Supporting Self-Determined Indigenous Innovations: Rethinking the Digital Divide in Canada

The romanticized tale of Indigenous peoples’ first interactions with cameras is all too familiar a narrative to the Western consciousness, portraying Indigenous peoples as fearful of the technology’s ability to “steal souls” (Golub, 2004). Retrospectively, it is important to critically analyze what it truly was that 19th century photographers were “capturing” with their cameras, and how dominant media has used technology and technological imagery to hijack Indigenous realities and control the way that society views Indigenous peoples and cultures. Photography like that of Edward S. Curtis is often used as a reference point for this argument, as his pictures sought to explicitly erase any signs of modernity and reduce Indigenous lives to a simplistic, one-dimensional commodity that could be easily consumed by the colonial gaze. In his portraits, only expressionless faces and stoic poses were allowed, and traditional dress was mandatory – whether or not it came from the subject’s own nation or the one over. In an infamous photograph titled “In a Piegan Lodge” (1910), Curtis’ original image showed a clock (Figure 1), which he removed before publishing the edited version (Figure 2)

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