Representing Indigeneity

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

Representing Native Americans in texts, photographs, museum collections, and exhibits was a central impetus pushing early American anthropological activities, alongside anthropology’s broader history founded on representing ‘natives’ from around the world. This course moves from a critical history of visual anthropology beginning in the 19th century through efforts to decolonize representations in the 20th century and widespread Indigenous media movements in filmmaking, photography, museums, and research. Since the 1970s, indigenous media makers in the Americas, Oceania, and the Arctic have created visual media as forms of social action that narrate historical and contemporary inequalities and cultural survival. Some indigenous media makers have worked with non-indigenous anthropologists and other allies, and some have built transnational networks with indigenous media makers from diverse parts of the globe that support and circulate indigenous media. While this course focuses on representations of indigenous peoples, the politics of representation — or in other words, the power in creating written, visual, and audio representations of our selves and others — are important in every anthropological project, as well as in many other professional and personal activities. This course’s texts and films present some of the complexities and possibilities across the continuum of representing others, collaboration, and self-representation.