Dana Gluckstein has photographed iconic figures from Nelson Mandela to Muhammad Ali and produced award winning campaigns for Apple. But her inner vision is most revealed through her photographs of Indigenous Peoples. Dana grew up in the Jewish “tribe,” steeped in knowledge of the Holocaust. She was fortunate to grow up knowing all of her great grandparents, and at the Passover table, she listened to those who recounted their own journey to freedom from the concentration camps. These experiences of her heritage engendered a deep affinity for other cultures, and in her early twenties, this calling took Dana to Haiti, then from continent to continent tracking the “ancient ones.” Over three decades, Dana has photographed Indigenous Peoples fighting for their lands, their traditions, their languages, and their very lives against corporate, governmental and missionary interests.
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
Categories: Artists, News & Press, Photographers, Photojournalist
Tags: Dana Gluckstein, DIGNITY, Human Rights, Indigenous People, United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
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Ramin Talaie is an Iranian born photojournalist based in Brooklyn, New York. Ramin is a frequent contributor to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg amongst others. His work has been published worldwide and was recently exhibition at the Fowler Museum at UCLA as part of a group documentation on Iranian-Americans living in the Los Angeles county.
