1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910823714203321

Autore

Huhndorf Shari M (Shari Michelle), <1965->

Titolo

Mapping the Americas : the transnational politics of contemporary native culture / / Shari M. Huhndorf

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Ithaca, : Cornell University Press, 2009

ISBN

1-5017-0566-0

0-8014-5880-3

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (xii, 202 pages) : illustrations

Disciplina

323.1197

Soggetti

Indians of North America - Ethnic identity

Indians of North America - Politics and government

Indian arts - North America

Eskimos - Alaska - Ethnic identity

Eskimos - Alaska - Politics and government

Inuit - Canada - Ethnic identity

Inuit - Canada - Politics and government

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction : Native American studies and the limits of nationalism -- Colonizing Alaska : race, nation, and the remaking of Native America -- "From the inside and through Inuit eyes" : Igloolik Isuma Productions and the cultural politics of Inuit media -- Indigenous feminism, performance, and the gendered politics of memory -- Picture revolution : "tribal internationalism" and the future of the Americas in Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the dead -- Coda : border crossings.

Sommario/riassunto

In Mapping the Americas, Shari M. Huhndorf tracks changing conceptions of Native culture as it increasingly transcends national boundaries and takes up vital concerns such as patriarchy, labor and environmental exploitation, the emergence of pan-Native urban communities, global imperialism, and the commodification of indigenous cultures. While nationalism remains a dominant anticolonial strategy in indigenous contexts, Huhndorf examines the ways in which transnational indigenous politics have reshaped Native culture (especially novels, films, photography, and performance) in the United



States and Canada since the 1980's. Mapping the Americas thus broadens the political paradigms that have dominated recent critical work in Native studies as well as the geographies that provide its focus, particularly through its engagement with the Arctic. Among the manifestations of these new tendencies in Native culture that Huhndorf presents are Igloolik Isuma Productions, the Inuit company that has produced nearly forty films, including Atanarjuat, The Fast Runner; indigenous feminist playwrights; Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead; and the multimedia artist Shelley Niro. Huhndorf also addresses the neglect of Native America by champions of "postnationalist" American studies, which shifts attention away from ongoing colonial relationships between the United States and indigenous communities within its borders to U.S. imperial relations overseas. This is a dangerous oversight, Huhndorf argues, because this neglect risks repeating the disavowal of imperialism that the new American studies takes to task. Parallel transnational tendencies in American studies and Native American studies have thus worked at cross-purposes: as pan-tribal alliances draw attention to U.S. internal colonialism and its connections to global imperialism, American studies deflects attention from these ongoing processes of conquest. Mapping the Americas addresses this neglect by considering what happens to American studies when you put Native studies at the center.