he was apparently happy when we gave him his favorite large photo of the Chicago wampum belt.

But we also happened to receive a few comments of this kind: “It is like in the school” —for

example when a girl would justify her unwillingness to even leave the van when we were visiting

some other native community. The simple idea of visiting and learning about other Native

communities was not attractive for everybody—contrary to my ethnographer’s mistaken

22

Cf. S. Sontag on “patronizing the reality” by photography: “Żrom “being ‘out there,’ we believe that the

world comes to be “inside” photographs” (S. Sontag, op. cit., p. 80).

One Oneida woman photographed day by day the process of construction of the new longhouse on the

reserve back in 2003 and 2004, and in 2004 she showed us the photo album she made. That is a clear

example of “safe” photos, taken by a member of the community, connected with the spiritual center of the

part of the community and that remain within the reserve, within their proper context. Of course we were not

the first outsiders who came to the Oneidas with cameras. For example already in 1907 their community was

photographed by the anthropologist Mark Harrington. His photos are now held in the National Museum of

the American Indian in Washington, and one of them is featured on the cover of an important 1998 album

published by the National Museum of the American Indian: Spirit Capture…, op. cit.

Examples of Native Americans’ strategies of “shooting back” – creating their own artistic images with

cameras are discussed e.g. in J. Rickard, op. cit., pp. 66–70; M. Gidley, “Reflecting Cultural Identity in Modern American Indian Photography,” in Mirror Writing: (Re-)Constructions of Native American Identity,

T. Claviez and M. Moss, eds., Glienicke/ Berlin – Cambridge/ Massachusetts 2000, pp. 257–282 (see pp.

264–272). Not only Indian artists, however, have consciously produced contra-images, but also other Indians

were able to manipulate their images, charging audiences for their photos or retaining exclusive rights to their

images (Geronimo and Sitting Bull being the most famous examples) or letting their pictures (or portraits by

the painters) be taken in exchange for political gains for their people. Clearly, Indians were not always

victims of photographers (see M. Sandweiss, op. cit., pp. 228 – 230; A. żanser, “Najpierw zobacz Indian w Ameryce. Czarne Stopy, malarze z Niemiec i promocja Parku Narodowego żlacier,” tr. M. Maciołek, Tawacin 3[79] 2007, pp. 3–11). 23

Behrend and Kammler indicate the need of attractive program in teaching the native language. O. Behrend,

H. Kammler, op. cit., p. 26.

413

assumption. Those reactions (fortunately there were positive ones, too) provoke thoughts about

“the tradition.” Attachment to tradition is universally acknowledged, at least visually: images of

Oneida wampum or Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) Confederacy wampum are found on the cars,

homes, stores, and administrative buildings throughout the reserve, as well as appearing on the

flags and dress and body ornaments of the Oneida dancers during powwows. Perhaps there is

another dimension of the tradition, of which we did not think before. Maybe it is perceived as

something too present, too banal, and yet too far from everyday needs and desires. Maybe there

was a threat of learning again and again the same things?24

9) What for us was within the sphere of an artistic and cultural experiment, for the community

members was an everyday reality. People usually do not treat their own lives as an experiment. And

we wanted to make an art and an educational thing out of their lives. We, as outsiders, could not

have avoided a distanced perspective. They, as insiders, perhaps felt uneasy when asked to make

their own self-portrait, to look at themselves from a distance.

Who can portray native culture?

The people to whom an ethnographer goes are more interesting than the ethnographer and his

problems, yet an important issue has to be reflected on. Photos 3 and 4, described at the beginning

of this article, were taken by an Oneida girl after I noticed subjects that were of interest to me and

asked her to take shots (we were in a van, driving through the reserve with the kids). Does it mean

that perhaps I wanted to be the author of their “autoportrait”? That in a way I was taking shots and

they were only releasing the shutter? Or, using film vocabulary, was I a director and they the

24

Yet, I cannot say for sure. I observed such reluctance among our young participants during the trips to other

Iroquois communities. On the other hand, some of them, after the visit at the Delaware community (which,

though geographically closer to the Oneida community, was apparently much less recognizable as “Indian” by our youths – they knew Moraviantown for baseball tournaments organized there rather than for being

another “Żirst Nation” community), seemingly learned a lot and were glad to listen about the Delaware “big house” (which they found similar to their “longhouse”), wampums, or Delaware ways to fish in the river. Maybe the higher level of “otherness” of the Delawares was more encouraging for the young Oneidas than a perceived similarity of other Iroquoian communities.

Maybe the mistake was too little consultation about the potential destination with the kids and their parents?

One of the very few times when we managed to organize a meeting with the kids' guardians to present the list

of proposed places to visit, we heard no response at all as to our suggestions. One of proposed destinations

was the Oneida community in upstate New York – the leaderships of the two groups are divided by a sharp

political conflict about the land claim in the Oneida homelands in New York State – and it is likely that the

kids’ parents did not take a proposal of offering of the “wampum” to the New York Oneidas, e.g. including their territory in the route of our travelling photo-exhibition as something desirable.

414

cameramen? Louis Owens, a famous writer of Choctaw, Cherokee and “dislocated Irish and

Żrench” ancestry,25

claims that when we go to other people and we want to photograph them, we

really do not take photos, but we bring them with us, we “impose an already extant negative” on

“exotic others.” What he means is that “in the field” we (say, we, anthropologists) just confirm

what we already knew (or what we thought we knew), we come with “preexisting stories” and our

point of view will always remain our own point of view (or the point of view of the society from

which we come), and nothing is going to change it. This would further mean that the only

“authentic” point of view is the one of the “subjects”—of the people ethnographer wants “to

study”.26 Is that really so?

Is it possible at all to effectively control how others would perceive us? And who would have

the right to exercise such control over the community representation? Who exactly within the

community could really have such control? Christians? Traditionalists? Who among the

traditionalists? Then, would they be the young or rather the old ones? Would they be officials or

common members of the community? Whoever does it, whoever takes the photographs, transparent

representation is never possible. Nor is one common view. We knew that there would be our

“touch” in the project, we had invented it, we struggled for it, we tried to control it so that it could

go more or less smoothly, and we tried to persuade others that what really mattered was an

exchange between us and them, and the good will of everybody to make something entertaining

and valuable together. Still, we strove to be careful and—as much as it was possible at all—we

tried to avoid to be the “tellers of their story.”27

As a designer of the project I tried to keep my eyes focused on anything that might be

interesting, in order “to not miss anything.” I guess that’s an ethnographer’s flaw (or virtue?). But

what about those “influenced” photos? Are they less “authentic”? Don’t they say something

interesting about the world of the Oneida people even if (in rare cases) I was the one to call the

attention to the subjects? And, even if “directed” by me, don’t they at least partly reflect the

25

This is how the author himself describes his origin s (L. Owens, “Their Shadows before Them. Photographing Indians” (Afterword), in Trading Gazes. Euro-American Women Photographers and Native

North Americans, 1880–1940, New Brunswick, NJ – London, pp. 187–192, see p. 188). 26

Ibidem, p. 189, 191. Cf. opinion on who can produce “authentic” Native American art in: A. Sanborn, op.

cit. 27

In another context a native author (Kwakwaka’wakw Żirst Nations), director of the tribal cultural center, rightly calls for respecting “authentic” tribal art and asks both non-Indians and other tribes not to use

Kwakwaka’wakw culture, art and stories for their own purposes, tourism or sale: “... it is our culture, they are our stories, let us tell them”, Andrea Sanborn, “Kwakwaka’wakw Spirit: Our Art, Our Culture,” European

Review of Native American Studies 19[1], pp. 31–34 (see p. 34).

Despite all what was said, there is the border an anthropologist cannot cross, and I hope I didn’t: you must not “photograph and broadcast the pain” of other people (N.H.H. żraburn, “The Present as History:

Photography and the Inuit, 1959–94”, in Imagining the Arctic. J.C.H. King and Henrietta Lidchi, eds., Seattle

– Vancouver 1998, 160–167, see p. 163).

415

Oneidas’ gaze? The photo of the rusty car stimulated another member of the group to give us a

longer story about it and brought back cherished memories. The particularly good (in my opinion)

photo of a boy and a dog walking on a reservation road perhaps would not have been taken if I had

not encouraged the girl to shoot it. But the kids took many other photos of almost empty Oneida

roads on one hand, and of other young people doing nothing but sitting on benches or walking on

the other—these are typical views and situations on an Oneida reserve (and probably on most other

Indian reserves and reservations). And looking at the photo of the lonely boy (and lonely dog) I

almost sense the sympathy the photo author feels for her subjects.28

However, we cannot disregard the problem of ideology which—whether we realize it or not—

stimulates our project/research, or may use its effects. In colonial times learning about Indians

served to conquer them faster, and once they were conquered and supposedly assimilated,

photography in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries served to “colonialize” them again, to

romanticize them and to make their “vanishing” eternal and unequivocal—good Indians are the

ones that vanish, possibly nostalgically riding towards the setting sun, and herds of tourists kept

coming to admire that spectacle.29

Today, instead, I should be aware that my search for “plain

folks” is, too, a “preexisting story” that I come with. I just think it is a better story than the previous

ones.

Photography, like any other means of artistic and scientific representation of “the other” has a

potential of rendering valuable insights as well as of misleading. I believe the point is not to futilely

28

Among the large photos that travelled with us only one was taken by non-Oneida: my photo of an Oneida

wampum belt from the Field Museum in Chicago which we developed for the sake of the second trip.

However, Valerie let me know several times that she felt uneasy seeing me taking too many (in her opinion)

photos (which of course I was taking most of all to document the project). 29

On appropriation of Native American cultures by “predatory” photography see S. Sontag, op. cit, p. 64.

Contemporary authors notice, however, that despite the efforts of some of the earlier photographers to

produce their own images of Indians that would comfort contemporary white society’s ideologies (e.g. about primitive peoples or vanishing Americans) and reflected the white society’s paternalism and domination, their photos today are a rich source of knowledge on Native Americans, their attitudes and reactions to the

changing times, and that they resist the very stereotypes they were meant to transmit and that sometimes (like

in the case of the Onondaga Indians photos taken at the beginning of the twentieth century) they demonstrate

“vitality and strength of the Iroquois way at a time of increased and overwhelming pressures to conform and to abandon tradition” (L. Hauptman, “Żoreword,” in Onondaga. Portrait of a Native People (Photographs by

Fred R. Wolcott). Syracuse, 1986, pp. 5–10 (see p. 10); cf. L.C. Mitchell, “The Photograph and the American Indian,” in The Photograph and the American Indian, A. L. Bush and L. C. Mitchell, eds. Princeton, NJ,

1994, pp. xi-xxvi (see p. xxvi). The photos show Indians as not passive subjects/ victims of white men

policies, but as “adaptable individuals who frequently exhibit a telling sense of humor” (M. Liberty, “Introduction,” in A Northern Cheyenne Album. Photographs by Thomas B. Marquis, Norman 2007, pp. 3–6,

see p. 6).

416

search for “authenticity” or “accuracy”, not to believe that any “objectivity” is possible,30

or that

photographs provide automatically the “truth” and “understanding”. They do not, at least as long as

you don’t grasp the context (e.g. where, when and by whom the photos are taken), as long as you

are not aware of your own attitude and of the limitations of any common activity undertaken by

people of different cultures. And keep in mind that the product of our effort is not reality, but a

representation of reality, an approximation of it, better yet a reflection of some aspect of it and—

most of all—of our way of seeing it.31

So the photos taken on the Oneida reserve show the world of

the Oneidas with their own eyes and yes, in a way, with my own eyes as well. It was not possible to

be a part of the project and pretend not to be.32

Without doubt, the Oneidas as insiders have the

greater competence to portray their own world, but a look from the distance may be useful as well.

Looking back, it seems that the project was disturbed by the tensions among the members of

the community (working together with someone meant excluding the possibility to work with

others), time pressure (we had certain amount of money and time to conduct the project, and this

limited our possibilities to “follow the rhythm” of the community), the wrong choice of a

coordinator within the community and our lack of skills to adjust flexibly to a changing situation.

***

To what extent have I written about the Oneidas? I don’t know. I prefer to think that these

were, to use Anthony Cohen’s words, individual minds, not the cultures, that acted.33 I prefer to

think that had we been lucky enough to work with some other individuals, the course and outcomes

of the project would have been different, more satisfying. I am also trying not to generalize because

I learned well how easy it is to become the victim of others’ beliefs about white anthropologists.

Doing that project with the Oneidas, I learned a lesson from my former friends: “You thought

it’d be easy to move freely between two worlds, but here nothing’s easy: not for us, and even more

30

Mick żidley asks important questions: “Is it possible for anyone to create “authentic” Indian photographs?... should photographs made by Indians themselves have any kind of privileged status?” Of course there is no space here to discuss this issue in depth, but it is worth keeping in mind those questions

(M. żidley, “Reflecting Cultural Identity,” op. cit., p. 264. 31

Cf. M. żidley, “Representing Others: An Introduction,” in Representing Others. White Views of Indigenous

Peoples. Mick Gidley, ed., Exeter 1992, pp. 1–13 (see pp. 1–2). 32

Our project with the Oneidas was not unique, of course. An excellent example of a project in which non-

Indian photographer and Native American kids from various parts of North America is a travelling exhibition

and the book Shooting Back from the Reservation (the book’s additional subtitle is A Photographic View of

Life by Native American Youth), selected by J. Hubbard, New York 1994. 33

A. Cohen, op. cit., pp. 346, 349–350.

417

not for you”. Still, my conclusion is that if I were asked whether making a photo project do the

sheep good—and if not, why make it?—I would answer: “Why not?”

Łapanie cieni z Oneidami.

O projekcie fotograficznym w tubylczej społeczności

w Kanadzie

Streszczenie

Wiosną i latem 2007 roku młodzi Oneidowie z „rezerwatu” w kanadyjskiej prowincji Ontario, pod kierunkiem kilku antropologów z Europy, wykonali serię zdjęć portretujących swoje miejsce zamieszkania. Potem, z wywołanymi w wielkich rozmiarach zdjęciami, umieszczonymi w drewnianych ramach, wędrowali do ró nych tubylczych społeczności w Kanadzie i Stanach Zjednoczonych, przebywając kilka tysięcy kilometrów. Artykuł omawia ideę i przebieg projektu, a tak e analizuje interakcje między antropologami a tubylczą społecznością oraz problemy związane z przedsięwzięciem, w którym biorą udział z jednej strony „profesjonaliści” – outsiderzy, z drugiej

„tubylcy”, którzy pełnią rolę ekspertów własnej kultury, ale jednocześnie „uczniów”, którzy w

mniejszym lub większym stopniu akceptują i realizują projekt zaproponowany przez przybyszy. Artykuł porusza te kwestię, w jakim stopniu inni, poza samymi uczestnikami danej kultury, mają prawo ją reprezentować. To zagadnienie szczególnie dra liwe w przypadku Indian amerykańskich, których przez pięćset lat kolonizacji biały człowiek próbował asymilować, stereotypizować i „cywilizować”.

1 Planting

2 On the rez road

3 Rusty car

4 Oneida Smoke Dance

5 Oneida Eagle Radio

6 Preparing the exhibition, Oneida reserve, Southwold, June 29, 2007

7 & 8 Preparing the exhibition, Oneida reserve,

Southwold, June 21, 2007