Sam Pambrun’s astonishing collection of Métis photos has over 2,000 photos from the mid-1800s to mid-1900s, and the archive is constantly growing.

Sam Pambrun started keeping the history of his family in the fifth grade. Pambrun and his classmates were told to go home, ask about their family's relationship to the Oregon Trail, and then write a paper and give a presentation about it.

“I went home and I asked them, and they laughed and laughed and laughed and said, ‘Your family was here before the people came across on the Oregon Trail,’” Pambrun said. “So I went back to my teacher and I told her, ‘I'm sorry, we had nobody that came here on the Oregon Trail. What do I do?’ She said ‘Well, write a story about how your family got here.’ And so that's what got me started.”

Over the years, Hurlburt, student researchers and descendants have pored over photos trying to connect the dots, identify people and figure out as much as possible about their lives.

"In a single collection, you can see before someone was born, when they're a little baby, when they're a toddler," student researcher Madeline Senter said. "They just progressively grow up and then you see the last photos of them. You kind of see their whole life."

One product of the archive includes an exhibit that is open to the public at Sheehan Gallery on Whitman College’s campus in Washington until December 6th, 2024. While the exhibit is full of information, stories, photos, quilts, baskets and more, Senter said what was on display was only a scratch on the surface.

Métis in British Columbia emerged as part of a vast and extensive kinship network of thriving mixed-ancestry communities throughout the Pacific Northwest.

At the BCMF we are committed to recognizing and reconstituting these important Indigenous kinship networks and to restoring the self-determination of all Métis peoples.