Copying People: Photographing British Columbia First Nations, 1860-1940

David R. Hutchinson is an educator on the Peguis Reserve in Manitoba.

Copying People features more than 160 images of Native peoples in
British Columbia, taken from the 1860s to the 1930s. The photographs
were taken primarily by professional photographers intent on preserving
what they believed to be the final images of a dying race. As indicated
in the book’s introduction, however, both the presumed impending
extinction of British Columbia’s First Nations, as well as many of the
“traditional” portraits, were largely invented by non-Native
commercial photographers. “Photographers,” writes the author,
“were trying to produce images that conformed to certain ideas about
the Native people. Viewers must ask themselves to what degree these
photographs mirror reality, and to what degree they create it.”

As Francis discovered, many of the photographs were staged, often to
the point where photographers supplied clothing, wigs, and other props
to ensure that their work would be viewed as authentic. The photography
sessions proved to be a commercial boon for the photographers, and in
many cases the aboriginal subjects received payment for their sittings.
This book invites the reader/viewer to question the photographers’
assumptions and motives, as well as their relationship to such
contemporary phenomena as cultural appropriation, racist stereotypes,
and systematic discrimination.

Copying People would be an excellent resource for anyone interested in
the early work

of Euro-Canadian photographers with Native peoples, and, more
specifically, for educators, historians, cultural anthropologists, and
students who are searching for a more critical social-theoretical angle
on this subject.