“You don‘t look Native to me” is a quote and the title of a body of work, that shows excerpts from the lives of young Native Americans from around Pembroke, North Carolina where 89% of the city’s population identifies as Native American. The town is the tribal seat of the Lumbee Indian Tribe of North Carolina, the largest state-recognized Native American tribe east of the Mississippi River, which means they are federally unrecognized and therefore have no reservation nor any monetary benefits.
I am tracing their ways of self-representation, transformed through history, questions of identity with which they are confronted on a daily basis, and their reawakening pride in being Native.
My work engages an unfamiliar mix of concepts: a Native American tribe whose members are ignored by the outside world, who do not wear their otherness on their physique, but who are firm in their identity. Through photography, video and interviews, I am investigating what happens when social and institutional structures break down and people are forced to rely on their own resources. This raises questions to the viewer regarding one’s own identity and membership to the unspecified mainstream.
This work was started in 2011.