Shadow Catchers or Shadow Snatchers? Ethical Issues for Photographers of Contemporary Native Americans

Concern over the ethics of depicting Native Americans in photographs grew out of postmodern critiques of power relations and representation, as well as the rising political and cultural awareness of Native Americans themselves. Native American activism and the "Red Power" movement preceded Foucault and Derida, and the latter postmodern authors reflect the concerns already raised by minority and indigenous authors. At the same time as concern over the rights of indigenous peoples has grown, public interest in Native Americans and the photographic record of their history has also burgeoned. The period from the 1970s to the present has been marked by a spate of books on photographers of Native Americans. On the whole these books trace an increasing awareness of the representational issues raised by both Native Americans and postmodern critics, although reviewers have accurately pointed out significant areas for improvement. Collections of photographs by Edward Curtis, the best known photographer of nineteenth-century Native America, illustrate the evolution of sensitivity to indigenous concerns. Beginning with works whose titles retain the "vanishing race" notion fostered by Curtis (despite his own awareness that it was inaccurate), one moves through time to Brown's still ambiguously titled collection of 1972, The North American Indians, which could be taken to imply that Indians, like Curtis, are part of the past (despite the editor's interior contrary statement). Next, Graybill's and Boesen's 1981 title, Visions of a Vanishing Race, is perhaps better, for "visions," in contrast to the earlier "portraits," could at least imply a false perception. Finally, in the 1990s, Lyman unambiguously titled his Curtis compilation, The Vanishing Race and Other Illusion