James Bay Ethnographic Resource

The original team of 4 photographers included myself, my brother Miklos Legrady, Louise Turner and Lillian Sly. I have not been able to track down Louise nor Lilian. Miklos Legrady has provided some photographs that he still had at hand. Comments and descriptions were also added by him to describe what the experience was like to engage in a documentary photography project in James Bay in the early 1970s.

The goal of publishing these photographs online fulfill a number of concerns and interests. Of primary concern is to provide access to the images to the Cree and academic research communities to advance historical preservation, cultural understanding and ethnographic research. The images themselves function as historical records of a crucial time in the James Bay Cree's lives and therefore merit circulation on their own. I have held on to the negatives with the intent to publish once time and funding became available. Funding for the project has been generously provided by the National Science Foundation Arctic Social Science program, and the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation which has an interest in social justice among its other goals in assisting research and supporting communities: http://rwdfoundation.org/new_ideas__directions/social_justice

Goals of the Prototype Phase

1. Scanning of contact sheets for discussion with ethnographers and selection of images from the inventory.
2. Digitization of the images.
3. Creation of an online database.
4. A scientific field trip to Wemindji, one of the four communities represented in the visual material to create community collaboration opportunities and to present the images and to annotate the images through community participation.
5. Test and document the multimedia presentation and repatriation process.
6. Integrate the metadata with the online visual database.
7. Verify the results through informal evaluations of user interactions with the database environment.