April 17, 2017
K-State alumna to present on indigenous feminist filmmakers
K-State alumna Dory Nason will present "Holding each other up: The Indigenous feminist filmmaking of Elle-Maija Tailfethers, Helen Haig-Brown and Lisa Jackson" at 4 p.m. Tuesday, April 18, in 15 Eisenhower Hall.
The talk is free and open to the public and sponsored by the gender, women, and sexuality studies department.
Nason will discuss the work of three Canadian filmmakers: Elle-Maija Tailfeathers, Helen Haig-Brown and Lisa Jackson whose films trace the impacts of gendered violence in individuals, families and communities. In their films, these three women refuse to produce easily consumable narratives of indigenous suffering or conversely, forgiveness and healing, concepts all too popular in an era of state-based reconciliation discourse in Canada. Their friendship and collaborations have created a body of work that is some of the best examples of indigenous feminist storytelling that hold up the love and resilience of indigenous women as much as they expose the ongoing nature of settler colonial gendered violence.
Nason, Anishinaabe/Chicana, is a grateful guest on Musqueam territory where she lives and teaches First Nations and Indigenous Studies and English at the University of British Columbia. Her research and writing focuse on indigenous women's feminist literature and creative activism. She is currently at work on her forthcoming book, "Red Feminists Criticism: Indigenous Women, Activism and Cultural Production" (University of Arizona Press) and the co-editor with Margery Fee of Tekahionwake; "E. Pauline Johnson's Writing on Native American" (Broadview Press, 2016). Nason received a master's degree in English and a graduate certificate in women's studies from K-State, and a doctorate in ethnic studies from the University of California, Berkeley.