Author Archives: Novel Alliances

Why We Need to Talk About Indigenous Literature and the Digital Humanities
Will cyberspace enable old knowledge to be experienced and expanded or will cyberspace create the the present anew each day, so that there never again is tradition or a past? –Loretta Todd Over the holiday break, while the in-laws were transporting my family and I to an outdoor light show, I found myself caught up in […]

FNIS 454: Indigenous New Media and Digital Storytelling
FNIS 454: Indigenous New Media and Digital Storytelling Instructor: Dr. David Gaertner Email: david.gaertner@ubc.ca Overview Following the 1997 launch of Skawennati’s (Mohawk) CyberPowWow, digital space has become a vital new territory for the resurgence of Indigenous storytelling and cultural practice: “We have signed a new treaty,” Cree artist Archer Pechawis wrote of this period, “and […]

Submit to Novel Alliances
All too often we write papers, hand them in or deliver them at a poorly attended conference, and then leave them to collect digital dust on our laptops. Novel Alliances began as a space to honour the labour we, as students and teachers, put into research and pedagogy. We invite submissions on Indigenous issues circulating around […]

Bibliography for FNIS 401F: Indigenous New Media
Below is the reading list for FNIS 401F a special topics course I teach in the First Nations and Indigenous Studies Program at the University of British Columbia. Dowell, Kristen. “Vancouver’s Aboriginal Media World.” Sovereign Screens: Aboriginal Media on the Canadian West Coast. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2013. 1-20. Fish, Adam. “Indigenous Digital Media and the […]

Notes: Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada
In the spirit of the TRC Reading Challenge (#ReadTheTRCReport) the following are my notes on the the Truth and Reconciliation of Canada’s Final Report: Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future. The goal is to incite more people to read the report and to generate productive, ongoing conversation. Obviously, these notes are not comprehensive and they […]

“Poor Impulse Control”: Remediation as a Decolonial Reading Practice
In my Indigenous new media and digital storytelling class, my students and I use remediation as a means to interrogate text and to consider what sovereignty might mean in terms of art. Remediation—refashioning one media in another—provides the opportunity to question modernist binaries between old and new, tradition and innovation, and to make art in […]

“Poor Impulse Control”: Remediation as a Decolonial Reading Practice
In my Indigenous new media and digital storytelling class, my students and I use remediation as a means to interrogate text and to consider what sovereignty might mean in terms of art. Remediation—refashioning one media in another—provides the opportunity to question modernist binaries between old and new, tradition and innovation, and to make art in […]

How Should I Play These?: Media and Remediation in Never Alone
“Games 10,000 years in the Making.” -Slogan for Upper One Video Games, the first Indigenous Owned Video Game Company in the United States and creators of, Never Alone. When it comes to Indigenous-made video games what is the “new” of New Media. The 2014 video game Never Alone has been lauded as cutting-edge gaming (Peckham) and […]

How Should I Play These?: Media and Remediation in Never Alone
“Games 10,000 years in the Making.” -Slogan for Upper One Video Games, the first Indigenous Owned Video Game Company in the United States and creators of, Never Alone. When it comes to Indigenous-made video games what is the “new” of New Media. The 2014 video game Never Alone has been lauded as cutting-edge gaming (Peckham) and […]

Guest Post: First Nations and Indigenous Studies 310 Collective Statement of Learning
The below post was written collectively by the students of UBC’s First Nations and Indigenous Studies theory seminar (FNIS 310), led by Matthew Wildcat. The following was written during two weeks of class time in November and December 2015. First Nations and Indigenous Studies (FNIS) 310 is the theory seminar for FNIS majors and minors. […]