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.

Dana Claxton is a Canadian interdisciplinary artist of Lakota Sioux descent. Her work includes film and video, installation and performance art, and centres on concerns of beauty, justice, autonomy and spirit. She is represented in public collections, has been shown internationally, and has received numerous awards including the VIVA Award from the Doris and Jack Shadbolt Foundation for her commitment to contemporary art in Vancouver; and in 2007 became an Eiteljorg Fellow sponsored by the Ford Foundation. She has held positions as Adjunct Professor at Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design, Vancouver; Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver; 2009/10 Ruth Wynn Woodward Endowed Chair in Women's Studies at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby; and was a founding director of the Indigenous Media Arts Group, Vancouver.

Dana Claxton's profile page

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.

Ezra Winton's profile page