First Nations of North America:
Politics and Representation
In the 22 essays collected in First Nations of North America: Politics and Representation native and non-native scholars and writers from Canada, Europe, and the United States explore the manifold ambiguities and pitfalls of intercultural contact between "indigenous," "native" or "aboriginal" peoples in North America and their European colonizers, from the encounters (imagined and real) of 18th and 19th century explorers and ethnographers, to the efforts of older and contemporary native artists and writers to negotiate a politics of human and artistic survival. Writing from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives - political, social and economic history; literature, theater, visual art, and photography; anthropology, media and museum studies - they explore the shifting sands of "representation" (in culture and scholarship) and its seemingly inevitable implication in "politics" This volume, then, highlights the long-lasting and ongoing struggle of native people to find a way out of the maze of identity politics, and towards self-empowerment against the odds of history and cultural memory, as well as the attempts of scholars - native and non-native, self-reflexive and critical - to illuminate the double bind of seeking cross-cultural understanding.