Presentation Title
Degree Name
Master of Interdisciplinary Studies (MA)
Department
Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences
Location
UW Tacoma Tioga Library
Start Date
17-5-2018 5:30 PM
End Date
17-5-2018 5:35 PM
Abstract
My research examines indigenous perspectives on representation and sovereignty to explore media complicity in furthering a colonialist agenda. According to historian Emma LaRocque, the conquest myth allows Americans to consider “colonized peoples as inherently rapable, their lands inherently invadable, and their resources inherently extractable,” and that opinion has been, and still is, continually validated in the media. Beginning in 1863, the Diné (Navajo) people were forced to walk 400 miles on foot from their sacred lands to the Bosque Redondo reservation, including my great-great-grandparents. In this presentation I discuss how my thesis employs feminist critical discourse analysis and autoethnography to examine how the media is complicit in the oppression of indigenous people in the United States, and how discursive processes, deployed through media, operate within and influence political rhetoric and action. Further, I ask how this discourse of colonization is realized and internalized across generations as I attempt to build a family archive. The Long Walk of the Navajo ended in 1868, but colonization did not. Media representations of American Indians still draw upon racial stereotypes. Stereotypes are a form of social control through dehumanization, and dehumanization leads to the violation of human rights. When entire populations of oppressed people are portrayed as “uncivilized” and anachronistic, or simplified and romanticized, discussions of complex issues that have real, dire consequences for indigenous people are silenced.
COinS
Perpetuating Colonization Through the Gaze of U.S. Media
UW Tacoma Tioga Library
My research examines indigenous perspectives on representation and sovereignty to explore media complicity in furthering a colonialist agenda. According to historian Emma LaRocque, the conquest myth allows Americans to consider “colonized peoples as inherently rapable, their lands inherently invadable, and their resources inherently extractable,” and that opinion has been, and still is, continually validated in the media. Beginning in 1863, the Diné (Navajo) people were forced to walk 400 miles on foot from their sacred lands to the Bosque Redondo reservation, including my great-great-grandparents. In this presentation I discuss how my thesis employs feminist critical discourse analysis and autoethnography to examine how the media is complicit in the oppression of indigenous people in the United States, and how discursive processes, deployed through media, operate within and influence political rhetoric and action. Further, I ask how this discourse of colonization is realized and internalized across generations as I attempt to build a family archive. The Long Walk of the Navajo ended in 1868, but colonization did not. Media representations of American Indians still draw upon racial stereotypes. Stereotypes are a form of social control through dehumanization, and dehumanization leads to the violation of human rights. When entire populations of oppressed people are portrayed as “uncivilized” and anachronistic, or simplified and romanticized, discussions of complex issues that have real, dire consequences for indigenous people are silenced.