Native Americans on Film: Conversations, Teaching, and Theory

by M. Elise Marubbio, Eric L. Buffalohead

Overview

The film industry and mainstream popular culture are notorious for promoting stereotypical images of Native Americans: the noble and ignoble savage, the pronoun-challenged sidekick, the ruthless warrior, the female drudge, the princess, the sexualized maiden, the drunk, and others. Over the years, Indigenous filmmakers have both challenged these representations and moved past them, offering their own distinct forms of cinematic expression.

Native Americans on Film draws inspiration from the Indigenous film movement, bringing filmmakers into an intertextual conversation with academics from a variety of disciplines. The resulting dialogue opens a myriad of possibilities for engaging students with ongoing debates: What is Indigenous film? Who is an Indigenous filmmaker? What are Native filmmakers saying about Indigenous film and their own work? This thought-provoking text offers theoretical approaches to understanding Native cinema, includes pedagogical strategies for teaching particular films, and validates the different voices, approaches, and worldviews that emerge across the movement.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813136653
Publisher:	University Press of Kentucky
Publication date:	02/22/2013
Pages:	398
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

M. Elise Marubbio is associate professor of American Indian studies at Augsburg College and director of the Augsburg Native American Film Series. She is the author of Killing the Indian Maiden: Images of Native American Women in Film, winner of the Peter C. Rollins Book Award. Eric L. Buffalohead, an enrolled member of the Ponca Tribe of White Eagle, Oklahoma, is associate professor and Chair of the American Indian studies department at Augsburg College.

Table of Contents

Dimensions of Difference in Indigenous Film
Reading Nanook's Smile: Visual Sovereignty, Indigenous Revisions of Ethnography, and Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner)
Dismantling the Master's House: The Feminist Fourth Cinema Documentaries of Alanis Obomsawin and Loretta Todd
Indigenous (Re)memory and Resistance: Video Works by Dana Claxton
Native Resistance to Hollywood's Persistence of Vision: Teaching Films about Contemporary American Indians
Geographies of Identity and Belonging in Sherman Alexie's The Business of Fancydancing
Teaching Native American Filmmakers: Osawa, Eyre and Redroad
The Native's Point of View As Seen Through the Native's (and Non-Native's) Points of View
The Dirt Roads of Consciousness: Teaching and Producing Videos with Indigenous Purpose
Pockets Full of Stories: An Interview with Sterlin Harjo and Blackhorse Lowe
Wrestling the Greased Pig: An Interview with Randy Redroad
Sandra Osawa: An Upstream Journey
Video as Community Ally and Dakota Sense of Place: An Interview with Mona Smith
The Journey's Discover: An Interview with Shelly Niro

What People are Saying About This

Randolph Lewis

"Without a doubt, this volume represents a major contribution to the literature on Native film. Because of its wealth of insightful articles and fresh interviews with Native filmmakers, it should be an essential book for courses on Native film, indigenous media, not to mention more general courses on Native American studies and media studies where these topics are too often neglected. A very impressive and useful collection."

From the Publisher

"Without a doubt, this volume represents a major contribution to the literature on Native film. Because of its wealth of insightful articles and fresh interviews with Native filmmakers, it should be an essential book for courses on Native film, indigenous media, not to mention more general courses on Native American studies and media studies where these topics are too often neglected. A very impressive and useful collection." — Randolph Lewis, author of Navajo Talking Picture: Cinema on Native Ground

"Accomplished scholars in the emerging field of Native film studies, Marubbio and Buffalohead... focus clearly on the needs of this field. They do scholars and students of Native film a great service by reprinting four seminal and provocative essays." — J. Ruppert, University of Alaska Fairbanks

J. Ruppert

"Accomplished scholars in the emerging field of Native film studies, Marubbio and Buffalohead... focus clearly on the needs of this field. They do scholars and students of Native film a great service by reprinting four seminal and provocative essays."

Editorial Reviews

Accomplished scholars in the emerging field of Native film studies, Marubbio and Buffalohead... focus clearly on the needs of this field. They do scholars and students of Native film a great service by reprinting four seminal and provocative essays.

J. Ruppert

M. Elise Marubbio and Eric L. Buffalohead have succeeded in depicting the complexities in study, teaching, and creating Native film.... Regardless of an individual's level of knowledge and expertise in Native film, Native Americans on Film is a valuable read for anyone interested in this topic.

Studies in American Indian Literatures

Without a doubt, this volume represents a major contribution to the literature on Native film. Because of its wealth of insightful articles and fresh interviews with Native filmmakers, it should be an essential book for courses on Native film, indigenous media, not to mention more general courses on Native American studies and media studies where these topics are too often neglected. A very impressive and useful collection.

Randolph Lewis

"M. Elise Marubbio and Eric L. Buffalohead have succeeded in depicting the complexities in study, teaching, and creating Native film.... Regardless of an individual's level of knowledge and expertise in Native film, Native Americans on Film is a valuable read for anyone interested in this topic." — Studies in American Indian Literatures

From the Publisher