Indigenous Media: Dialogic Resistance to Climate Disruption

This chapter discusses the collaboration between four Indigenous studies scholars all interested in illuminating the aesthetics, ethics, and politics of contemporary Indigenous art and visual culture with regard to climate disruption. Even as Skawennati presents a keen commentary on the ongoing value of the Peacemaker story through space-time, the Second Life platform lends itself to amusing storytelling as most characters are rendered with idealized physiques. Mowarin demonstrates the interwoven relationship between sacred sites and ecological sustainability by presenting an argument-which could simply be opposed-but through an immersive experience that fosters embodied understanding. Spotlighting Indigenous artists from geographies as far apart as the North American Arctic to Australia, and covering a variety of media from hip-hop and multimedia installations, to machinima, to two types of virtual reality, the individual vignettes below nonetheless thread through a common theme. Juxtaposing allochronic assumptions of traditional versus modern, Galanin’s work breaks down western chronologies of linear temporal progression.