First Families: A Photographic History of California Indians

by L. Frank Manriquez, Kim Hogeland

When L. Frank and Marina Drummer went on the road in 2002, they set out to visit as many people from different California tribes as possible. Crisscrossing the state, they taped hundreds of hours of interviews and collected copies of nearly fifteen hundred family photos. The documentary project, funded by the California State Library and LEF Foundation, paints an unprecedented portrait of California’s indigenous people using their own words and photographs from their own family albums. In turns moody, beautiful, warm, and humorous, First Families is a one-of-a-kind book that combines extremely personal images with text that gives readers a broader, deeper view of Indian history and many complex living cultures.

Genres: History

304 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2007

Reviews

[Nate · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book combines general history about specific groups of tribes in regions throughout California with family stories and photographs of Native Americans. It is a hopeful and personal perspective of people who have overcome great tragedy. Really moving book.

[Deb Krol · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I may be biased because I contributed photos and stories to this book. But...it's so cool to be able to have a chronicle of our Cali Indian families, how we survived and continue to survive and thrive. Thanks to L. Frank for reaching out for our photos too. It's a cure when I get homesick.

[Glenn Anaiscourt · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this book, the authors explain that they asked Indian people all over California if they would be willing to talk about their family photo albums. They traveled to families who agreed to meet with them and then pretty much just listened as they spoke about their photos. The pictures go back to the 1800s, and as I was reading I definitely had a sense of sweeping through history. I also sometimes had the odd sensation that I was sitting on the couch in someone’s living room while people took me through their family album, because it definitely has that feel too. So it’s a book about history, but at a very personal level. The authors give some background to provide context for many of the photos, but the book is about families and communities, and you see people with their spouses, and children, and uncles, and friends, and grandmothers, or just alone at some time in their lives. The authors say that a surprising number of the families they contacted didn’t actually have a lot of family photos, because they lost them to brush fires which were common in many of the remote locations where they were consigned on reservations and rancherias. They succeeded in collecting a large set, though, and this is a really beautiful collection.