Michelle Stewart is coordinator and associate professor of cinema studies and literature at Purchase College in New York. Her dissertation from the University of Minnesota, “Sovereign Visions: Native North American Documentary,” investigates the development of Native North American filmmaking as a creative form of cultural activism that is tied to a political program of cultural revival, self-determination, and national sovereignty. In general, her scholarship centers on interdisciplinary questions of cinema’s relation to changing forms of sociality and political life under globalization. Her current research concerns film policy, the European state, and minor cinema, with an emphasis on the cinematic production of North and West Africans in France.
In this exciting collection, scholars, activists, and media producers explore the emergence of Indigenous media: forms of media expression conceptualized, produced, and/or created by Indigenous peoples around the globe. Whether discussing Maori cinema in New Zealand or Indigenous radio in Colombia, the contributors describe how native peoples are utilizing mass media to combat discrimination, to advocate for resources and rights, and to preserve their cultures, languages, and traditions. By representing themselves in a variety of media, Indigenous peoples are also challenging misleading mainstream and official state narratives, forging international solidarity movements, and bringing human rights violations to international attention.
Global Indigenous Media addresses Indigenous self-representation across many media forms, including feature film, documentary, video art, television programs, radio broadcasts, Internet activism, and journalism. The volume’s sixteen essays reflect the dynamism of Indigenous media making around the world. One contributor examines animated educational films for children produced by Indigenous-owned companies in the United States and Canada. Another explains how the Indigenous media of Burma (Myanmar) works with NGOs and outsiders against the country’s brutal regime. Still another considers how the Ticuna Indians of Brazil are positioning themselves in relation to the international community as they collaborate in the creation of a CD-ROM featuring Ticuna knowledge and rituals. In the volume’s closing essay, Faye Ginsburg points out some of the problematic assumptions about globalization, media, and culture underlying the term “the digital age” and claims that it has arrived. Taken together, the essays reveal the crucial role of Indigenous media in contemporary media at every level: local and regional, national and international.