Peggy Fontenot, PATAWOMECK, POTAWATOMI Descent, USA

The prevailing late 19th-century view was that Indians should be absorbed as rapidly as possible into White society: their reservations broken up, tribal authority abolished, traditional religions and languages eradicated. Federal policy embodied this attitude: tribes were no longer independent governments; reservation lands were allotted to individual Indians in units of 40-160 acres (remaining land was to be sold to whites to pay for Indian education). Photographer Edward S. Curtis (in)famously spent 30 years documenting “vanishing” North American Indians. My photography documents the exact opposite. It portrays their ability to survive as individuals, as clans, and as tribes, while fighting governmental bounties, forced removals, germ warfare, and assimilation. It is a testament to the fact that assimilation, for the most part, did not and will not work.