great plains and alaska tribes photo exhibit

There's a photo exhibit on the North American Indian at the Science Museum on Bo Guan Rd. The photos were bankrolled by JP Morgan and were taken by Edward S. Curtis early in the 20th century to 'document traditional native life before it went extinct' (or finally got wiped out by the white man, whichever came first). Though they're beautiful pics (gallery) be aware of the context of times he was living in,
"Curtis documented some aspects of the customs and lifestyles of American Indians of the trans-Mississippi West. The publication of Curtis's work, highly romanticized and most craftily staged, exerted a major influence on the image of Indians in popular culture. Curtis is reported to have retouched some of the photographs in order to remove modern objects, adding to the popular illusion of Native Americans as a primitive people."

and for further reading on the a plight of the American Indian in the late 19th and early 20th centuries read David R.M. Beck's (University of Montana) excellent essay, The Myth of the Vanishing Race