PHOTOJOURNALISM AS STREET ART: A COLLABORATION WITH SHEPARD FAIREY

(photo by Juan Luis Garcia)

They made us many promises, more than I can remember. But they kept but one – They promised to take our land…and they took it.”
– Chief Red Cloud

Over the past seven years I have made many stories, but one project has come to own me.  I am completely swept up in its current and I do not know where it will end.  That overflowing, undercurrent filled, story is about the Oglala Lakota of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.  Many of you may have heard of the Lakota, or at least the larger group of tribes called the Sioux.  They are one of many tribes that were moved off their land to prisoner of war camps now called Reservations.   The Pine Ridge Reservation is located about 60 miles southeast of the Black Hills in South Dakota.  It is sometimes referred to as Prisoner of War Camp Number 344, and it is where the Lakota now live.  If any of you have ever heard of  the Wounded Knee Massacre, AIM (the American Indian Movement), Leonard Peltier, or of the stand-off at Oglala, then you know that Pine Ridge is ground zero for Native issues in the U.S.

Their story is long and sad, and filled with many massacres, but the end goes something like this:  In 1980 The longest running court case in U.S. history, United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, was ruled upon by the U.S. Supreme Court.  The court determined that, when the Sioux were resettled onto reservations and seven million acres of their land were opened up to prospectors and homesteaders, the terms of the second Fort Laramie treaty had been violated. The court stated that the Black Hills were illegally taken and that the initial offering price plus interest should be paid to the Sioux Nation. As payment for the Black Hills, the court awarded only 106 million dollars to the Sioux Nation. The Sioux refused the money with the rallying cry, “THE BLACK HILLS ARE NOT FOR SALE!”

in 2010, after years of superficial journalism and disappointing magazine stories I decided that I had to do something more.   The magazines weren’t doing enough, and they would never let me do it through them.  They weren’t representing the people well enough; they couldn’t say the things that needed to be said, and they couldn’t choose a side.  But I did not have those restrictions.   In the summer of 2010 I chose a side.

Using the TED.com stage I made my choice clear: “Give back the Black Hills.  Its not your business what they do with them.”

 And from TED it began to grow, snowballing until it landed on the doorstep of National Geographic magazine.  This summer National Geographic will publish my Pine Ridge work and the real story of the Oglala Lakota.

Pine Ridge was a project that I tried to escape many times.  And I did succeed, on a few occasions, to have 6 month or year-long breaks before diving back in.  Those were in the days when I would call home in tears, broken by the seemingly bottomless darkness.   I did not want to go back to hear about another subject-turned-friend who had just died a gruesome death.  I did not want to hear any more stories about the children I knew being raped.  In the seven years I have been returning to Pine Ridge I know over 30 people who have died unnatural deaths, and as for rapes I dare not ask, it would break my heart beyond repair.

Despite my attempts to give up I would always be lured back by an email from someone I knew, and a desire to go deeper because I knew the story had not been told.  In time I found new communities, and learned from my mistakes.  And eventually I learned to see beyond the superficial stories that magazines had been hiring me to tell in those first years on the Rez.  Beyond the seductive photographic surface of poverty and despair, beyond the caricature that was so easy to find in drunks and pow wows.  In my final act of print journalism on the Reservation, National Geographic made sure I had the time and resources to find the heart in this story, everything I needed to do it right.  I emerged on the other side of that long journey and found myself being called “brother” and “uncle” and sitting down to eat with the family I had built in those seven years.  Mitakuye Oyasin,  you are,  “All my relations.” 

Since defining my vision two years ago, I have been working on behalf of that family to tell the world a story that does not fit into the pages of most magazines.  One of the greatest outlets for this has been my collaboration with Shepard Fairey, the most prolific street artist in America (famous for his Obama “HOPE” campaign and his ongoing OBEY propaganda).  Together we have taken my photographs of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and the message of the Oglala Lakota to the streets of America.

Our most recent installation on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles covered a 22×60 foot wall.(photo by Taylor Kent)

(photo by Eric Becker)

My friend Daryl Hannah even showed up to help cut and paste!  (photos by Eric Becker) 

SEE THE WHOLE MURAL COME TOGETHER IN THIS AMAZING TIME-LAPSE VIDEO (made by the talented Sinhue Xavier).

And in an ongoing, crowd-funded, street art campaign we have seen the walls of 20 cities, from San Francisco to New York City, covered with 7,000 2×3 ft wheat-pasted images.(photo courtesy of studio number one)

 (photo from anonymous paster)

(photos from anonymous paster)

(photo from anonymous paster)

Photojournalism CAN leave the pages of magazines!   Full resolution versions of the work Shepard and I made are available for download at www.honorthetreaties.org so that YOU can choose when and where this issue is seen.  The site also includes a library of every treaty made with Native tribes in the continental U.S.Stay tuned for more, the next installment is about my collaboration with activist, artist, and friend Ernesto Yerena!  His work is the backbone of this street campaign.

 To see more of the photo essay (2005-2009) visit www.aaronhuey.com  

You will have to wait until the summer to see the new work from 2011 in the magazine!(the legendary photo editor sarah leen in our first layout session at NG HQ)