Oregon Public Broadcasting

The 2004 independent film "Born into Brothels" portrayed kids in India who got specialized training in photography.

The children document the poverty and beauty that surrounds them. Now, the Muckleshoot Tribe in Western Washington has started a similar program for American Indian youth.

The course helps tribal kids build up their self esteem, with the aim of keeping them in school. Correspondent Anna King has the story.

Bob Charlo, 56, stands next to one of his student's prints. Charlo teaches the children's photo course for the Muckleshoot Tribe. He's a professional art photographer. He's perhaps best known for his photo of a teepee brandishing an American flag. The image was featured as the signature image of the recent PBS series "We Shall Remain."

Bob Charlo patiently hands out disposable cameras to his summer photography class. Little fingers scramble at the plastic packaging and wrestle to open them. Giggles and smiles are everywhere.

These are film cameras not digital. The expense of a class like this is only possible lately at the Muckleshoot Reservation. The tribe is doing well now thanks to a casino near Seattle and Tacoma.

Just in the last seven years the tribe has built: A new school, a county library, a health and wellness center and a tribal college. The unemployment rate has gone down, but poverty is still a problem.

Charlo is leading this class because he's a professional photographer himself and a member of the Kalispel tribe north of Spokane.

Bob Charlo: "Does anybody know what composition is? When you draw something what do you do?"

Charlo tries to teach the students one principle of photography per class. After each session they get a new camera to take the lessons into the field.

Sometimes it's hard to know if the children listen to his explanations of proper composition and using the flash. But he knows they're focused when he develops the film.

Photos selected for the art show from the Muckleshoot Tribe's Young Eyes Walk with Image Catcher youth photography program.

By Patience Daniels, 6th grade.

By Julianna Arms, 12th grade.

By Alexis Mason, 6th grade.

Bob Charlo: "Sometimes I am just blown away by some of their imagery. But these pictures that they come back with, the little snippets of their world, of their activities, their adventures -- I think that is what is really neat."

The children say the course helps them explore their world and document where they've been.

Some take pictures of the forested reservation landscape. Grass, trees, rocks.

Others, like 11-year-olds Isabella Valles and Lenora Jansen, capture the images of their grandparents and relatives.

Isabella Valles: "You get to remember stuff. Like when you are older, you can remember stuff when you are little kid."

Lenora Jansen: "If you forget it, you will have pictures and you will be like oh yeah when I was in 5th grade or 6th grade I used to take photography classes and took pictures of nature and family and whatever and if your family member passed away then you will have pictures to remind you."

Charlo chooses the best photos from each child. Those pictures are professionally framed for an art show.

The sales pay for things like school clothes and other items.

Some of these children have parents who are both unemployed.

For Charlo the greatest satisfaction comes in the quiet moments when he is hanging the photos for the show.

Bob Charlo: "I don't want to say it's envy, but dang I wish I would have took that one. Where was he when he took that? I want to go there and take a picture like this you know."

The photos from Charlo's classes are very different from historic portraits of Native Americans.

The kind you see in museums or coffee table books.

Charlo explains that back then slow exposure meant subjects had to stay still for minutes at a time. And it captured natives through a white man's lens.

But he says these native children are taking their own photos that capture the vibrant and complex world they live in.

Online:
http://www.bcharlofineart.com/

http://www.kids-with-cameras.org/home/