Indigenous Media

1 Course Unit

This course introduces students to the active participation of Indigenous peoples across the globe in media technologies and the creation of media objects. We will critically explore how Indigenous peoples have engaged with media technologies—both adapting Western technologies and developing distinctive practices—to express their identities, contest stereotypes and systemic erasure, and grapple and expose pressing issues affecting their communities. This course starts by analyzing how Indigenous peoples have been represented in Euro-American media and considering the effects of these portrayals. Building upon this foundation, we will examine how Indigenous groups have used film, radio, and digital technologies to create their own modes of storytelling and self-representation. In the second half of the course, we will explore the complex relationships that have emerged with the rise of digital technologies. We will consider how Indigenous groups interpret and respond to the roles of these technologies in their communities. Importantly, we will examine how Indigenous peoples are not only users but active producers of digital technology—for example, by looking at a Diné reservation labor site involved in semiconductor manufacturing. Throughout these discussions, we will grapple with the ethical issues that arise from these technologies and their effects among Indigenous communities. Through close analysis of case studies, media artifacts, theoretical readings, and guest speakers, students will explore how media objects are not neutral or autonomous, but rather shaped by local ways of knowing, by the possibilities and limitations of technologies, and by the goals and values of societies. We will challenge the idea that media technologies are automatically good or empowering. Instead, we will examine technology as “ambivalent”—capable of helping, hindering, and creating unexpected outcomes. Students will grapple with the diversity of Indigenous groups and how differing groups go about media usage. While there are more than 5,000 distinct Indigenous groups across the world, this course will primarily focus on media participation emerging from the Americas and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Students will gain critical skills in media analysis and thoughtfully engage with issues of media, technology, and Indigeneity. 1 Course Unit