Indigenous Media Arts in Canada: Making, Caring, Sharing

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.

Table of Contents:
Insiders/Outsiders: The Cultural Politics and Ethics of Indigenous Representation and Participation in Canada’s Media Arts – Edited by Dana Claxton and Ezra Winton Contributor Bios 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. And Speaking of the North: A Conversation between Ezra Winton and Alethea Arnaquq-Baril 3. Sights of Homecoming: 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, Repairing Justice: The Legacy of Films on Canadian Residential Schools – Brenda Longfellow 6. Indigenous Women in Québec Cinema: From Alanis Obomsawin’s Mother of Many Children to Michel Poulette’s Maïna – 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/Practices/Knowledges/Interventions Part III Introduction Dana Claxton and Ezra Winton 8. Indigenous Documentary Methodologies: ChiPaChiMoWin / Telling Stories – Jules Arita Koostachin 9. Due North: Contemporary Indigenous Media and Ecological Knowledge – Michelle Stewart 10. Marking and Mapping Out Embodied Practices of Indigenous Women Media Artists – Julie Nagam and Carla Taunton 11. Speaking Outside: Collaboration as Strategic Intervention Toby Katrine Lawrence Part IV - Resurgent Media and its Allies Part IV Introduction - Knowledge as Territory: A Note to the Settler Academy – Sasha Crawford-Holland and Lindsay LeBlanc 12. “Making Things Our [Digital] Own”: Sovereignty in Indigenous Computational Art – Sasha Crawford-Holland and Lindsay LeBlanc 13. Careful Images: Unsettling Testimony in the Gladue Video Project – Eugenia Kisin and Lisa Jackson Conclusions We Are Only Beginning – Dana Claxton and Ezra Winton Final Thoughts: Setting the Record Straight –Lisa Jackson Index – Makers and Thinkers 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

About the Author :
Dana Claxton 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 with the University of British Columbia. Ezra Winton is Assistant Professor, Communication Studies (Precarious/Visiting) 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 Hot Docs, Buying in to Doing Good (MQUP).

Review :
“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