Dignity: In Honor of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

Updated second edition.

“The work of Dana Gluckstein helps us to truly see, not just appearances, but essences, to see as God sees us, not just the physical form, but also the luminous soul that shines through us.”
–NOBEL LAUREATE, ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU IN THE FOREWORD

DIGNITY, a three-time winner of the International Photography Awards, is a collection of iconic photographs by Dana Gluckstein which honors Indigenous Peoples worldwide. Gluckstein, whether photographing a Haitian healer or a San Bushman elder, succeeds in distilling the universality of experience that links us all without diminishing the dignity of the individual. DIGNITY includes more than 100 of Gluckstein's black-and white duotone portraits, made over three decades. The photographs express the theme of tribes in transition by capturing a fleeting period of world history where traditional and contemporary cultures collide.
DIGNITY's power, artistry, and impassioned call to action make it a historic book in support of Indigenous Peoples throughout the Americas, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific, who are among the world's most impoverished and oppressed inhabitants. It begins with a moving foreword by Nobel Laureate, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and an introduction by Oren R. Lyons, Native American Faithkeeper, Turtle Clan, Onondaga Nation. The afterword by Dana Gluckstein chronicles the inspiration for the photographs. Powerful epilogues from Nobel Peace Prize winner Amnesty International, advocate for global implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The poetic images that comprise this updated second edition of DIGNITY are intended to bring greater awareness to the Declaration. The DIGNITY book advocacy campaign helped create a tipping point for President Obama to endorse the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in December 2010. The Declaration is the most comprehensive global statement of the measures every government must enact to ensure the survival and well-being of Indigenous Peoples. DIGNITY includes the full text of the Declaration.

“The dispassionate remove common to most modern portraits is all but absent in these images; in its stead is a passionate complicity between artist and sitter that allows each subject to be memorialized with both beauty and grace.”
–ROBERT A. SOBIESZEK, FORMER CURATOR DEPARTMENT OF PHOTOGRAPHY, LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART 

DANA GLUCKSTEIN has photographed iconic figures including Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Desmond Tutu, and Muhammad Ali, as well as award-winning advertising campaigns for clients such as Apple and Toyota. Her portraits are held in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Gluckstein’s international museum exhibition, DIGNITY: Tribes in Transition, presented at the United Nations in Geneva and has been touring European and U.S. museums since 2011. She addressed the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in 2013 on how art can impact the state of the world. DIGNITY is a three-time winner of the International Photography Awards. Gluckstein graduated from Stanford University, where she studied psychology, painting, and photography, and realized the power of images to shape consciousness. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and has two children.

ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his nonviolent resistance to apartheid. As an Anglican priest, he served as General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches and Archbishop of Cape Town. In 1995, President Mandela appointed him chairman of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission where he brought to light the atrocities of apartheid. In 2009, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States’ highest civilian honor. He now serves as Chair of the Elders, a group of eminent global leaders working to support peace and address the causes of human suffering.

OREN R . LYONS, FAITHKEEPER, TURTLE C LAN, ONONDAGA NATION, co-founded the Working Group on Indigenous Populations for the United Nations in 1982, and helped develop the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. As a revered Native American elder and scholar, he has sat on the Council of Chiefs of the Six Nations in New York since 1967 and has taught Native American studies at New York State University at Buffalo for 37 years. He is a Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus and holds an honorary Doctor of Law degree from Syracuse University. He received the United Nations Earth Day International Award, the Elder and Wiser Award of the Rosa Parks Institute for Human Rights, and is honored in the American Indian and the National La Crosse Hall of Fame. He is guided by the Six Nations’ democratic principles of governance by the people, which requires decision-making on behalf of the “seventh generation coming.”

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning global movement of more than 7 million people who campaign for a world where human rights are enjoyed by all. The organization investigates and exposes abuses, educates and mobilizes the public, and works to protect people wherever justice, freedom, truth and dignity are denied.