Indigenous Media Arts in Canada: Making, Caring, Sharing

by Dana Claxton (Editor), Ezra Winton (Editor)

Overview

Indigenous and settler scholars and media artists discuss and analyze crucial questions of narrative sovereignty, cultural identity, cultural resistance, and decolonizing creative practices.

Humans are narrative creatures, and since the dawn of our existence we have shared stories. Storytelling is what connects us, what helps us give shape and understanding to the world and to each other. Who tells whose stories in which particular ways leads to questions of belonging, power, relationality, community and identity. This collection explores those issues with a focus on settler-Indigenous cultural politics in the country known as Canada, looking in particular at Indigenous representation in media arts. Chapters feature roundtable discussions, interviews, film analyses, resurgent media explorations, visual culture advocacy and place-based practices of creative expression.

Eclectic in scope and diverse in perspective, Indigenous Media Arts in Canada is unified by an ethic of conciliation, collaboration, and cultural resistance. Engaging deftly and thoughtfully with instances of cultural appropriation as well as the oppressive structures that seek to erode narrative sovereignty, this collection shines as a crucial gathering of thoughtful critique, cultural kinship, and creative counterpower.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781771125413
Publisher:	Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Publication date:	04/11/2023
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Dana Claxton (Wood Mountain Lakota First Nations) is an acclaimed artist and filmmaker. Her practice investigates indigenous beauty, the socio-political and spiritual. She mentors indigenous youth, emerging artists and filmmakers. She is Head and Professor in the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at the University of British Columbia.

Ezra Winton is Assistant Professor (Visiting), Communication Studies at Concordia University. His writing, teaching, research and curatorial practice engage in representational politics, screen ethics and media curation/circulation. He is currently finishing his monograph on documentary politics and curatorial ethics at film festivals, Buying in to Doing Good (MQUP), as well as a Canada Council for the Arts curatorial project on settler identification through film and media called Settler Frames. Ezra is a working class settler of British/Dutch descent from K’ómoks territory who currently lives in Tiohtiá:ke, where he is also the Director of Programming at Cinema Politica. Twitter: @ezrawinton

Table of Contents

Table of Contents
Indigenous Media Arts in Canada: Making, Caring, Sharing – Edited by Dana Claxton and Ezra Winton
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Seeing, Knowing, Lifting – Dana Claxton and Ezra Winton
Part I – Decolonizing Media Arts Institutions
Part I Introduction – Dana Claxton and Ezra Winton
1. Our Own Up There: A Discussion at imagineNATIVE – Danis Goulet and Tasha Hubbard with Jesse Wente, Alethea Arnaquq-Baril and Shane Belcourt
2. Curating the North: Documentary Screening Ethics and Inuit Representation in Canada – Ezra Winton and Alethea Arnaquq-Baril
3. Sights of Homecoming: Locating Restorative Sites of Passage in Zacharias Kunuk’s Festival Performance of Angirattut – Claudia Sicondolfo
Part II – Protecting Culture
Part II Introduction – Dana Claxton and Ezra Winton
4. Addressing Colonial Trauma Through Mi’kmaw Film – Margaret Robinson and Bretten Hannam
5. Not Reconciled: The Complex Legacy of Films on Canadian "Indian" Residential Schools – Brenda Longfellow
6. The Resurgence of Indigenous Women in Contemporary Québec Cinema – Karine Bertrand
7. “Our Circle Is Always Open”: Indigenous Voices, Children’s Rights, and Spaces of Inclusion in the Films of Alanis Obomsawin – Joanna Hearne
Part III – Methods/Knowledges/Interventions
Part III Introduction Dana Claxton and Ezra Winton
8. Indigenous Documentary Methodologies: ChiPaChiMoWin: Telling Stories – Jules Arita Koostachin
9. Marking and Mapping Out Embodied Practices through Media Art – Julie Nagam and Carla Taunton
10. Curatorial Insiders/Outsiders: Speaking Outside and Collaboration as Strategic Intervention – Toby Katrine Lawrence
11. The Generative Hope of Indigenous Interactive Media: Ecological Knowledge and Indigenous Futurism – Michelle Stewart
Part IV - Resurgent Media/Allies/Advocacy
Part IV Introduction – Dana Claxton and Ezra Winton + Sasha Crawford-Holland and Lindsay LeBlanc
12. “Making Things Our [Digital] Own”: Lessons on Time and Sovereignty from Indigenous Computational Art – Sasha Crawford-Holland and Lindsay LeBlanc
13. Careful Images: Unsettling Testimony in the Gladue Video Project – Eugenia Kisin and Lisa Jackson
Concluding Thoughts
Part 1: Beyond Words and Images – Ezra Winton and Dana Claxton Part 2: Setting the Record Straight – Lisa Jackson
About the Contributors
References
Index

Contributors

Alethea Arnaquq-Baril
Shane Belcourt
Karine Bertrand
Dana Claxton
Sasha Crawford-Holland
Danis Goulet
Bretten Hannam
Joanna Hearne
Tasha Hubbard
Lisa Jackson
Eugenia Kisin
Jules Arita Koostachin
Toby Katrine Lawrence
Lindsay LeBlanc
Brenda Longfellow
Julie Nagam
Margaret Robinson
Claudia Sicondolfo
Michelle Stewart
Carla Taunton
Jesse Wente
Ezra Winton

Editorial Reviews

“Dana Claxton and Ezra Winton's collection of conversations between, for, and about Indigenous media makers poses vital, critical, and generative questions about Indigenous film, film festivals and institutions, residential school histories, and decolonization without providing easy answers. These conversations are at times joyful expressions of the radical possibilities of media arts and at times painful provocations about settler colonial violence and its representational apparatuses. The chapters, written by the most brilliant and creative minds in contemporary Indigenous film, are paradigm-shifting love letters to the land, lived experience, collaboration, and futurity.” —Michelle Raheja, Associate Professor, Department of English, University of California, Riverside, author of Reservation Reelism: Redfacing, Visual Sovereignty, and Representations of Native Americans in Film

From the Publisher