American Studies ETDs
Publication Date
Spring 4-15-2020
Abstract
This dissertation examines how Native art makes critical interventions that are aesthetically and intellectually arranged with the intention of displacing the master narratives. The project tracks how film and photography—historically used by non-Native people as a tool of colonialism—are being reclaimed by the visual and sonic scholarship of contemporary Native artists. The project shows how multidisciplinary artists use technology to remix audiovisual archives from a specific time in American history: portrait photography and ethnographic filmmaking at the turn of the twentieth century, Hollywood’s frontier representations of Indianness in twentieth-century motion pictures, social guidance classroom films from the 1950s, and digital video surveillance cameras in the twenty-first century. All of these carry legacies of intense racial coding, ones which Native scholars and visual artists have critiqued with counter discourse and works of “visual sovereignty.” Intervening into film studies, Native American studies, and critical theories of visual culture, the research offers new insights into the complex relationship between settler colonialism and visual sovereignty. I use visual sovereignty as a framework to confront the often-absurd assumptions that circulate around visual representations of Native Americans, while also disempowering structures of cinematic dominance and stereotype.
Keywords
Native American Studies, Visual Culture, Native Art, Film, Photography, Remix Studies, Native Feminism
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
American Studies
Level of Degree
Doctoral
Department Name
American Studies
First Committee Member (Chair)
Jennifer Nez Denetdale
Second Committee Member
Luana Ross
Third Committee Member
Rebecca Schreiber
Fourth Committee Member
Antonio T. Tiongson Jr.
Recommended Citation
Ernest, Marcella. "Remixing The Archives: Indigenous Interpretations Of History And The Future." (2020). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/amst_etds/103
Included in
American Film Studies Commons, American Popular Culture Commons, Film Production Commons, Indigenous Studies Commons, Interdisciplinary Arts and Media Commons, Other Arts and Humanities Commons, Other Film and Media Studies Commons, Photography Commons, United States History Commons, Visual Studies Commons, Women's Studies Commons
