Indigenous Radically! Dancing Our Archive: Bringing to Life the Photography of Tsimshian Benjamin Alfred Haldane

Indigenous Radically! Dancing Our Archive: Bringing to Life the Photography of Tsimshian Benjamin Alfred Haldane
Saturday, February 3, 2024
2:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Galt Museum & Archives

This lecture examines the dramaturgical process of the Git Hayetsk dancers, a First Nations dance group based in the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples known by its colonial name Vancouver BC. Led in partnership by Dr. Mique’l Dangeli (Tsimshian) and artist Mike Dangeli (Nisga’a), the members of the Git Hayetsk Dancers are from many Nations along what is now the Northern Northwest Coast of British Columbia and Southeast Alaska. They specialize in the ancient mask dances of their people and the creation of new songs and dances. Mique’l is a dancer and choreographer, and Mike is a carver, composer, and regalia maker.

Through their collaborative process the Dangeli’s work to ensure the history that they are living now will be embodied and passed down in the way of their ancestors–through song, dance, and ceremony. The case study for this lecture is their Photographer’s Dance inspired by the career of Tsimshian photographer Benjamin Alfred (B.A.) Haldane (1874-1941). Having opened a portrait studio there in 1899 in Metlakatla, Alaska, B.A. is one of the first Indigenous people to become a professional photographer in North America.

Using archival, community-based research, and Indigenous research methodologies, this lecture demonstrates the complex and provocative ways in which B.A.’s photography was utilized by First Nations people in Alaska and British Columbia to resist colonial oppression of their cultural practices and how that led to the reclamation of B.A.’s photography through dance and ceremony by the Git Hayetsk Dancers and his descendants in Metlakatla, Alaska. This lecture will be followed by a performance by the Git Hayetsk Dancers.

2 pm–4 pm | all ages welcome | free | no registration required