Indigeneity and the Decolonizing Gaze

Indigeneity and the Decolonizing Gaze orchestrates an unprecedented conversation between French philosophers, Brazilian modernists, and indigenous artists and thinkers from North and South America. Against the long historical backdrop of 1492, Columbus, and the Conquest, Robert Stam's wide-ranging study traces a trajectory from the representation of indigenous peoples by others to self-representation by indigenous peoples as a form of resistance to colonial capitalism. In this indigenous sequel to the foundational text Unthinking Eurocentrism (with Ella Shohat), Stam counterpoints the western mediated gaze on the 'Indian' and the indigenous gaze itself, especially as incarnated in the burgeoning movement of 'indigenous media', that is, the use of audio-visual-digital media for the social and cultural purposes of indigenous peoples themselves. Drawing on examples from cinema, literature, music, video, painting, and stand-up comedy, Stam shows how indigenous artists intellectuals, and activists have offered ideas profoundly relevant to the multiple crises - climatological, economic, political, racial, and cultural - afflicting the contemporary world.