Picture Revolution: Transnationalism, American Studies, and the Politics of Contemporary Native Culture

Abstract

Since the 1980s, political shifts within Native America, including the transnational indigenous peoples movement, have increasingly emphasized connections among indigenous communities, illuminated the place of Native America in global imperialism, and reshaped indigenous cultural production. Indigenous transnationalism, this essay argues, carries particular weight for feminism and other contemporary anti-colonial strategies as it also draws Native studies into a closer but frequently vexed relationship with postnationalist American studies. Parallel transnational tendencies in American studies and Native American studies have heretofore worked at cross-purposes: as pan-tribal alliances draw attention to U.S. internal colonialism and its connections to global imperialism, postnationalist American studies has largely neglected the ongoing colonization of Native America. Through an analysis of Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel Almanac of the Dead and Shelley Niro’s multimedia installation “The Border,” this essay addresses this neglect by considering what happens to postnationalist American studies when you put Native studies at the center.

“Where We Are Within That”: Chuj Sovereignty and Belonging Across Overlapping Settler Borders

“…In 2022, the PAG and Chuj nation succeeded in expelling the hydroelectric company from Xantin. Connecting across Maya nations to develop a vision for the future built on an interconnected vision of Maya sovereignty and self‐determination, their experiences reflected Shari M. Huhndorf's (Huhndorf 2009) statement that Indigenous “transnational alliances” are “the most powerful … form of anticolonial resistance” (141). Through their work with the PAG, Chuj youth established a decolonial vision of themselves, their community, and their future.…”

Transgressing the Exhibition: Isuma at the 2019 Venice Biennale Curated by Asinnajaq, Candice Hopkins, Catherine Crowston, Josée Drouin‐Brisebois and Barbara Fischer. Exhibited Artist Collective: Isuma (Zacharias Kunuk, Paul Apak, Pauloosie Qulitalik, Norman Cohn), May 11–November 24, 2019, Canadian Pavilion, La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Parallel Online Exhibition: http://www.isuma.tv/isuma‐book and http://www.isuma.tv

“…Questions of access and territorial control and selfdetermination indeed lie at the heart of Isuma's decolonizing film praxis and they form a central part of the exhibition as well (Huhndorf 2009). All of the works in the three-part moving image installation deal with the same land, the region around Pond Inlet (Mittimatalik), and offer diverse practices of visual sovereignty over that land (Ginsburg 1994;Raheja 2007).…”