Interview with John LeKay
PART II - Lakota Dancers
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JL: How did you get the opportunity to take the photographs of the Lakota dancers out at Pine Ridge?

DMK: Oh God.

JL: Is this an awful question?

DMK: Yes it's an awful question.

JL: Sorry.

DMK: That's ok, part of it, I'm still coming to terms with . But it's good to talk about it. That's part of coming to terms with it. I've always been really interested in native spirituality and I've always felt a kind of kinship to it and I guess the thing that really got me going is when I worked with a guy named Leonard Peltier.

I actually worked a tremendous amount for Bob Guccione at Penthouse magazine. It's funny because a lot of people say they don't buy Penthouse magazine for the pictures, they buy it for the articles. Guccione had tremendous articles in that magazine. His was the first national magazine that did a story on Leonard Peltier, and that's what I did for him.  I never photographed the girls. I always photographed the people that they did the stories with. I photographed Elliot Gould for him. I photographed Jimmy Swaggert's hooker for him. I photographed Reverend Fletcher of the PTO for him. I did great stuff for Guccione; wonderful people, very interesting - and important stories (most of them) and important stories that weren't being covered by a lot of other media.

Picuris Deer Dancer #1, 15 1/4 x 15 1/4, Palladium Print, January 1994

Taos Hoop Dancer #1, 15 1/4 x 15 1/4, Palladium Print, December 1993

DMK:  So anyway, Guccione sent me to Leavenworth prison to photograph Peltier.  So, I photographed Leonard in Leavenworth and really felt like a kinship with this guy.

JL: So you got to talk to him and hang out with him?

DMK: We spent three or four hours together in the penitentiary and I set up a little studio there and we just hung out and made some pictures and talked.

Amazing man, I really liked Leonard, I really enjoyed him. When I looked in his eyes, man, I looked in his eyes and I don't believe he is a murderer. I don't believe he did any of that shit.

JL: I don't either.

DMK: I mean you read the books and you read the trial transcripts and there is no way you come away and think he did it. So anyway, I left New York and when I got to New Mexico, I really wanted to work with Native Americans and I kind of looked around for a while, and I hooked up with a tseuki buffalo dancer and I talked about the idea of doing a project on ceremonial dance with him.

The first one I did was the 8 Northern Pueblos in New Mexico.  That took almost 7 years to do 8 pictures.

DMK: Yeah, because I really needed to do it in a good way and I wanted to do it with permission.

JL: Yes I understand.

DMK: It was a huge pain in the ass because I was dealing with the tribal government and everybody was suspect of what I was doing. And you know the Indians have been ripped off so bad that nobody really trusted me. I still give a percentage of the sales of those prints back to the tribes.

JL:  That's cool.

DMK: And, for seven years I fought to get those 8 pictures done and finally we got them done and I felt a little burned out; but my affinity has always been towards the plains Indian. So, when I finished the Northern Pueblo portfolio, I decided I wanted to work with the plains Indians. I went out to South Dakota and I met a bunch of folks on the Pine Ridge Reservation, particularly a woman named Chic Big Crow.

Chic had lost her daughter in a car accident and I had lost my daughter in a car accident and so we had kind of an affinity. There was this nice connection and Chic had started the Sioux Big Crow Boys and Girls Club on the reservation.  I had learned my lesson from working with the 8 Northern Pueblo Council that I realized that going through the tribal government was the wrong way to go.

JL: Seven years?

DMK: Because the tribal governments are ripping off the people. It's a huge pain in the ass.  So when I went up to Pine Ridge, I was looking for more grass roots people, medicine people, spiritual leaders, people that were involved in the community, people that were more traditional, and were not involved in tribal government per se. So Chic was perfect - she was very involved in the community. She was trying to put together this boys and girls club on a shoestring and I talked to her and told her what I would like to do - that I would like to do this work with the dancers up in South Dakota. And, that I would give a percentage of all the sales to the  Sioux Boys and Girls Club. So, the money wasn't going back into the tribal coffers - it was going to a very specific thing.

JL: That's great.

DMK: Yeah. In return for that, what I wanted her to do was to introduce me to people; let people know that I'm an ok kind of person, and just kind of help smooth the way with introductions to the people who spiritually ok what I was doing.

DMK:  And then I would take the dancer and go away somewhere, You know,  just me and the dancer, out in the hills, out in the plains somewhere and we would photograph it and I felt better about that because I really wasn't interfering with the ceremonies. And so, I really wasn't photographing the ceremonies.

We did it as accurately and traditionally as we could, but at the same time we were outside of the ceremonial situation and that seemed to make everybody feel more comfortable.

JL: Were there any other problems?

DMK: Yes, there's a few inherent problems with it, one of the problems is working with Native Americans.  There are always that fringe of people who don't understand what you are doing, that feels - once again - here's another guy ripping off Indian culture.

JL: Yes, like exploiting the culture.

DMK: And that was a huge battle, even today that's a huge battle. People see the work and they accuse me of that.

JL: Really?

DMK: I find myself constantly defending what I'm doing.

JL: Like your intentions?

DMK: Yeah, you know you get kind of sick of saying "I'm not ripping anybody off".  This was done in a good way, it was done with permission, money goes back to the people.

JL: Yes, it also brings awareness to their cause and what's going on out there.

DMK: Exactly. I thought that this was a really good thing for all those reasons, bringing awareness to the culture, sharing the culture, but I found that there was an awful lot of friction about it and then I started looking at the work and started thinking you know, this work is showing the Native Americans in really good light.

DMK: It's very positive work and you look at the pictures and you hopefully feel the culture; you feel the spirituality and maybe people go away looking at this thinking that the world of the Native American is pretty good right now.

JL: Right.

DMK:  And of course it's not.  You know these people are able to find their space to do their ceremonies and to do their dancing, but their life is really hard - poverty, domestic violence, alcoholism. I  mean it's really all of the bad stuff  - in which our society has permeated their culture.  You know, my personal feeling is that it's all a part of the plan to exterminate the race.

JL: Yes I agree with that.

DMK: It has to do with the land, it also has to do with their history because as long as they are around, we maybe - not consciously, but subconsciously acknowledge the fact that we stole all this from them. You know even Congress recently awarded the Lakota people millions of dollar's to the Black Hills. So as long as they are around, they are a daily reminder that we ripped this land off from them. And we sure as hell aren't going to give it back to them. That isn't going to happen.  So, what you do is get rid of them so you don't have the memories anymore.

DMK: Because of all of this, I kind of felt like I needed to show the other side of life. I needed to show the poverty; I needed to show the struggle that they have very day.

And so I started work on another series of Indian work which was much more environmental portraiture of them in their homes and on their land. 

Part III.  On The Road

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