Colville Reservation photographs are subject of museum program

A museum in Colorado will offer a program this week showing historical photographs of the Nespelem area, streaming it live online so you can attend.

The Clyfford Still Museum, located in Denver, Colorado, will be live streaming a free program titled "Into the Archives: Photographs from the Colville Reservation."

"In 1937, Clyfford Still co-founded an artists' colony in Nespelem, the Indian Agency on the Colville Reservation in Washington state," the museum website explains. "During his time there, Still sketched and photographed the Native Americans whose livelihoods had been negatively impacted by the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam by the U.S. government."

The virtual program will feature a conversation between Milo Carpenter, CSM associate digital archivist and Michael Holloman, Washington State University associate professor and member of the Colville Confederated Tribes.

"Their conversation will shed light on the creation and context of these photographs," the website reads. "They will focus on one of the photographs in CSM's newly reinstalled archival display cases, Portrait of a woman in traditional Native American dress, taken in June 1936 in Nespelem. The photograph will serve as an introduction to Nespelem and the Colville Confederated Tribes, Coulee Dam, and how Still found his way there. ... Holloman will share the cultural and historical significance of the photograph's content and will discuss the larger history and context of artists photographing indigenous communities."

The program will be livestreamed on YouTube on Thursday, March 18, from 5-5:45 p.m. Pacific Standard Time, at https://www.youtube.com/c/clyffordstillmuseum.

The program can be also be viewed on Zoom which can be quickly registered for at https://clyffordstillmuseum.org/events/into-the-archives-photography-from-the-colville-reservation/