Matika Wilbur is Documenting Indigenous Culture, One Photo at a Time

Project 562 is the fourth, and most ambitious, of Ms. Wilbur’s creative projects addressing core Native American values and experiences — among them food sovereignty, rematriation (a term that can refer to seed sharing, knowledge sharing or reclaiming the feminine identity), kinship ties and mutualism. (A Project 562 book will be published next year by Ten Speed Press, and an exhibition organized by the nonprofit Photoville is scheduled for June 4 to 26 in Times Square.) But most importantly, by her own account, Ms. Wilbur’s personal experience has also deepened from sitting with elders like John Trudell, an activist who died in 2015, who, she said, suggested she convey “what it means to become human from an Indigenous perspective.”

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Why is collaboration with your subjects key to your portraits?

My spirit name, Tsa-Tsique, means Woman Who Teaches, so it’s my responsibility to be a messenger, and a good relative, while I’m trying to tell these stories. Each of the people that I photographed chose what to wear, where to be photographed, and which questions they wanted to answer. They share in the mission to change the way we see Native America.

Because of that common goal, I think it put me in a lot of situations, photographically, where they chose a location because it was maybe emotionally significant to them. When I was photographing tribes in Utah, outside Zion National Park, I really wanted people to be in front of those big red rock formations under that blue sky, and they were like, no, it’s OK. Just take my picture here on my front porch.

Has the project changed over time?

In the beginning, the work was very much about overcoming stereotypes of the leathered and feathered Indian. How do we help people to realize that Native America is complex, that everywhere we are is Native land, that there is a Native identity that is always around you, if you choose to listen and engage? It was certainly about that.

Then, as time went on, I became interested in other things beyond narrative correction work. I think I was aiming to get to know cultures and identities that I had hoped for as a child. When I was a young person, my mom owned a Native American art gallery, and we had songs from the Haudenosaunee singer Joanne Shenandoah. I played her album on repeat. And I would try to imagine like what it would be like to be in one of their long houses. So that was a big moment when I got to visit with her.