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Looking for something to do during your class break? Just across the street from Laney College, the Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) offers free admission for Laney students. Their latest exhibition, “Born of the Bear Dance: Dugan Aguilar’s Photographs of Native California” features a collection of intimate photographs that celebrate and unveil exclusive insights into the largely private, contemporary life of Indigenous Californians.
Photographer Dugan Aguilar of the Mountain Maidu, Pit River, and Walker River Paiute tribes traveled extensively to document the lives of Indigenous tribes throughout the state from 1982 to 2018. Through his lens, Aguilar captured the resiliency and spirit of Natives Americans throughout California.
“There is really no other more complete record of California Native indigenous culture and life from the last 40 years,” said OMCA Director Lori Fogarty.
By depicting Natives engaging in everyday activities, while proudly carrying on centuries old traditions, “Born of the Bear Dance” emphasizes the importance of sharing the authentic perspectives of Native Californians.
The artwork weaves together symbols of both the past, present and future. In one photograph, a Native elder poses in traditional tribal dress while also donning Gucci sunglasses; in another, a family sells frybread and intricate handwoven baskets at a town market. A third photo features Dugan Aguilar, a Vietnam War veteran who served in the Marines, posing alongside other Native American veterans in front of the Veteran’s Memorial in Susanville, CA.
The exhibit’s name, “Born of the Bear Dance”, refers to a ceremony where tribal members gather to celebrate health, community and perform a ritual dance that is said to provide some sort of defense against the rattlesnake and the bear, honoring the symbiotic relationship between humans and the wild.
Dugan Aguilar’s son, Dustin Aguilar, inherited a trove of his father’s work following his death in 2018. According to an OMCA press release, this included “more than 20,000 original negatives, 600 prints, proof sheets, past exhibition flyers, notes, and other personal items from his 40-year career.”
The massive collection, donated by the Aguilar family in 2021, arrived at OMCA completely uncatalogued. It took three years of collaborative efforts between Dustin Aguilar, the Native Advisory Council, OMCA, and more to prepare and present these images for the public.
“I see his photographs as just inherently celebratory,” said Drew Johnson, OMCA’s Curator of Photography and Visual Culture. “It’s partly a response to the historical photography of Native people and the way that photographs were used to either demean or to exoticize or romanticize [them].”
Part of that, he explained, is due to OMCA’s Native Advisory Council, a seven-member advisory group that advises the museum on developing exhibits that represent them accurately.
Chatting with Dustin Aguilar near a photograph of himself as an infant, The Citizen asked him what this project means to him as part of his father’s legacy and the responsibility of bringing this collection to the public. With gravitas, he shared that it was his first time experiencing the completed exhibit and many of the photographs contained his friends and family.
“I definitely feel it as a very deep personal, familial and cultural responsibility, and I always have viewed myself as a steward of the show,” Dustin Aguilar said. “I do think it’s really important to share his relationship with the people over the years, and I think that’s the legacy … I look at it as a love letter to the community.”
For generations of people unaccustomed to being in the focus of a lens, it takes skill and effort to put the subjects at ease. Dustin Aguilar said his father’s “quiet energy” helped to build bonds and establish trust, affording him a peek inside their Indigenous contemporary life.
The exhibition also received support from Theresa Harlan, a member of the Native Advisory Council, an Indigenous author, and founder of the Alliance for Felix Cove. As a collaborator of “Born of the Bear Dance” and longtime friend of Dugan Aguilar, she hopes that people take away the “vibrancy” of Indigenous peoples within the community beyond just photographs.
“They’re very much part of the future, very much part of how we can find our way out of global warming by going back to the ancestral ways and Indigenous practice,” Harlan said. “It totally stops the myth that California Indian people no longer exist.”
Through partnership with Laney College, the museum is free to Laney students with a valid student ID. Fogarty, the OMCA Director, encouraged students to hang out in the gardens and study in the galleries with free Wi-Fi. She said students should think of OMCA as a place of refuge, joy and rejuvenation.
“Born of the Bear Dance: Dugan Aguilar’s Photographs of Native California” will be showing until June 22, 2025, during which time it will be periodically refreshed with different pieces from Aguilar’s body of work.
