DIGNITY: TRIBES IN TRANSITION
DIGNITY is a multifaceted, many-layered project that captures the collision of modernity and tradition, globalization and indigeneity with grace, elegance, and profound humanity.
–Jill Deupi, Chief Curator of the Lowe Art Museum
The Indigenous Peoples of the world have a gift to give the world that the world needs desperately, this reminder that we are made for harmony, for interdependence. If we are ever truly able to prosper, it will be only together.
- Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Laureate
Woman with Pipe, Haiti, 1983
Chanter, Hawaii, 1996
Tribal Man in Transition, Kenya, 1985
Butterfly, Tewa Dancer, Ohkay Owingeh, New Mexico, 2013
Aboriginal Artist, Gathering of Elders, Onondaga Nation, New York, 1989
Campbell River Indian Band Teenage Girl, Canada, 2008
Young Boy at Religious Festival, Bhutan, 2010
Dancer, Navajo Tribe, Arizona, 2012
Ovazemba Teenage Girls, Namibia, 2007
Himba Girl, Namibia, 2007
Himba Man, Namibia, 2007
Lacandon Maya Shaman, Gathering of Elders, Onondaga Nation, New York, 1989
Masai Warrior Initiate, Kenya, 1985
Qero Pakko Healer, Peru, 2006
Dancer, Bali, 1988
Dancer, Bhutan, 2010
Chanter, Hawaii, 1996
Quechua Boy, Peru, 2006
Quechua Girl, Peru, 2006
School Boys, Bhutan, 2010
© Dana Gluckstein
Dana Gluckstein’s DIGNITY: Tribes in Transition exhibition and her second updated edition of DIGNITY: In Honor of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, provide urgency and a contemporary focus to the worldwide movement for racial justice in which DIGNITY continues to play an important part. “DIGNITY is a call to action against racism,” explains Gluckstein. The exhibition highlights the roots of racism with wall text narrative by Native American Faithkeeper Oren R. Lyons about the medieval Catholic Church and its Doctrine of Discovery that condemned Indigenous Peoples as subhuman to be treated like animals – the justification for their conquerors to steal land and enslave the inhabitants.
Gluckstein spent three decades in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific creating more than 60 black-and-white, duotone portraits that appear in the exhibition and express the theme of “tribes in transition.” For example, the image of the Hawaiian Chanter, depicts the proud, 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,” Gluckstein says. In the words of Robert S. Sobieszek, the late curator of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, “The dispassionate remove common to most modern portraits is all but absent in these images; in its stead is a passionate complicity between artist and sitter that allows each subject to be memorialized with both beauty and grace.”
DIGNITY helped create a turning point for the Obama administration to adopt the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples – a historic milestone. The UN Declaration is the most comprehensive global statement of the measures every government must enact to ensure the survival and well-being of Indigenous Peoples. It has empowered a worldwide movement of Indigenous Peoples to assert stewardship of the land, air, and water. The exhibition and the updated second edition of Gluckstein’s book, DIGNITY: In Honor of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, educate viewers on the Declaration. The exhibition includes a curriculum on the Declaration.
In 2013, Gluckstein addressed the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on how art can impact the state of the world. The exhibition and associated book, DIGNITY: In Honor of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, have received extensive international media coverage such as PBS, CNN, Boston Globe, New York Times, Vanity Fair.
Exhibition Book: DIGNITY: In Honor of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
Online Resources:
Dana Gluckstein's website
Press