Seattle photographer Matika Wilbur has a little exercise she encourages new acquaintances to perform: Do a Google image search for “Native American” and see what you get.
The first result on a recent attempt is a grainy, sepia-toned picture of an unidentified Indian chief staring into the distance like a lost soul and decked out exactly (and unfortunately) as one might expect: in a headdress of tall feathers and a vest made of carved animal horns.
The photo seems to be from early in the previous century.
The 30-year-old Wilbur, a member of the Tulalip and Swinomish tribes of Puget Sound, knows perhaps as much as anyone how out-of-whack that Google result really is.
She is halfway through a journey funded via Kickstarter to visit and document every federally recognized tribe in the United States — more than 500 in all.
For the past 18 months, she has been taking new images to replace the tired ones that pop up in Internet searches, in the mainstream media — and in our minds.
She calls her three-year campaign Project 562, the “562” representing the number of recognized tribes when she began the project. As of the spring, the number was 566.
The first 50 or so gallery-ready images from the project are on exhibit through Oct. 5 at the Tacoma Art Museum in Washington. (Wilbur visited Ohio in 2013 for an exhibit of her work at the River House Arts gallery in Perrysburg.)
Her visual-documentation effort marks the most ambitious involving Native Americans since Edward Curtis undertook a similar challenge at the beginning of the 20th century. Back then, Indians on this continent were widely thought to be going extinct and needed to be photographed for posterity.
Wilbur is also concerned about photographing Native Americans for posterity, but her project involves more a story of survival and advancement than one of extinction.
“How can we be seen as modern, successful people if we are continually represented as the leathered and feathered vanishing race?” Wilbur says in a clip on Kickstarter.
In person, she makes an equally powerful impression — telling stories, laughing out loud and giving hugs, but also speaking earnestly about her work.
Native Americans make up only 1.7 percent of the U.S. population, or about 5.2 million people, according to the 2010 census.
As Native American tribes negotiate for things such as federal recognition and access to natural resources, Wilbur says it helps to show that Indian society remains intact and functional, albeit diminished.
“Imagery matters,” she says. “Representation matters.”
Her project began in the fall of 2012, when Wilbur, a schoolteacher, gave up her job and hit the road.
She laid the groundwork by networking through Facebook, tribal newspapers, cultural leaders, professors and even distant relatives to get out the word and drum up contacts. In the first round of her Kickstarter campaign to fund her travels, she raised $35,000.
To date, she has visited more than 220 tribal lands from Long Island to Louisiana, Hawaii to Alaska, armed with little more than a camera and audio equipment, and a willingness to live out of her car and sleep in the homes of strangers.
In the field, Wilbur gains access to tribal events and behind-the-scenes moments that are off-limits to most outsiders.
Wilbur, who maintains a small staff of volunteers based in different cities, seems to have struck a chord. A second Kickstarter campaign to continue the project netted pledges totaling $213,461.
Project 562 is only partly a photographic journey. It is also a social documentary — a contemporary oral account by people young and old, blue-collar and professional — of what life is for an Indian in the United States.
Wilbur’s portraits don’t avoid colorful Indian attire and ceremonies. From White Mountain Apache crown dancers in full body paint and headdresses to traditional hoop dancers, the collection celebrates customs and rituals. But presented among pictures of academics, activists, students, family men, career women and cowboys who are Indians, the images have a better context.