1. Refusal/film: diasporic-indigenous relationalities.
- Author
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Jafri, Beenash
- Subjects
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INDIGENOUS art , *FILMMAKING , *INDIGENOUS peoples , *CULTURAL production , *REPRESENTATIVE government , *VOYAGES around the world - Abstract
This essay situates the cultural-political practices of non-Indigenous, racialized diasporas with Audra Simpson's concept of refusal. I frame diasporic film that generates alternatives to settler colonial relationships and imaginaries in terms of ongoing practices of diasporic refusal. To elaborate on what this refusal can look like, I turn to South Asian Canadian filmmaker Ali Kazimi's experimental documentary Shooting Indians: A Journey with Jeffrey Thomas (1997), a profile of Iroquois photographer Jeffrey Thomas that self-reflexively explores the politics of spectatorship and representation through an examination of Native subjects of Edward Curtis' portrait series. Understanding Shooting Indians' refusal requires not only an analysis of its representational politics, but the contextualization of the film as (a) a generative effect of South Asian diasporic artists in Toronto engaging questions of Indigenous sovereignty and relationality through art and community discussion, and (b) as itself opening possibilities for continued conversations and cultural production among South Asian diasporas and Indigenous peoples in Toronto. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2020
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