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You Don’t Look Native to Me. By Maria Sturm.
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Photographs by Maria Sturm
Void, Athens, 2023. English, 112 pp., 8¾x11½".
What’s in a name? Be it Lumbee, Littleturtle, Jacobs, or Locklear.
Start at the very beginning. The titular “You” addresses an individual, a group, and in an oblique fashion the reader. The cover repeats the title twice — You Don’t Look Native to Me — and includes matching silhouette busts of someone who might have braided hair, who might be looking away from us, and who is definitely obscuring the word “don’t” in the second iteration of the title. Ergo, “you look native to me.” (The picture source of the silhouette appears about halfway through the book; they are indeed a pony-tailed figure with an earring and necklace, wearing a vivid sweater, looking away and off screen to the left). Duality is a phenomenon to bear in mind while absorbing this book.
This is a fascinating and provocative volume. Photographer and interviewer Maria Sturm’s work is eloquently presented by the edit, concept, and design team João Linneu and Myrto Steirou. There are no captions. You will find explication and dates, however, if you read the excerpts of transcriptions interspersed between the photographs. The conversations must be read to flesh out the visual narrative.
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While the photographs feel very quiet — stilled lives, one could say — the verbal exchanges humanize the imagery and articulate the impetus for Maria Sturm’s project. Amidst the pervasive pensiveness more animated photographs include flames, a female dancer (seen in a sequence of shots), a mural of a rearing horse, and two women laughing together.
“Orality shapes origin stories.” Kaya Littleturtle’s words from April 2017 close the book. Littleturtle’s voice resounds throughout the transcript. It may even be appropriate, or accurate, to identify her as a heroine, a leading character in the book; judging from the words she speaks, and what others have to say about “Kaya,” one might link the voice to the recurring figure of a woman throughout the photographs. This individual appears first behind a heart-strewn storm door, then holding a phone displaying an image of a drum, fixing her hair, dancing in the above-mentioned sequence, and tucked in close to another slightly taller, maybe male figure. Collectively she emerges as a standard-bearer for a tribe, the Lumbee of North Carolina, that has been both recognized and slighted. Its creation and destruction myths seem conjoined with U.S. legislation from 1956 that inexplicably defines the Lumbee and withholds privileges accorded to other tribes.
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Who are the Lumbee? Evidence is present throughout Sturm’s book. Sovereignty is perhaps a more important topic. According to “Chris” on October 25, 2016, what Sturm is depicting “is not about color, or look, what you’re capturing is about sovereignty and the definition of sovereignty.” He continues: “Sovereignty is not the people discovering who they are. Sovereignty is Indian people discovering what sovereignty is to them. And when they discover it, they have sovereignty. It’s like a mirage.”
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Let’s allow the 1956 House of Representatives a word about Lumbee identification. “Tribal legend,” “a distinctive manner of speech,” and “family names such as Oxendine, Locklear, Chavis, Drinkwater, Bullard, Lowery, Sampson, Jacobs and others” are cited as fundamental to their recognition. In the same stroke of the legislative pen, however, the “Act” proclaims that “Nothing…shall make such Indians eligible for any services…and none of the statutes of the United States which affect Indians because of their status as Indians shall be applicable to the Lumbee Indians.” The hand that giveth also denieth.
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Visually, the quandary could be summed up by two photographs that appear on adjoining spreads. The first being the previously mentioned image of someone (Kaya?) regarding a cell phone showing an image of drummers. Turn the page, and the second image is another over-the-shoulder shot, this one depicting a man regarding himself in a mirror, perhaps reflecting on a new, very close-cropped haircut. On one hand a view into the distance, echoing that of the silhouetted cover figure, that nonetheless looks backward at tribal tradition, followed by a more narcissistic self-regard, looking inward at “me” in the now.
The duality of looking Native is the paradox beating at the heart of Sturm’s project. Voice and vision collaborate in the mission to ascertain origins and forge identity.
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George Slade, aka re:photographica, is a writer and photography historian based in Minnesota's Twin Cities. He is also the founder and director of the non-profit organization TC Photo. georgeslade.photo/Image c/o Randall Slavin