Case Study 2

Indigenous Labour

Karrmen Crey and Dana Claxton continue research that links the Indigenous Media Arts Group; IMAGeNation Aboriginal Film and Video Festival archive (an initiative of Dana Claxton and Cleo Reese, from the late 1990s-early 2000s) with video archives and documentation of related Indigenous media works from the Crista Dahl Media Library & Archive, including the First Nations Access Program (the First Nation Video Collections Fonds), records of independent media festivals, video documentation of Indigenous activism and Diamond’s fonds at CDMLA, and fonds considering the history of Indigenous work and labour activism, including the work and rights of Indigenous cultural workers. Claxton and Crey address the application of postcolonial media theory to the challenges of processing Indigenous media-centered collections within Canadian institutions, strategies to tell the story of Indigenous media history without reproducing past injustices, and respecting data sovereignty.