My films work to challenge the formal discourse around these systems that have served to codify the terms and representations of “Indian” into definite and universalized concepts. My commitment to this project is to create a counter-hegemonic visual framework for interrogating dominant discourses of authenticity, processes’ of racialization, and Native American cultural representation.
A still from Crucible
Gender appropriations is a central theme of your work. Could you introduce our readers to this fundamental aspect of Because of Who I Am?
Conceptually, the film explores the place of gender roles within culture while asking people to re-think sexualities and identities as something beyond the constructed binaries of heterosexual and homosexual / traditional and nontraditional/ male and female, and so on.
This explanation is a very basic piece of a much larger and very complicated condition. We are talking about ancient cultures and over 500 years of political histories between Native American tribes and the United States.
Borro-wing from the genre of documentary, in my video art, there is a story that takes place: acknowledgment of actual experiences that illuminate a space for both men and women to speak personal narratives that explore the gendered, and sexual politics of their culture. In doing so, they transform the debilitating force of an old social control, shame, into a social change agent. To put this into a more explanatory context, the piece addresses the historical and social condi-tions that have framed the representations of Native American gender norms —both within
These interdependent relationships are continuing to perpetuate complicated identity struggles and dense socio political issues of belonging. My film, Because of Who I Am, is inspired by per-ceptions of gender and regulations of tradition. Native American people live in relation to the ongoing power relationships of settler colonialism whereas colonialism acts as a primary condition of the development of gender politics and the performance of our own identity.
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