This past summer, the City of Los Angeles passed the The county of Los Angeles joins several cities across the U.S., including Seattle, Albuquerque, N.M., and Denver, which have replaced Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day.
This change has been long overdue for Indigenous peoples. The change will not only provide a symbolic correction to the distorted history given about the Indigenous people, Native Americans, American Indians of this nation, but provide an outlet for the larger community to understand our history and the original inhabitants of this continent.
This is my new photography project #RepresentYourTribalNation to commemorate #IndigenousPeoplesDay in Los Angeles. I want a larger audience to see us as contemporary natives in the city, but also see our tribal flags and the diversity that exists within a city like Los Angeles.
The work that I do came from a realization that – of all the diverse stories and histories being told about contemporary Angelenos, virtually none focuses on American Indians living in Los Angeles today. Many people in Los Angeles have no idea that Native Americans live among them. I want to change that. I want to provide stories that offer realistic images and narratives of American Indians, especially in the mecca of filmmaking (and media) where our imagery and voice have been so distorted that society today believes in stereotypical fantasies over the realities of our existence. I want to show that we are here, we are part of the history of Los Angeles!
My project is will continue with more participates (we do have over 567 U.S. Federal Tribal Nations). If you’d like to donate to this project you can by going to our paypal at paypal.me/pjpeters Thank you, and lets all make the collective conscious decisions to see Native Americans as people and not as Hollywood stereotypes or relic of the past.
Pamela J. Peters 