Vicki Wilson and Granddaughter Ashley in Prince Albert, SK, September 7, 1992

These black and white images originate in my desire to image, as well as imagine, my community. In the selected photographs from “Portraits in Blood,” I investigate my Indigenous heritage by photographing Native women in the Winnipeg community. Prior to this point, I had not self-identified as an Indigenous person. As I have said of this series, “I decided to investigate my native heritage by making portraits of native women. I asked these women if I could be a native woman too.  In the process I developed a community of friends and elders where I could talk about my skin colour and all of those things that came along being Indigenous. I called the portraits, ‘Portraits in Blood,’ because I was looking at my bloodlines.”