Photographs made with my uncles on ancestral land on the
Agua Caliente Indian Reservation, Sec-he ("Palm Springs, California")

Say Uncle is an ongoing photo project that explores the tension between being seen and seeing. For this work I photographed my uncle in different canyons on the Agua Caliente Indian Reservation in Séc-He ("palm springs, ca"), our ancestral homeland. Together we travel across the land, following the same paths that our family has walked for countless generations. Traditional migration routes open up into portals across the land, making way for reinterpretation of some of the same scenes that our family has always seen, and some new. 

The imagery seeks to acknowledge the act of observing and acknowledging the dual lineages of understanding the land, people and other life in the canyons; one of Indigenous symbiotic relation, and another of colonial ownership and occupation. Séc-He, a famous vacation spot for wealthy Americans, was one of Edward Curtis' sites for his infamous project "The North American Indian". The legacy of his photographs, and images like them, has long been contended with by Indigenous photographers, looking to self represent. Identity politics in the photographic medium have provided one of the few avenues for Indigenous and other non-white photographers to make progress in the fine art world. 

By photographing my own family, on our own ancestral land in contrast with the colonial markings of settler society on the place, I call into question equity of the photographic image, and highlight our general unwillingness to view photographs from the same perspective as a larger settler society. The photographs serve as portals into my and my family's own cultural understanding of our origin point. Moments of colonial creep unsettle the space shared by the same people, my ancestors, for time immemorial.