San Francisco, CA

In their own Words

Powerful photographic portraits give voice to the Indigenous communities of California’s South Coast Range.

Photographer Kirti Bassendine is no stranger to the challenges of marginalized communities. Born in Kenya and of Indian descent, she experienced racial discrimination firsthand from a very young age, expressly in the form of segregation.

Kirti Bassendine, Gregg Castro, (Salinan T’rowt’raahl), Culture Director, the Association of Ramaytush Ohlone

When she emigrated to England at 10 years old, she found herself a child of displacement, something she experienced once again when she moved to the United States in her late 20s. Her own personal struggles navigating between disparate worlds and cultures, and feeling part of neither, led her to devote her career to giving voice to the often underheard. Her first project Voices focused on other South Asian girls growing up in the Western world. Since then she has tuned her lens to other communities in projects such as Homeless Voices, which focused on the homeless in San Franciso’s South Bay area.

Kirti Bassendine, Kanyon Sayers-Roods, Chairwoman, Indian Canyon Chualar Tribe of the Costanoan-Ohlone People, digital print, 2023.

“I realized the power of voice,” says Bassendine. “It’s so important to tell your own story, express it and to be heard. So in my artistic practice, trying to bring these different cultures, different marginalized communities, to come forward and to be heard, has been an important focus of my work… I realized it’s so important to be able to express your culture, be proud of the culture you come from, and be proud of who you are.”

Her latest photography project, Contemporary Indigenous Voices of California’s South Coast Range, now an exhibition on view at the de Young Museum through January 7, 2024, does the same for Native American communities whose tribal lands begin at the San Francisco peninsula and stretch down through San Luis Obispo and Morro Bay.

Featuring 17 powerful portraits of prominent members from 10 tribal nations, the four-year project was organized in consultation with the Association of Ramaytush Ohlone, and in collaboration with the Confederated Villages of Lisjan, Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area, Tamien Nation, Indian Canyon Chualar Tribe of the Costanoan-Ohlone People, Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, the Rumsen Ohlone Tribal Community, Esselen Tribe of Monterey County, the Salinan Tribe of San Luis Obispo and Monterey Counties, and the Salinan T’rowt’raahl tribal community.

Kirti Bassendine, Linda Yamane, Rumsen Ohlone Culture Bearer and artist, digital print, 2023.

“Hearing their [stories] and their historical trauma through the three different periods of the Spanish, Mexican and American occupations, you really wake up to the genocide that they suffered and the struggles that the remaining survivors went through, trying to still keep up the culture, hiding, not being able to express their culture, changing their names, changing their identity,” Bassendine says. “Just hearing the story of the genocide of their culture has been really emotionally compelling and really heartbreaking to hear what they had to go through, and the journey that they’re still having in their present lives.”

Working closely with Bassendine, curator in charge Christina Hellmich managed the development and execution of the exhibition and public programs, prepared the design and completed the installation.

Bassendine’s photographs are accompanied by powerful personal statements from Native community members calling attention to cultural connections to the land, rematriation (restoring the relationship between Indigenous people and their ancestral land) and climate change.

“It was important to dedicate physical space for participants to speak to visitors in their own words—to describe their communities and state their cultural concerns,” says Hellmich. “It is the voices of the community members, exclusively, in the labels. “Other than a short introductory panel at the start of the exhibition] you do not hear my voice or Kirti’s…The stories are their own.

Kirti Bassendine, Ann-Marie Sayers, Chairwoman Emeritus, Indian Canyon Chualar Tribe of the Costanoan-Ohlone People, 2023, digital print.

“The exhibition provides an opportunity for our visitors to learn about the Indigenous communities of this land and hear about their concerns in their own words,” continues Hellmich “They are still here in the South Coast Range and their communities are vibrant. They are inextricably connected to the land and seek more land rights. In the exhibition, Gregg Castro (T’rowt’raahl Salinan, Rumsien and Ramaytush Ohlone) states, ‘We are not from the land, we are of the land, and the land is of us.’”

Through January 7, 2024
Contemporary Indigenous Voices of California’s South Coast Range
de Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive
San Francisco, CA 94118
(775) 329-3333, www.famsf.org