Looking With The Indigenous Gaze: An Exploration Of Indigenous-Made Films

Indigenous film offers a place to represent Indigenous sovereignty, explore Indigenous futurity, and resist and subvert dominant narratives that are prevalent in society and mainstream media. Mainstream films featuring Indigenous peoples have historically been overpopulated with negative stereotypes that misrepresent a richly diverse, collective culture of multiple nations. Indigenous-made film offers a place of resistance to these hegemonic narratives. What impact do Indigenous women filmmakers have on challenging heteropatriarchal and colonial narratives that exist in the public imaginary? Rooted in gaze theory, this project takes an intersectional feminist approach to demonstrate the impact of films made by Indigenous women and demonstrate the power Indigenous-made film has in constructing an accurate representation of Indigeneity and the experiences of Indigenous women. Current researchers have examined the Indigenous gaze in film (Gauthier, 2015; Topash-Caldwell, 2020; Rice et al., 2020; Gauthier, 2021) and the impact of Indigenous films (Medak-Saltzman, 2017; Sonza, 2018; Romero, 2017; Beadling, 2016). While most researchers within the field use case study or thematic analysis to conduct their research, this project will contribute to this growing field by using a content analysis and semi-structured interviews to analyze Indigenous-made films. Using Indigenous Methodologies to frame this project, this project will conduct a close reading and content analysis to demonstrate the storytelling tactics used in three Indigenous films made by women. Categories chosen for a content analysis are Indigenous Sovereignty, Violence, and Representation of Indigenous Women. To supplement the content analysis, semi-structured interviews with Indigenous filmmakers and industry professionals will be done to provide further analysis of the films analyzed in this project. By conducting interviews, it will center Indigenous women’s voices within the conversation surrounding the impacts of Indigenous film. This project will contribute to the field in further developing research on the Indigenous gaze and its power to confront and subvert heteropatriarchal and colonial narratives.