Career: Artist, Writer, Photographer, Book & Exhibition “DIGNITY” for Amnesty International’s 50th anniversary
Interests: Indigenous People, Tribes, Human Rights
Hometown: Los Angeles (CA), USA

Dana Gluckstein is a celebrated, award-winning photographer whose work has appeared in countless campaigns, newspapers & magazines. Gluckstein graduated from Stanford University, where she studied psychology, painting & photography.In her 30-year career, she has captured cultural luminaries from Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev to Muhammad Ali, but perhaps her most important work has been her personal mission, photographing indigenous communities around the globe- a work collected in the book, Dignity: In Honor of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Her portraits are held in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles Countys Museum of Art and Santa Barbara Museum of Art.

Dignity: In Honour of The Rights of Indigenous People honors Indigenous Peoples worldwide and celebrates the 50th Anniversary of Amnesty International, the Nobel Prize-winning human rights organization. Gluckstein, whether photographing a Haitian healer or a San Bushman elder, succeeds in distilling the universality of experience that links us all without diminishing the dignity of the individual. Dignity includes more than 90 of Gluckstein´s  black-and-white duotone portraits, made over three decades. The photographs express the theme of tribes in transition by capturing the fleeting period of world history where traditional and contemporary cultures collide.

Amnesty International is a global movement of more than 3 million supporters, members and activists in more than 150 countries and territories who campaign to end grave abuses of human rights. Amnesty started campaigning in 1961, and has worked around the globe to stop the abuse of human rights. Currently, they have more than 2.2 million members, supporters and subscribers in over 150 countries and territories, in every region of the world. Their vision is for every person to enjoy all the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights standards. They  are independent of any government, political ideology, economic interest or religion and are funded mainly by our membership and public donations. In the context that U.S. government along with Canada (only two countries in U.N.) have not accepted the Declaration, there is a petition through Amnesty International for the adoption of the declaration.

The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was adopted by the General Assembly in September 2007. The Declaration is the most comprehensive statement of the rights of indigenous peoples ever developed, giving prominence to collective rights to a degree unprecedented in international human rights law. It is a culmination of over twenty years of work, that began in earnest at the Working Group which began the drafting of the declaration in 1985. The first draft was completed in 1993, and in 1995, the Commission on Human Rights set up its own working group to review the draft adopted by the human rights experts of the Working Group and the Sub-Commission. More than 100 indigenous organizations participated in the Working Group of the Commission annually.

More:
www.danagluckstein.com
www.amnesty.org
www.un.org

Dignity on
Facebook: http://en-gb.facebook.com/dignitybook
Twitter: @DIGNITYbook

Other articles/links/videos:
Culture/Movies-TV-Music-Books/True-Grace" target="_blank">Elle: True Grace (2010/11)
Planet-mag: dignity-dana-gluckstein (2010/10)
Huffington Post: International Day of  Indigenous Peoples: Are We Listening To Their Wisdom? (2010/08)
The Daily Beast: Portraits From the Corner of the Earth.

Video: Desmond Tutu and Hugh Maskela unite for Dignity
Video: Dana Gluckstein Interview Part 1