The powerful lens of Tulalip photographer Matika Wilbur

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, June 17, 2026

TULALIP — It’s been 14 years since Tulalip photographer Matika Wilbur sold her belongings, closed her apartment, and set out on a Kickstarter-funded journey to document the lives of people in the estimated 562 federally recognized Native tribes across the country.

Eleven years later, “Project 562” resulted in a 400-page coffee-table book of the same name, featuring Wilbur’s photos of more than 200 tribal members.

Today, Wilbur, 42, owns the art gallery Tidelands, a block from the tourist-packed Seattle waterfront, where currently she offers a stunning exhibition of art embodying cultural creation stories as told primarily by the 13 Coast Salish tribes who speak the Lushootseed language.

Wilbur, known nationally for the portraits of Indigenous people, is also the co-host of the popular podcast “All My Relations,” which is recorded upstairs at Tidelands.

A 2002 graduate of La Conner High School and an alumna of the Brooks Institute of Photography, Wilbur grew up on the Swinomish reservation, encouraged in photography by her mother, Nancy Wilbur, also a photographer. Matika’s loud, infectious laugh from childhood remains a part of her persona.

A practiced speaker and a former teacher at Tulalip Heritage High School, Wilbur has lectured at universities across the country talking about the fact that the native people of our country are still here, still vital and still honoring ancient ways.

Since she began her photo journey in 2012, Wilbur married Lino Manansala, welcomed two beautiful daughters, experienced the death of her father Kenny Joseph and ventured into cooperative projects with other Native artists. Her work has been shown at the Whatcom Museum, the Museum of Northwest Art, the Burke Museum, the Seattle Art Museum, the Tacoma Art Museum and the Nantes Museum of Fine Arts in France, among others.

In September 2024, Wilbur opened the Tidelands gallery.

The late Barbara Brotherton, who was the curator of Native art at the Seattle Art Museum, said Wilbur’s work is “a major contribution to how we look at contemporary Native people. Native communities have connections to their pasts, but there are new modes of expression that the general public often doesn’t understand.”

The first Tidelands exhibit focused on Wilbur’s project portraits.

The current exhibition opens with an introduction:

“Our people have lived here since the beginning of time. We understand ourselves as children of the land, taught how to live in balance, in health, and in relationship. Our wealth does not come from what we own, but from what we share.”

The exhibit opened in February, with song and readings, much of it spoken in Lushootseed. There were reminders that the language and the creation stories nearly disappeared when children were taken to residential schools and the U.S. government enacted laws that prevented tribes from participating in traditional gatherings and activities.

“These stories were often whispered in the dark, kept from being public by colonizers,” Wilbur said. “Tidelands is a place where our people can tell our stories.”

Lushootseed Creation Stories are the histories of how the land, the waters, the animals and the first peoples came to be, Wilbur said.

At the heart of the stories is the Creator, often referred to as Changer or Transformer, who shaped the mountains, the rivers and the people, marking the beginning of the first people to inhabit Western Washington.

The artwork includes carvings, paintings, a quilt, photos and a rope or cedar bark strands.

One of Wilbur’s photos displayed is of “Old Bull Frog Lady,” who cares for one of the first babies, part of the story of the sisters who descended to the land on a braided cedar-bark rope.

Wilbur’s aunt Judy Gobin of Tulalip, a fiber artist, crafted a representation of the rope for the exhibit.

“I am proud of my niece,” Gobin said. “She’s from a great family. When she comes into a room, her enthusiasm and passion just spread. She’s brought a lot of people together with her art.”

Lummi glass artist Dan Friday, whose work also is displayed across the street at the Seattle Aquarium, praised Wilbur for the establishment of Tidelands.

“This is a fine place for our people to come together,” Friday said. “The ancestors would be proud.”

Moving from being just a photographer to an administrator of a gallery presented a steep learning curve, Wilbur said.

“We needed a marketplace and a place to honor the scholarship of native art. Tidelands is a space where native people can tell our stories and celebrate our language,” Wilbur said. “Our artwork is relevant in our society today. We need kinship structures with all brown people. For future generations, we need to fight back against systems of oppression.”

Contact writer Gale Fiege at gfiege56@gmail.com.

IF YOU GO

Lushootseed Creation Stories art exhibition is 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday through July 22 at Tidelands Gallery, 55 University St., Seattle; 206-453-1011; thisistidelands.com.

Getting there: Take the Link light rail to Symphony station in downtown Seattle and walk down University Street toward the waterfront. The gallery is on the left.

This story originally appeared in Sound & Summit magazine, The Daily Herald’s quarterly publication. Explore Snohomish and Island counties with each issue. Subscribe and receive four issues for $18. Call 425-339-3200 or go to soundsummitmagazine.com.