SILETZ NEWS
Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians
Vol. 43, No. 5
May 2015
Siletz News
Confederated Tribes of
Siletz Indians
P.O. Box 549
Siletz, OR 97380-0549
Delores Pigsley,
Tribal Chairman
Brenda Bremner,
General Manager
and Editor-in-Chief
Presorted
First-Class
Mail
U.S. Postage
Paid - Permit
No. 178
Salem, OR
Portland Art
Museum to
present major
exhibition of
Indian photos
Courtesy photo by Kathy Kentta Robinson
Bella Gomez (left) and Jaretzi Alonso enjoy an Easter egg hunt for Siletz Tribal Head Start students on Government Hill in
Siletz. See more photos on page 13.
STAHS presents 10 baskets at Tribal Council meeting
The Siletz Tribal Arts
and Heritage Society
acquired 10 beautiful bas-
kets in February and early
March. The baskets were
presented to the Tribal
Council and then delivered
to our repository on March
20 for our future Siletz
Cultural Center.
STAHS works directly
with our Culture Depart-
ment staff to identify and
acquire appropriate bas-
kets. Most baskets are pur-
chased or donated.
STAHS is a nonprofit
corporation and accepts
tax-deductible donations.
I n F e b r u a r y, G r a n d
Ronde cultural staff gifted
the Siletz Tribe with a Siletz
basket recovered with other
stolen property during a
police raid in Marion County.
Special thanks to the Grand
Ronde Tribe for helping us
build our collection.
The Portland Art Museum is proud to
present Capturing Indians: Native Pho-
tographers and the Edward Curtis Legacy
from Feb. 5 to May 6, 2016.
This major exhibition will feature
contemporary photographs by Ameri-
can Indian photographers Zig Jackson,
Wendy Red Star, Matika Wilbur and Will
Wilson in dialogue with photographs from
Edward Sheriff Curtis’ renowned body of
work The North American Indian.
This exhibition and associated edu-
cational programming will ask visitors to
consider Curtis’ continuing influence on the
interpretation of American Indian culture
while highlighting contemporary reactions
to his complex role within the history of
representation of indigenous peoples.
Capturing Indians will feature mul-
tiple volumes from the groundbreaking
publication The North American Indian.
Funded by financier and philanthropist
J.P. Morgan, the 20-book set was pub-
lished in a limited edition between 1907
and 1930.
Curtis’ magnum opus charts the cul-
tural practices, languages and traditions
of more than 80 American Indian Tribes.
More than 1,500 photogravures illustrate
the book volumes and the portfolios hold
an additional 700 large-scale images.
Rich both for its artistry and histori-
cal content, The North American Indian
is considered one of the most significant
non-indigenous records of American
Indian culture ever produced and the
museum possesses a complete set.
Curtis, a non-Native who believed that
American Indians were a “vanishing race,”
produced a meaningful yet romanticized
record of Tribal life at the turn of the 20 th
century. The photographs he included in
The North American Indian document
significant aspects of daily life and mate-
rial culture, and encourage nostalgia for
societies under threat of elimination.
This beautiful but often idealized
representation of Native culture has
elicited both praise and scrutiny as many
photographs were posed and manipulated
in order to eliminate signs of modern life
and create the artifice of a pre-European
snapshot in time.
Yet, because of Curtis’ thorough
documentation, some present-day Tribal
members utilize The North American
Indian to identify ancestors and cultural
objects critical to their histories.
In response to the current rich dia-
logues surrounding Curtis’ photographs,
See Photos on page 4