DIGNITY AND CHANGE

DIGNITY’s powerful text, stirring museum collected images, along with an impassioned call-to-action create a historic book in support of Indigenous Peoples—who comprise six percent of the global population and are amongst its most impoverished and oppressed inhabitants. With inspirational text and photographs, DIGNITY is intended to give a fuller awareness of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (http://www.state.gov/s/tribalconsultation/declaration/) and to advocate for its global implementation. The declaration was adopted by 144 countries in 2007 and is the most comprehensive global statement of the measures every government should enact to ensure the survival, dignity, and well-being of Indigenous Peoples around the world.

As the Obama administration has recently announced a “formal review” of the U.S. position, the publication of DIGNITY comes at a timely moment. In 2007, the U.S. voted against the declaration, along with Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. Since then, New Zealand adopted the declaration, as well as Australia along with making a formal apology to the Aborigines. It is now a critical opportunity to encourage the Obama Administration to endorse this important human rights declaration and ensure the rights and dignity of our Indigenous communities around the world.

TAKE ACTION ON INDIGENOUS RIGHTS NOW: http://www.aiusa.org/undrip

STORIES OF HOPE

When I photographed in Zambia, impoverished boys from the Goba tribe, knowing that nothing remained of their authentic ceremonial adornments, made cardboard masks for their portrait. In Namibia, Ovazemba girls posed, one with a plastic toy cell phone dangling from a necklace and the other with a bra and no shirt – a collision of traditional, modern and missionary cultures.  I photographed a traditional Fijian warrior who had just returned from fighting a distant war in Iraq. The images from Bhutan depict the contradictions facing this ancient and mystical Himalayan culture whose admirable gross national product is measured in moments of happiness rather than the acquisition of material things. An onslaught of Bollywood and Hollywood images since television’s introduction in 2000, however, threaten traditional values.  At a religious festival, a school boy dressed in his traditional gho crouches with his toy rifle.

Recently, I photographed a San Bushman elder in Botswana, keeper of the legendary rock paintings at Tsodilo Hills, a descendent of the world’s most ancient, peaceful, hunting-gathering cultures.  The elder can no longer provide for his people because the government now requires him to purchase a “hunting license” he cannot afford.  He asked, “How can we pass on our traditional dances and songs if we cannot hunt, if we have no skins?”  His people have been forcibly removed to squalid resettlement camps because their land sits atop lucrative diamond mines.

Amidst such degradation and dispossession, there are stories of hope.  The images of the Hawaiian Chanter, depict the cultural renaissance of Native Hawaiians who seek to heal the centuries of cultural erosion and loss of identity that followed the theft of their kingdom.  Now their children attend Hawaiian cultural immersion programs where they learn to speak their once forbidden Hawaiian language, to dance their traditional hula, and to feel proud of their heritage.

Photograph by Dana Gluckstein

Photograph by Dana Gluckstein

Photograph by Dana Gluckstein

Photograph by Dana Gluckstein

For more info please visit:

http://www.danagluckstein.com/

Clip featuring a voiceover by Hugh Masekela of Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s foreword to DIGNITY: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tP8bI3DEYB8

A recent blog by Dana on Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-gluckstein/international-day-of-indi_b_669425.html

Statement Concerning Change

Change is one constant in everyone’s life that simply cannot be stopped, or for the lack of better word changed.  Photography documents the changes in our lives, whether in the form of a snapshot or a professionally taken portrait. A picture captures a moment in our life which can be studied and then becomes a point of reference. Photography has documented history and continues to do so. It is the perfect tool for bridging the gap between the past and the future or the West or East, the good and the bad. While we speak many languages, photography is the one language that does not change and is understood by all.

Contribution to Change

This is a series of informal portraits depicting individuals in Iran. The pictures were shot in Tehran during two trips in 2009.  In my images, I sought to document Iranians in their environment exactly as I saw them. I tried to demonstrate the diversity of Iranians — from the old Haji (Muslims who have gone to pilgrimage) photographed in a public bath, to the young female musician who posed for me in a park in central Tehran.

For more info please visit www.ramintalaie.com