“The Visual Archive: Ho-Chunk Cultural Performance, Modern Labor, and Survivance in Wisconsin, 1879-1960.”

This presentation explores the intersections of photographic images, family history, tourism, and Ho-Chunk survivance through an examination of two photographic collections housed at the Wisconsin Historical Society: the Charles Van Schaick Collection and the H.H. Bennett Collection. The Van Schaick collection includes nearly taken between 1879-1936, and the H.H. Bennett Collection is comprised of hundreds of images of tribal members taken from 1865-1960. Also contained within the Bennett Collection are film reels of the Stand Rock Indian Ceremonial, a major tourist attraction that employed tribal members in Wisconsin Dells, WI from the 1920s through the 1960s. The stories that these images convey of the importance of kinship, place, modern labor, cultural performance, settler colonialism, and survivance are the central themes of the Ho-Chunk experience in the 20th century, and my presentation will address these intersecting themes and the ongoing meanings that these images have for contemporary tribal citizens.

Amy Lonetree, a member of The Public Historian editorial board, is author of Decolonizing Museums: Representing Native America in National and Tribal Museums (University of North Carolina Press, 2012), and co-editor with Amanda Cobb of The National Museum of the American Indian: Critical Conversations (University of Nebraska Press, 2008).

Sponsored by the UCSB Public History Program, the Department of Anthropology, and the Department of History.

Lonetree Poster for the event flyer.