Spotlight Sundays: Celebrating Native Heritage through Photography—A Conversation with Ashley Salaz and Haley Day Rains

Spotlight Sundays: Celebrating Native Heritage through Photography—A Conversation with Ashley Salaz and Haley Day Rains

Join us for this month’s Spotlight Sundays as we dive into the power of photography in honoring and amplifying Native heritage. This thought-provoking panel discussion features two dynamic Native creatives: Oakland-based Coharie and Nahua photographer Ashley Salaz and Mvskoke photographer, scholar, and filmmaker Haley Day Rains. Moderated by Drew Johnson, OMCA Curator of Photography & Visual Culture, the conversation will explore how photography serves as a vital tool for storytelling, cultural preservation, and community connection.This program is part of the exhibition Born of the Bear Dance: Dugan Aguilar’s Photographs of Native California—on view through June 2025—and draws on Dugan Aguilar’s legacy of documenting the vibrancy and resilience of Indigenous communities. The discussion will address key themes of representation, reciprocity, and the ways in which photography can be rooted in and shaped by community. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to engage in this meaningful conversation. 

Panelist Bios

Ashley Salaz is an Indigenous storyteller living in the occupied Ohlone territory of Huchiun (Oakland, CA). She is an enrolled member of the Coharie Tribe (North Carolina), but was born and raised in the urban sprawl of the East Bay Area. Ashley began photographing Indigenous people in California as a way to connect to a culture that she didn’t know growing up, and to tell modern stories of the people who have tended to this land since time immemorial.

Ashley is a self-taught photographer and is passionate about photographing political actions in the Bay Area. She uses her medium to highlight Indigenous activism, community work and kinship. Ashley has a keen eye for capturing raw emotion and an unromanticized authenticity of Native peoples through her photos.

She is currently shooting freelance photography as well as directing her first documentary short film about her tribe’s Native-run school and the lasting effects of its closure on the community.

Haley Day Rains (Mvskoke) is an exhibiting and published photographer, scholar, filmmaker, and current UC President’s/Andrew Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Film and Digital Media at UC Santa Cruz. She earned her Ph.D. in Native American Studies at the University of California, Davis. Haley’s research and creative practice center on cultural and economic self-determination in historically underrepresented and underserved communities.

Drew Heath Johnson is Curator of Photography & Visual Culture at the Oakland Museum of California, where he has worked since 1989. His many exhibitions at the Museum include Capturing Light: Masterpieces of California Photography, 1850 – 2000, Fertile Ground: Art and Community in California, and Dorothea Lange: Politics of Seeing which traveled to venues in Europe and the United States. Among his duties is stewardship and public sharing of the Dorothea Lange Archive, which holds more than 6,000 vintage prints and 40,000 negatives, along with personal correspondence, field notes, proof sheets, and working documents from the artist. His publications include Silver & Gold: Cased Images of the California Gold Rush and the award-winning exhibition catalog for Capturing Light. Born and raised in Oakland, he has been a student of photography since purchasing his first daguerreotype at the age of fourteen.

Accessibility

Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) is committed to providing programs that are accessible, welcoming, and inclusive of our community. Wheelchairs, sensory inclusive devices, and additional amenities are available for checkout on a first come, first served basis at the Ticketing Desk. To request other accommodations, like American Sign Language (ASL), Cantonese, Spanish or another language interpreter, please email [email protected] at least three weeks before the event. Learn more about our accessibility options.