Picture Perfect

(left) Nineteenth-century image of the Kwakwaka’wakw coastal village of Xumtaspi.

(below) An Interior Salish woman and child with baskets.

Thousands of Photos of Indigenous Communities Accessible to the Public

By Erik Lambertson

Corporate Communications Manager A mong the millions of items in its collections, the Royal BC Museum holds thousands of historical photographs depicting Indigenous communities from across British Columbia, taken between the late 1800s and the 1970s.

Indigenous community members and researchers have always been welcome to view the photos, and they were encouraged to identify people, places and events depicted, writing notes on the back of each image. But this was always done at the museum, hunkered among shelves, the images pulled from large wooden index-card drawers.

Now, after two years of digitization work, the photos are far easier to access. It’s no longer a matter of booking a trip to Victoria. It’s as simple as logging onto a laptop.

In June 2020, to help celebrate National Indigenous Peoples Day, the Royal BC Museum placed 16,103 historical photographs (and the data for each) online.

The image scans will likely be of value to researchers and learners, but the museum’s priority has been on providing access to Indigenous communities. In fact, staff from the Indigenous Collections and Repatriation department have already met with representatives of many Indigenous communities across BC (prior to the pandemic) at events like Hobiyee (Nisg _ a’a New Year), distributing USB drives featuring digitized images of those communities.

To search the database, go to rbcm.ca/icar-photos, type “pn” into the Catalogue Number field and click search. You can also search by culture (e.g. Haida) or community.