ANTH217

This course examines traditional and contemporary Indigenous artistic production, and investigates the multiple webs of meaning and social worlds within which native practitioners and their creative productions exist. A diverse range of contemporary art practices –- including painting, photography, film, music, performance, fashion, and new media -– are considered in relation to key aspects of cultural, political, and social lives of Indigenous peoples. Students analyze, among other things, art as particular expressions of Indigenous cosmologies, the entanglement of Primitivism and modernity, art and native sovereignty, capitalism and Indigenous cultural futures, art and value in the marketplace, tourist art and the value of authenticity, art and national identity, and colonial and postcolonial art. Additionally, students engage with recent scholarship on decolonization and Indigenous studies, and current events related to the theme of the course.