Stikine Prairie near Tuaton Lake, at the headwaters of the Stikine River, August 1981. photograph by Gordon Brent Ingram
This site documents and expands upon a number of exhibitions in British Columbia, in the 1980s, some of which were funded by the Canada Council.
I first visited and worked on the Spatsizi Plateau in 1977 when I was 21 years old. My family has had a long involvement in the Yukon and north-western British Columbia, often active in Métis and other aboriginal communities, going back to the late 19th Century. Having recently been awarded a B.A. in Environmental Studies, I was hired as a guide for a group of mountaineers from Northern California. In the previous years, I had conducted field studies in coastal and north-western BC for a few resource-related agencies of the Government of British Columbia with a focus on identifying critical habitat for large vertebrates. I first visited the Edziza Plateau in 1980, soon after being awarded a BFA in Photography at the San Francisco Art Institute funded by the British Columbia Cultural Fund along with a MSc in Ecosystem Management. On Edziza, I was employed by Eco-Summer Canada to assistant, guide and teach photography. In the following year, I received my first Canada Council grant to return to the region and taught a field studies course on the Spatsizi Plateau for the Wildlands Studies Program of San Francisco State University.
Nearly all of the images from ‘crossing cold streams’ in 1978 and 1981 are of places within or near Spatsizi Plateau Wilderness Park. Nearly all of the images from ‘crossing cold streams’ in 1980 are of places within Mount Edziza Provincial Park. While these vast areas are nominally managed by the Province of British Columbia, they are part of unceded territories of the Tahltan Nation with eastern margins part of the traditional lands of the Caribou Hide people of the Sekanis.
Métis guides in the history of British Columbia have often had ambiguous roles that while sometimes benefiting First Nations, as intermediaries, often have contributed to the obscuring of the depth of traditional knowledge and ongoing occupation and stewardship of peoples such as the Tahltan and the Carrier-speaking communities to the east. While recalling this early work of mine with great pleasure, I could not return to the region, nor provide more photographic documentation, unless I were working directly for a First Nations government.
The ‘edziza trip’ and ‘crossing cold streams’ exhibitions in Victoria and Prince George documented some cultural landscapes in the headwaters of the Stikine in the early 1980s. The following is some of the most important documentation from those exhibitions.
Gordon Brent Ingram. 1978. A source of the Stikine River. RFD (Oregon) 18 – front and back cover. Ingram 1978 RFD _Oregon_ 18 – front and back cover
Gordon Brent Ingram. 1982. from. edziza trip. OVO (Montréal) 46 – Photography and literature. 4 pages. Gordon Brent Ingram 1982 OVO _Montréal_ 46 – Photography and literature, 4 pages
Gordon Brent Ingram. 1983. edziza trip and crossing cold streams. Parallélogramme (Toronto) 8(3): 88. Ingram 1983 Parallélogramme (Toronto) 8(3) page 88
