Photographer and educator Zig Jackson grew up in the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota and began photographing while attending a high school for Indigenous children in Utah. He earned a BA in education from Northeastern Oklahoma State University and furthered his artistic training at the University of New Mexico and San Francisco State University. Jackson's conceptual, black-and-white photographs employ humor to address the geopolitics of settler colonialism and challenge misconceptions of Indigenous peoples as a vanishing community. Jackson received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2021 and the Beaumont Newhall Award for Photographic Excellence in 2015. His teaching career includes positions at Mount Holyoke College and Michigan State University. As of 2024, Jackson teaches photography at the Savannah College of Art and Design.