Celebrating Native American Tribal Nations: Photography Exhibition at 808 Gallery

Celebrating Native American Tribal Nations: Photography Exhibition at 808 Gallery
Natural Wanderment, a collection of photos by Matika Wilbur, is on view through March 8
Natural Wanderment: Stewardship. Sovereignty. Sacredness, on view at the 808 Gallery through March 8, examines Native American relationships to land, spirituality, and the ongoing fight for sovereignty. Photo by Julian Massari (ENG’26)
This article was originally published in BU Today on February 12, 2024. By Sophie Yarin.
Excerpt
People of the Blue Water. People of the Tall Pines. People of the Four Sacred Mountains. These are the names of three Native American tribal nations, translated into English. You might be more familiar with other names: Havasupai, Hualapai, Navajo (or Diné).
But as photographer Matika Wilbur (Swinomish and Tulalip) discovered over a 12-plus-year journey photographing approximately 400 of the tribal nations of the United States, there is no separating Native American identity from the land itself. Wilbur’s ongoing photo series, Project 562 (a reference to the 562 federally recognized tribal nations in the country at the time), forms the basis of a fascinating new photo exhibition, Natural Wanderment: Stewardship. Sovereignty. Sacredness, on view at the 808 Gallery through March 8.
“We are our homelands,” Wilbur says in the foreword to her New York Times best-selling book, Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America (Ten Speed, 2023), which chronicles her ambitious project. “There is no separation. And what is done to Mother Earth, is done to us.”
By 2023, Project 562 had taken Wilbur 600,000 miles across all 50 states, traveling by RV from Alaska to Florida and a vast number of places in between. She interviewed and photographed hundreds of people and met thousands more. As she recounts in the foreword, she asked many of her subjects the same questions: “about sovereignty, blood quantum, overcoming racism, education, and what it means to be an Indian,” and the idea for Natural Wanderment came about when a large cross section of her responses veered toward the same notion.

“I realized that the better question is, what does it mean to be Tulalip or Swinomish or Warm Springs, and…those answers were more related to the original agreements of the land,” Wilbur said during a Q&A held by the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication. “I started questioning…how do we maintain that land-based identity when, on many occasions, the land that we are from historically no longer resembles our original identity or our original agreement?”
In Natural Wanderment, Wilbur addresses that question through nearly 40 portraits of Native American individuals—a fraction of the total that make up Project 562—nearly all of them posed in front of breathtaking vistas: mountains, prairies, canyons, and lakes. In keeping with her thesis that the Native American experience is not monolithic, the photos included in the show reveal and celebrate the depth and breadth of indigenous experience in North America. The land, the faces, the clothing, the rituals differ widely from the Miccosukee Nation of the Florida Everglades to the Kanaka Maoli of Hawaii, yet it’s the connection to the land—and the attempts by federal and local institutions to thwart that connection—that unites Wilbur’s subjects.
Among the portraits in the show is one of Starflower Montoya (Diegueño Barona and Taos Pueblo), who grew up in Southern California, but each year engages in a 12,000-year-old ritual pilgrimage to New Mexico’s Blue Lake, the most sacred site of the Taos Pueblo. It’s an act that in present times holds an even deeper layer of meaning, as the Taos Pueblo were denied sovereignty over the site for nearly 70 years, starting in 1906. The lake site was returned to the Taos Pueblo nation in 1970, when President Richard Nixon signed the Blue Lake Bill, the first successful piece of Native American land-back legislation.
We are our homelands. There is no separation. And what is done to Mother Earth, is done to us.
Elsewhere in the exhibition is a portrait of Michael Frank (Miccosukee), a seer and guardian. “In his childhood in the Everglades, Frank’s family and community enjoyed plentiful fish and hunted for deer, bear, and alligator,” the accompanying caption reads. “Now widespread toxic mercury levels in the Everglades prevent the tribe from fishing, compromising this crucial aspect of the culture along with many others.” But Frank remains resolute.
“All our land is sacred…respect our sovereignty, respect our home, respect our tradition,” he says in the caption. “We know they will destroy our home if we walk and talk like the rest of the world.”
Natural Wanderment was brought to Boston University through a collaboration among Wilbur, the BU Arts Initiative, and BU Art Galleries. BUAG intern Bo Yeon Chon (GRS’26), who designed and arranged the exhibition in the 808 Gallery, was motivated to create a walk-through experience that was reminiscent of Wilbur’s own journey.

Don’t miss this exhibition, on view through March 8!
Natural Wanderment: Stewardship. Sovereignty. Sacredness. is on view at the 808 Gallery, 808 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, through March 8. The gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday, from 11 am to 5 pm. Admission is free to the public.
RELATED EVENT
Matika Wilbur will discuss her work at an artist talk on Tuesday, February 20, at the Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground, 808 Commonwealth Ave., from 6 to 8 pm. The event, sponsored by the College of Fine Arts, BU Arts Initiative, BU Art Galleries, BU Diversity & Inclusion, LGBTQIA+ Center for Faculty & Staff, and LGBTQIA+ Student Resource Center, is free and open to all members of the BU community. Register here.