Native Americans on Film: Conversations, Teaching, and Theory

Indigenous (Re)memory and Resistance: Video Works by Dana Claxton

Indigenous (Re)memory and Resistance Video Works by Dana Claxton Carla Taunton I’m influenced by my own experience as a Lakota woman, as a Canadian, a mixed blood Canadian, and then my own relationship to the natural and supernatural world. So taking that whole bundle of experiences, it all goes in to the artwork, I think that’s where the multilayering comes in because I’ve had a very multi-layered life. And it’s all those experiences that go in to the work. —Dana Claxton (2010) Starting from grandmothers and ancestors, land and sky, rage and beauty, Dana Claxton weaves images, sounds, and ideas together with a sense of balance, subversion, and hope. Dana’s work is situated in place, remembering, and history, bringing these elements together in surreal homages and explorations. Dana’s work is part of a journey— the journey of identity of self and Nation (both Indigenous nations and Canadian Nationhood), the journey of history, and the journey of the spirit. —Tanya Willard The multifaceted artistic practice of Hunkpapa Lakota artist Dana Claxton intertwines her Indigenous1 worldviews with contemporary Aboriginal realities to create a visual language that exposes legacies of colonization, critiques settler histories, and asserts previously silenced Indigenous perspectives . Although her vast body of work includes films, installations, performances, and photography, her intricately layered video pieces are some of the most salient examples of her activist practices. In this chapter I explore the ways that Claxton re/frames archival photographs and film, personal interviews, contemporary music samples, and iconic images to simultaneously critique and create. A key aspect of her decolonization project is the sharing of Indigenous stories, a strategy that foregrounds (re)memory and resistance. She incorporates Indigenous bodies for the Indigenous (Re)memory and Resistance 117 sharing of Indigenous perspectives and mines the archive to assert Indigenous histories. Taken together, I argue, Claxton’s videos function as vehicles toward Indigenizing social memory—a role that is rooted in sovereignty , self-determination, and survivance.2 The theoretical framework underpinning my chapter draws on the writings of two prominent Indigenous scholars, Steven Loft (Mohawk) and Jolene Rickard (Tuscarora). In his article “Sovereignty, Subjectivity and Social Action: The Films of Alanis Obomsawin,” Loft argues that discussions of Aboriginal filmmaking “must take place within a theoretical framework based on the political, social, historic and artistic realities which face Aboriginal people.”3 In “Sovereignty: A Line in the Sand,” Rickard suggests, “The work of Indigenous artists needs to be understood through the clarifying lens of sovereignty and self-determination, not just in terms of assimilation, colonization, and identity politics. . . . Sovereignty is the border that shifts Indigenous experience from a victimized stance to a strategic one.”4 Building on the perspectives of these important scholars, this project explores Claxton’s work through frameworks of sovereignty and selfdetermination . I proceed from the premise that her videos make space for the imperative acknowledgment of the continued negotiations made by contemporary Indigenous peoples, and specifically Indigenous artists of colonial histories and contemporary experiences. More broadly, sovereignty and self-determination are lenses through which contemporary Aboriginal art can be explored in order to highlight Indigenous artists’ agency, the autonomy of Native worldviews, and the sophisticated and political artistic strategies of sharing stories and experiences. By approaching Claxton’s work within this larger theoretical structure, the complexity of media and meanings in her videos can be understood as tools for responding to and participating in the multifaceted project of reclaiming and revoicing Indigenous histories. Claxton’s Buffalo Bone China (1997), a video, performance, and installation , recalls the infinite impact of the extermination of the buffalo on Indigenous life and the historical use of buffalo bone to make fine china. A dynamic interweaving of artistic media, Buffalo Bone China is an example of Claxton’s use of artistic production to reveal and challenge nationalist narratives and foreground occluded histories and silenced voices. At the same time, it functions as a site for mourning and remembrance of not only the loss of the buffalo but of the way of life the buffalo supported 118 Carla Taunton and generated for Plains Aboriginal peoples. This multitude of meanings and messages is made possible through the use of the archive and the body, tools that Claxton strategically employs throughout her work. By juxtaposing imagery from archival film footage with live-feed imagery of the Aboriginal body, Claxton’s approach brings the past into the present, complicating...