Reading Nanook's Smile: Visual Sovereignty, Indigenous Revisions of Ethnography, and Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner)
"Reading Nanook's Smile: Visual Sovereignty, Indigenous Revisions of Ethnography, and Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner)" puts ethnography and cinematic representations of Native Americans in crucial dialogue with the work of contemporary indigenous filmmakers. The author explores what it m...
Published in: | American Quarterly |
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Language: | English |
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Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/aq.2007.0083 |
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crjohnshopkinsun:10.1353/aq.2007.0083 2024-06-23T07:50:12+00:00 Reading Nanook's Smile: Visual Sovereignty, Indigenous Revisions of Ethnography, and Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner) Raheja, Michelle 2007 http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/aq.2007.0083 en eng Project MUSE American Quarterly volume 59, issue 4, page 1159-1185 ISSN 1080-6490 journal-article 2007 crjohnshopkinsun https://doi.org/10.1353/aq.2007.0083 2024-06-13T04:15:46Z "Reading Nanook's Smile: Visual Sovereignty, Indigenous Revisions of Ethnography, and Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner)" puts ethnography and cinematic representations of Native Americans in crucial dialogue with the work of contemporary indigenous filmmakers. The author explores what it means for indigenous people "to laugh at the camera" as a tactic of what she calls "visual sovereignty," to confront the spectator with the often absurd assumptions that circulate around visual representations of Native Americans, while also flagging their involvement and, to some degree, complicity in these often disempowering structures of cinematic dominance and stereotype. She employs Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner) (2000), the first full-length feature film directed by an Inuit, Zacharias Kunuk, and produced by Igloolik Isuma Productions, Inc., a collaborative, majority Inuit production company, as her primary context for analysis to examine the ways this film is embedded within discourses about Arctic peoples that cannot be severed from the larger web of hegemonic discourses of ethnography. She does this first by discussing the pervasive images of Native Americans in ethnographic films and then by theorizing the ways that Atanarjuat intervenes into visual sovereignty as a film that successfully addresses a dual Inuit and non-Inuit audience for two different aims. More specifically, she interrogates how the Atanarjuat filmmakers strategically adjust and reframe the registers on which Inuit epistemes are considered with the twin, but not necessarily conflicting, aims of operating in the service of their home communities and forcing viewers to reconsider mass-mediated images of the Arctic. Article in Journal/Newspaper Arctic Igloolik inuit Johns Hopkins University Press Arctic Igloolik ENVELOPE(-81.800,-81.800,69.378,69.378) American Quarterly 59 4 1159 1185 |
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Open Polar |
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Johns Hopkins University Press |
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crjohnshopkinsun |
language |
English |
description |
"Reading Nanook's Smile: Visual Sovereignty, Indigenous Revisions of Ethnography, and Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner)" puts ethnography and cinematic representations of Native Americans in crucial dialogue with the work of contemporary indigenous filmmakers. The author explores what it means for indigenous people "to laugh at the camera" as a tactic of what she calls "visual sovereignty," to confront the spectator with the often absurd assumptions that circulate around visual representations of Native Americans, while also flagging their involvement and, to some degree, complicity in these often disempowering structures of cinematic dominance and stereotype. She employs Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner) (2000), the first full-length feature film directed by an Inuit, Zacharias Kunuk, and produced by Igloolik Isuma Productions, Inc., a collaborative, majority Inuit production company, as her primary context for analysis to examine the ways this film is embedded within discourses about Arctic peoples that cannot be severed from the larger web of hegemonic discourses of ethnography. She does this first by discussing the pervasive images of Native Americans in ethnographic films and then by theorizing the ways that Atanarjuat intervenes into visual sovereignty as a film that successfully addresses a dual Inuit and non-Inuit audience for two different aims. More specifically, she interrogates how the Atanarjuat filmmakers strategically adjust and reframe the registers on which Inuit epistemes are considered with the twin, but not necessarily conflicting, aims of operating in the service of their home communities and forcing viewers to reconsider mass-mediated images of the Arctic. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Raheja, Michelle |
spellingShingle |
Raheja, Michelle Reading Nanook's Smile: Visual Sovereignty, Indigenous Revisions of Ethnography, and Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner) |
author_facet |
Raheja, Michelle |
author_sort |
Raheja, Michelle |
title |
Reading Nanook's Smile: Visual Sovereignty, Indigenous Revisions of Ethnography, and Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner) |
title_short |
Reading Nanook's Smile: Visual Sovereignty, Indigenous Revisions of Ethnography, and Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner) |
title_full |
Reading Nanook's Smile: Visual Sovereignty, Indigenous Revisions of Ethnography, and Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner) |
title_fullStr |
Reading Nanook's Smile: Visual Sovereignty, Indigenous Revisions of Ethnography, and Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner) |
title_full_unstemmed |
Reading Nanook's Smile: Visual Sovereignty, Indigenous Revisions of Ethnography, and Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner) |
title_sort |
reading nanook's smile: visual sovereignty, indigenous revisions of ethnography, and atanarjuat (the fast runner) |
publisher |
Project MUSE |
publishDate |
2007 |
url |
http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/aq.2007.0083 |
long_lat |
ENVELOPE(-81.800,-81.800,69.378,69.378) |
geographic |
Arctic Igloolik |
geographic_facet |
Arctic Igloolik |
genre |
Arctic Igloolik inuit |
genre_facet |
Arctic Igloolik inuit |
op_source |
American Quarterly volume 59, issue 4, page 1159-1185 ISSN 1080-6490 |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1353/aq.2007.0083 |
container_title |
American Quarterly |
container_volume |
59 |
container_issue |
4 |
container_start_page |
1159 |
op_container_end_page |
1185 |
_version_ |
1802641066473553920 |