Picture Revolution: Transnationalism, American Studies, and the Politics of Contemporary Native Culture

Since the 1980s, political shifts within Native America, including the transnational indigenous peoples movement, have increasingly emphasized connections among indigenous communities, illuminated the place of Native America in global imperialism, and reshaped indigenous cultural production. Indigenous transnationalism, this essay argues, carries particular weight for feminism and other contemporary anti-colonial strategies as it also draws Native studies into a closer but frequently vexed relationship with postnationalist American studies. Parallel transnational tendencies in American studies and Native American studies have heretofore worked at cross-purposes: as pan-tribal alliances draw attention to U.S. internal colonialism and its connections to global imperialism, postnationalist American studies has largely neglected the ongoing colonization of Native America. Through an analysis of Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel Almanac of the Dead and Shelley Niro’s multimedia installation “The Border,” this essay addresses this neglect by considering what happens to postnationalist American studies when you put Native studies at the center.