Visual Sovereignty In Smoke Signals

American high school setting. Chris Eyre manipulates this genre of popular film and is able to twist it in a way that allows the audience to see Native Americans as normal citizens, and not an outcast group. The next example is Victor and Thomas’s journey to retrieve Victor’s father’s ashes in Arizona. In this journey, Smoke Signals is able to cover a wide array of topics that are relatable to the film’s diverse audience. The road-trip is an iconic part of American life and media, and in that journey, Victor and Thomas were able to rekindle a long lost friendship and by the end of the film became close once again. Smoke Signals was able to use alcoholism as a key component of the characters in the film. Sociologist and Professor John
Correspondingly is Visual Sovereignty in Atanarjuat. The film as whole is showcases a great sum of Visual Sovereignty because it is a film that exams an Inuk legend and presents it on film, giving the legend a means to live on. The film's plot, on the surface, is confusing to a majority of its audience. Atanarjuat shows audiences both, indigenous and nonindigenous, a side of First People’s culture (specifically Inuk) that had rarely been displayed in popular
It is a way for First Peoples to retake traditions that had been lost during the period encroachment by settler cultures. Atanarjuat is a visual representation of an Inuk legend and is a collection of different versions of the legend told by eight Inuk Elders. The film carried on the legend and brought it back to prevalence, otherwise the legend may have been lost to the younger generation of Inuk youth. The entire film to its core is a piece of Inuk art; Atanarjuat acts as means to preserve the culture and allowing an Inuk legend to live on. The film hired an entirely Inuk cast and crew, and was film in Inuk lands, the entire cast had to relearn the Inuk language of Inuktitut (Lecture, Week 3), pumping 1.5 million dollars into the economy and hired sixty people (Isuma Productions). Also, the film was meant to appeal to Inuk audience first. The film was important for the Inuk community because as Doug Alexander from the Canada’s History Magazine (formally the Beaver Magazine) states, “Atanarjuat is an important step for an indigenous people who have, until recently, seen their culture recorded by outsiders”. Because the film was a purely Inuk production, it gave the entire Inuk population a vehicle to carry on a legend for generations to come. Atanarjuat is a