See the Stunning Archival Photographs That Tell the Stories of Everyday Native Life and Communities

The Archive Center at the National Museum of the American Indian presents a new exhibition that can help “interrupt the romanticized, stereotypical images often shared of Native peoples throughout history”

It’s 1910. A young girl stands on a road, with trees and buildings behind her. She’s wearing a formal dress with dozens of elk teeth sewn into the fabric. Her expression is light. She closes her eyes and playfully sticks out her tongue.

She is Sarah Grandmother’s Knife, an Apsáalooke (Crow) 10-year-old in Montana. She’s the subject of a black-and-white photograph in the Fred Meyer photography collection, whose original card catalog simply identified her as “woman in costume.” However, through looking into archives and genealogies, researchers have been able to identify Sarah Grandmother’s Knife and more information about her life—including that she was married twice, had eight children and died of cancer in 1957.

The photograph of Grandmother’s Knife features prominently in “InSight: Photos and Stories From the Archives,” a new exhibition from the Archives Center at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). Opening on May 23, the exhibition shares photographs selected from the more than a half million images stewarded by the museum, ranging from the late 19th century to the present day. “InSight” gives viewers the opportunity to see these photographs on walls, in photo books and, in the case of Grandmother’s Knife, in a large life-size panel.

The museum’s Archive Center began developing the exhibition around 2021, and the collaboration included head archivist Emily Moazami, reference archivist Nathan Sowry and processing archivist Rachel Menyuk. Sowry says that one of the goals of the exhibition was to provide a platform for Native images and stories. Another goal was to show the full scope of Native life.

“One really big thing that we wanted to focus on is a lot of the museum, a lot of the exhibits historically at this museum, have been a more heavy and serious tone,” Sowry says. “We wanted to show that Native peoples are just like everybody else. We don’t have to focus just on negative history, but instead some of the lighter sides, and some of the joyful moments and some of the intimate moments. You can see all of that through these photos.”

Many of the photographs featured in the exhibition show young people having fun and participating in cultural activities—including a young boy smiling with a black puppy, children enjoying popsicle sticks and a young girl in 1918 holding a porcelain doll. The photographs also show how Native peoples were present during all parts of American history. Other images include military veteran and activist Grace Thorpe’s photos from around Asia as a recruiter in the Women’s Army Corps during World War II and soldiers from the 120th Engineer Combat Battalion playing a game of stickball in Iraq.

Moazami says that pictures of everyday life help interrupt the romanticized, stereotypical images often shared of Native peoples throughout history, such as Edward S. Curtis’ photographs. She references a 1975 family photograph of artist John D. Garcia’s family, an image in which any viewer might see themselves represented.

“I love this dress from the ’70s,” Moazami says, pointing to a patterned outfit worn by potter Lois Gutierrez. “I would wear any of this clothing.” The photograph “dispels the image of Native people always in regalia,” she adds. “This could be anybody’s family from the ’70s.”

The curators for “InSight” stress that this exhibition could only be created through deep collaboration with Native communities and museum visitors, as part of the curatorial process included public surveys where visitors could identify which photos they most wanted to see in the show. Menyuk notes the importance of online spaces for connecting and sharing stories. For example, around 2014, the Archive Center posted a blog featuring a William Stiles photograph of an Innu man, Thommy Mestokosho, playing a guitar. Mestokosho’s granddaughter Lydia Mestokosho-Paradis was able to get in touch with the Archive Center, and the center was able to share the photograph with the family along with some of Mestokosho’s letters. When including the same photograph in “InSight,” they reached out to Mestokosho-Paradis again, who engaged even more with the museum.

Mestokosho-Paradis “went to her whole family, they all sat down and wrote up a little piece about her grandfather Thommy, who had since then passed away,” Menyuk says. “It was just a really beautiful circular moment of being able to get the words about this amazing guy with his hair and his guitar, and just learn a little bit more about him from his family.”

The Archives Center at NMAI includes a huge collection of photographs and archival materials, with many artifacts having their own idiosyncratic history of how they wound up in the museum. For example, the museum obtained a letter written by Grace Thorpe to her mother during World War II because someone had found it in an antique shop. But not all object histories are as easy to trace. NMAI was established in 1989 by an act of Congress, yet much of the museum’s collections come from the older Museum of the American Indian/Heye Foundation, established in New York City in 1916. Many archival materials were initially paired with field notes not written in conversation with Native peoples, or they were simply mailed to the museum and accepted.

Today, the study of museum objects’ origins is called “provenance history,” and NMAI museum specialist Maria Galban is dedicated to studying these histories. The museum also collaborates with others in the Smithsonian Institution to help share information about historical artifacts. These efforts include the Audiovisual Media Preservation Initiative, which helps digitize audiovisual collections (especially quickly deteriorating audio tapes), and the NMAI culture thesaurus, which ensures accuracy for cultural terms within the Smithsonian (a process sometimes called “reparative description”). For the curators, it’s important that their work extends beyond just their own archives.

“We really don’t think that our job just ends at the entrance to NMAI or to the CRC [Cultural Resources Center],” Sowry says. “We kind of refer to it as the ‘archival diaspora,’ where people’s—especially Indigenous people’s—cultural belongings and cultural materials are spread everywhere at museums and cultural institutions throughout the world.”

And the collaboration the Archive Center most prioritizes is with Native communities themselves, providing reference services to community members, scholars and the general public. Since April, the center has hosted community visits with members from Alaska, North Dakota, El Salvador and elsewhere. During these visits, the center helps look up names within the archives in hope of making connections. The connection works both ways: Sometimes elder community members can identify previously unnamed people in photographs at the center, and sometimes the center will share photographs with family members for the first time.

“It’s such a powerful moment when it happens, and it happens regularly,” Moazami says of helping people recognize family histories. “It’s such an honor to be a part of that experience, to be with a person when they are able to see a relative for the first time, a visual cue for the first time.”

Menyuk says that she sometimes finds fun in the “detective” element of their process, but that overall the curators really see themselves as the “stewards” of these connections more than anything. “We don’t see ourselves as the experts on any of this,” Moazami adds. “It’s the people, the community, that are the experts and the best interpreters of their own culture rather than us.”

Menyuk notes that sometimes there’s a misconception that archives can be “stuffy,” but the “InSight” exhibition offers viewers the opportunity to discover forgotten histories, even going into the future.

“We’re still collaborating with Native communities and with family members, where we might not know the names of the people in these photos yet,” Menyuk says. “That’s a work in progress; this is all still a work in progress. That’s part of the dynamism of archives, that these stories are still developing. Even as this exhibit goes up, we’re still working on it.”