A powerful music video showing how indigenous youth are playing with new media and historical representations. The artist here is hip hop writer Wahwahtay Benais from the Anishinabe tribe from the Great Lakes region and he's sampling the Dixie Chicks. What's so interesting to me is to see that he clearly adopts some components of hip hop culture and just as intentionally leaves some behind--a poweruful example of contemporary identity work (new media, mashup, new perspectives, voice to the voiceless, etc...). There is some thoughtful commentary on In Media Res as well. Seems like Critical Pedagogy to me.....Thoughts?
This video is powerful. The mashup of the Dixie Chicks song was largely lost on me until the end of the song, but the historic photographs of Native American children in schools pierced my heart. This would be an provocative way to begin a discussion in a US history class, and unlike some other contemporary music, you don't have to worry about violent images or inappropriate language for school. I hope someone will use it and tell us about it.
Posted by: Susan Adams | May 05, 2009 at 10:56 PM
Productions of this type are a wake-up call to our educational system. Schools, as a systemic function, tend to avoid issues within our society from a critical position, assuming that ignoring them or ackowledging them will simply cause them to go away. The fact that our young people are finding ways to speak out and voice the outrage not heard because it does not come from the "right" voice. I would like to see the response to this in a teacher education course. The systemic versus moral perspectives could fire some very interesting and revolutionary conversation.
Posted by: Lisa Clouse | June 27, 2009 at 11:26 AM