TV Indians

This work was part of Looking 101, a 2024 exhibition that supported Northwestern University’s undergraduate curriculum with an emphasis on first-year students.The following text was made available in the exhibition via cell phone camera (QR code) and booklet

In this photograph, five people with connections to Puebloan communities pose in traditional Puebloan attire in front of a mound of old box televisions in the Galisteo Basin in north-central New Mexico. The portrait sitters are photographer Cara Romero’s friends and family members: from left to right, Romero’s daughter Crickett Tiger, Kaa Folwell, Romero’s son Santiago Romero, and Dina Devore with her baby. The television screens show popular representations of Indigenous people in American media. Among these is a close- up of Italian American actor Iron Eyes Cody (born Espera Oscar de Corti, 1904–1999), who starred in a long-running anti-littering campaign (below). Corti posed as a person of Indigenous heritage throughout his career and reaped economic and reputational benefits from his impersonation. Some images refer to historical events: one screen shows a nuclear blast evoking test bombings undertaken by the US military on Indigenous territories across the American Southwest. Still from an ad by Keep America Beautiful, an anti-litter organiza- tion created by packaging corpora- tions in 1971. The Ad Council. Romero has noted that many of the portrayals of Indigenous people represented on the televisions in her photograph are "beloved" and immediately recognizable in Indigenous communities, despite their inaccuracies, acknowledging the complicated relationship Indigenous people have with such media.