Reclamation, An Exhibition Featuring Two Contemporary Native Photographers

University of Oregon’s Special Collections & University Archives is pleased to announce the opening of Reclamation, an exhibition featuring two contemporary Native photographers, Zig Jackson and Pamela Peters.  Jackson’s  and Peters’ photographs aim to dismantle popular mythology around Native culture and to reaffirm the sovereignty of Indigenous identity, land, and traditions. 

Pamela J Peters (b. 1970) is a Diné multimedia artist and documentarian from the Navajo Reservation who currently resides in Los Angeles, California.  She defines her photography as “Indigenous Realism,”  exploring the complexities of contemporary Native culture and life, while also debunking the notion of Native Americans as inhabiting a cliched and anachronistic past. Her visual approach intends to “change the way Americans see Indians today … reflecting them through an indigenous-aesthetic lens.” The photographs on display focus on the protests that emerged in response to the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) that was ultimately constructed through the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.   

Zig Jackson (aka Rising Buffalo, born 1957) grew up on Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota and is of Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara descent.  Through performative acts and a deep insight into the problems of photographing “the other,”  Jackson challenges ideas of what it is to be Native American and documents the ever-changing realities of Indigenous life in the United States.  Jackson is a professor at the Savannah College of Art & Design in Georgia, and he exhibits widely throughout the United States and abroad. In 2021, Jackson was the first Native American to receive the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in photography.  The work on view spans over two decades of Jackson’s artistic career.   

Jackson’s and Peters’  work was acquired by Special Collections & University Archives in 2021, and is now available for use by researchers, faculty, students, and staff.  Reclamation is a companion exhibition to the current Unceded Kinship: Land, Place and People exhibition in Knight Library and is part of a series of events associated with the UO Common Reading of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer.