Indigenous Media Arts in Canada: Making, Caring, Sharing - Paperback

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

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.

Author Biography

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 of Journalism and Mass Communication, American University in Bulgaria and holds a PhD in Communication Studies from Carleton University. He is the co-founder, with Svetla Turnin, and Director of Programming of Cinema Politica, the world's largest grassroots documentary screening network, and is a contributing editor at POV Magazine.