HAMILTON, NY.- The Picker Art Gallery at Colgate University announces the opening of its new exhibition, Our People, Our Land, Our Images: International Indigenous Photography, on Thursday, January 26, 2017. Opportunities to view Indigenous peoples through the eyes of Indigenous photographers are rare and recent. This exhibition presents the work of photographers from the United States, Canada, Peru, and New Zealand, including newly discovered nineteenth-century pioneers, established contemporary practitioners, and members of the next generation of emerging artists. Reflecting contemporary trends, the photographs vary in style, from straightforward documentary accounts to aesthetically altered images combining overlays and collage. However, the works stand united in exploring their makers’ connections to their lands, communities, and traditions. The multiplicity of perspectives represented by the photographs and accompanying artists statements demonstrates the longevity and continuing vitality of Native traditions and answers the overdue and continued need to expand knowledge of Indigenous self-presentation in photography.

In conjunction with the exhibition at the Picker Art Gallery, a display of works by Indigenous artists in the permanent collections of both the Picker and the Longyear Museum of Anthropology is on view. Additional programming includes a screening of short films by filmmakers Shirley Cheechoo (Cree), Daniel Janke, and Shelley Niro (Mohawk) on Tuesday, February 21, 2017, at 7:00 p.m. in Golden Auditorium at Colgate University. This event is held in conjunction with the Alternative Cinema series and is a collaboration among the Department of Art and Art History, the Film and Media Studies Program, and the Student Film Society at Colgate University. A lecture by exhibiting artists Shelley Niro (Mohawk) and Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie (Seminole/Muskogee/Diné), director, C. N. Gorman Museum, and associate professor, Department of Native American Studies, University of California, Davis, will take place on Thursday, March 30, 2017, at 4:30 p.m. in Golden Auditorium at Colgate University.

Guest curator Veronica Passalacqua of the C. N. Gorman Museum at the University of California, Davis, originally organized Our People, Our Land, Our Images in conjunction with a conference for international Indigenous photographers held at the museum. For the past fifteen years, Passalacqua has been active in the field of Native North American art as a writer, curator, and scholar. Most recently, she facilitated the donation/repatriation of a significant private Lakota collection of artifacts to the Buechel Memorial Lakota Museum, Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota. Previous curatorial work includes exhibitions at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, England; the Navajo Nation Museum, Window Rock, Arizona; and the Barbican Art Gallery, London.

The exhibition is toured by ExhibitsUSA, a national program of Mid-America Arts Alliance. ExhibitsUSA sends more than twenty-five exhibitions on tour to more than one hundred small- and mid-size communities every year. Mid-America is the oldest nonprofit regional arts organization in the United States. More information is available at www.maaa.org and www.eusa.org.

Our People, Our Land, Our Images has previously been on view at the Tarble Arts Center, Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, IL (2011–2012); the Sordoni Art Gallery, Wilkes University, Wilkes-Barre, PA (2013); the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK (2014); the Museum of the Southwest, Midland, TX (2014); and the Oklahoma State University Museum of Art, Stillwater, OK (2016–2017). In July 2017, the exhibition will travel to the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts in Kalamazoo, MI.