Dispossessed but Defiant, a travelling photographic exhibition arrived at SFU last week.
Created by the Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East Foundation (CJPME), the exhibit showcases historical and contemporary photography of indigenous experiences of dispossession from South Africa, Palestine, and Canada.
Located in the Saywell Atrium, the display was brought to SFU through a collaboration of the world literature program, the Office for Aboriginal Peoples, and SFU’s Institute for the Humanities. The photographs will be on display until November 6.
Dispossessed but Defiant presents over 80 photos drawn from various archives, libraries, and individual collections, by both amateur and professional photographers.
The exhibit was curated and contextualized by CJPME through consultation with an expert in each of the areas of interest. It deals with the restriction of free movement and peaceful protest, as well as forms of dispossession like land loss and cultural pressures, amongst many others.
This exhibit hits close to home as SFU itself is situated on unceded Coast Salish territory.
Melek Ortabasi, the director of the SFU’s world literature program, frames the exhibit as part of the university’s mission — to create opportunities for dialogue around social issues. “SFU, to its credit and peril, has thrown itself behind the motto of ‘The Engaged University,’” she said, adding that it falls within this mandate to examine difficult questions.
The exhibit aims to personify the experiences and stories of the dispossession of indigenous peoples through the use of photography, drawing from multiple traditions from the invention of photography to the present day.
It counts on institutional records, anthropological photographs, studio portraits, and press and activist photography to illustrate a narrative of indigenous “‘migration,’ ‘exile’ ‘homeland,’ and ‘dispossession,’ as some of most viscerally wrenching human concepts,” expressed Ortabasi.
Through projects such as this, the world literature program aims to unpack the concept of travel, movement, and tradition — by tackling “these difficult questions, and how they are mediated from one culture to another,” explained Ortabasi.
In three photographic case studies located in different places, the exhibit attempts to provide an opportunity to examine the Canadian indigenous experience in relation to that of other countries, through the organization of five clusters of photographs that suggest a thematic arrangement.
The photographs chronicle well-known historical moments like residential schools in Canada and Nelson Mandela’s election under universal suffrage in South Africa. However, the exhibit also presents some less familiar pieces of history.
The exhibit provides a broader view of traditional lands, ways of life, dispossession and resistance in its various forms by showcasing photographs of agriculture in pre-partition Palestine and referencing the failed creation of Bantu homelands under apartheid.
Through the combination of text and compelling documentary photography, Dispossessed but Defiant aims to cast a wide lens on the experience of indigenous dispossession and to encourage productive discussion of surrounding issues.
