Native Actors And Filmmakers Visual Storytellers

Discover the unique lives and career paths of twelve Native people who are actively working in the complex entertainment industry of motion pictures, television, or digital productions. They work both in front of or behind the camera as either an actor, director, producer, writer, cinematographer, or editor; in some cases, in multiple roles. These biographies include realistic descriptions of what each member of a production team does, as well as advice on what it takes to get started in the entertainment business. A glossary highlights the terminology used in TV/movie production, and a list of resources provides a variety of ways to obtain additional information about the industry.Featured individuals are: Irene Bedard (Inupiat, Yup'ik, Inuit, Cree, Metis) Actor Tantoo Cardinal (Metis, Cree, Dene, Nakota) Actor Christopher Nataanii Cegielski (Dine/Navajo) Writer, Producer, Director Sydney Freeland (Dine/Navajo) Writer, Director Jack Kohlerv (Hupa) Actor, Producer, Director, Educator Kimberly Norris Guerrero (Colville) Actor Michael Horse (Yaqui) Actor Alanis Obomsawin (Abenaki) Producer, Director Doreen Manuel (Secwepemc, Ktunaxa) Producer, Director Randy Redroad (Indigenous American) Writer, Director, Editor Ian Skorodin (Choctaw) Writer, Director Gilbert Salas (Indigenous Mexican-American) Cinematographer, Director of Photography.

Cherokee teen Billy Buckhorn had no idea what was in store for him when Osage teen Lisa Lookout and her family showed up on his doorstep. A tribal prophecy, carried by their family for a thousand years, indicates Billy is the long awaited Chosen One, and that he is destined to battle dark ancient forces that are planning to retake control of the Middleworld. As Billy comes to accept his prophesied new role, he must also learn to accept that he and his loved ones are now targets of the most powerful shape-shifting Native American witches and sorcerers on Turtle Island. Known as the Night Seers of the Owl Clan, Billy must use old Indigenous ways, intertwined with new technology, to fight and defeat this evil force. Billy Buckhorn and the Rise of the Night Seers is the second thrilling installment of the Thunder Child Prophecy Series.

Michigan Salvage is the first scholarly collection on celebrated writer Bonnie Jo Campbell, the author of two novels and three short story collections, including National Book Award finalist American Salvage (2009). Her writing captures a diverse and bustling rural America, brimming with complex characters who struggle with addiction, poverty, and land degradation—issues that have become, undeniably, part of the southwestern Michigan landscape that she calls home. The essays in this volume demonstrate many rich ways to approach Campbell’s writing, from historical and cultural overviews to essays examining the class and gender implications of her stories and novels, to teaching essays highlighting how to use her work in the classroom and beyond. Along with each essay, Michigan Salvage also features lesson plans and writing prompts meant to spark discussion and encourage further investigation into these stories and novels. This essential and teachable collection makes plain Campbell’s contributions to contemporary American literature.

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.

Canadian universities have an ongoing history of colonialism and racism in this white-settler society. Racialized students (Indigenous, Black and students of colour), who would once have been forbidden from academic spaces and who still feel out of place, must navigate these repressive structures in their educational journeys. Through the genres of essay, art, poetry and photography, this book examines the experiences of and effects on racialized students in the Canadian academy, while exposing academia’s lack of capacity to promote students’ academic well-being. The book emphasizes the crucial connections that racialized students forge, which transform an otherwise hostile environment into a space of intellectual collaboration, community building and transnational kinship relations. Meticulously curated by Dr. Benita Bunjun, this book is a living example of mentorship, reciprocity and resilience.

More than any other event in Australia’s legal, political and cultural history, the High Court of Australia’s 1992 Mabo decision challenged previous ways of thinking about land, identity, belonging, the nation and history. Now, more than a quarter of a century after Mabo, this book examines the broader impacts of this landmark legal decision on various forms of Australian culture and cultural practice. How is Australia’s post-Mabo imaginary being reflected, refracted and articulated in contemporary film, fiction, poetry, biography and other forms of cultural expression? To what extent has the discussion and practice of history, linguistics, anthropology and other branches of the humanities been challenged or transformed by Mabo? While the judges in Mabo recognised native title, they also denied Indigenous people sovereignty over the continent: how is First Nations sovereignty being articulated and creatively imagined in more recent post-Mabo discourse? This interdisciplinary book, offering a transnational perspective via scholars based in Australia, continental Europe and the UK, provides an overview of the diverse impact and discursive influence of Mabo on fields of artistic endeavour and cultural practice in Australia today.

This insightful volume offers an analysis of land-based Diné and Dene imaginaries as embodied in their own cinematic, visual, and literary stories. Watchman uses literary and visual texts to explore how relations are restored, showing how literary linkages from land-based stories affirm kinship.

In this deeply engaging account Michelle H. Raheja offers the first book-length study of the Indigenous actors, directors, and spectators who helped shape Hollywood’s representation of Indigenous peoples. Since the era of silent films, Hollywood movies and visual culture generally have provided the primary representational field on which Indigenous images have been displayed to non-Native audiences. These films have been highly influential in shaping perceptions of Indigenous peoples as, for example, a dying race or as inherently unable or unwilling to adapt to change. However, films with Indigenous plots and subplots also signify at least some degree of Native presence in a culture that largely defines Native peoples as absent or separate. Native actors, directors, and spectators have had a part in creating these cinematic representations and have thus complicated the dominant, and usually negative, messages about Native peoples that films portray. In Reservation Reelism Raheja examines the history of these Native actors, directors, and spectators, reveals their contributions, and attempts to create positive representations in film that reflect the complex and vibrant experiences of Native peoples and communities.