Cirrus@Austlit

'My dissertation, Palya Futures: The Social Life of Kimberley Aboriginal Media, is based on 28 months of ethnographic research in the Kimberley region of Northwestern Australia since 2006. I follow the social lifecycles of dozens of film projects through daily collaboration within production teams, in order to understand the stakes of Aboriginal self-representation embedded within the process of filmmaking itself. My research analyzes the paradoxical relationship between the production of films that vividly imagine hopeful and diverse Indigenous futures, and the current widespread defunding of Aboriginal communities and organizations.'

Source: Author's website. (Sighted: 19/9/2018)

'The recent rise of Native-produced sci-fi films is more than an academic fascination. These diverse set of films have the power to not only help us to reimagine our assumptions about the futures of Indigenous peoples, but also to serve as a cultural mirror enabling us to reassess the Western sci-fi futures we have internalized. These processes are discussed by Native scholars such as Grace Dillon (Anishinaabe) as “Indigenous futurisms.”

'This article is a brief attempt to draw on Indigenous futurisms as a way of introducing the diversity of Native sci-fi films in conversation with mainstream sci-fi.'

Source: Introduction.