By Their Work
Indigenous Women's Digital Media in North America
Published on 11. November 2025
Book
Hardback
344 pages
978-1-5179-1905-4 (ISBN)
Description
A first-of-its-kind collection to transform our understanding of digital media from Indigenous women creators
Indigenous women form a vital force in digital media production now and have over the past several decades-in fact, nearly three quarters of the projects at the 2017 imagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival were created by women. By Their Work highlights the prismatic nature of Indigenous women's digital media, connecting the digital arts with their creative labor and adaptive activism.
Joanna Hearne and Karrmen Crey bring together a collection of essays and interviews to highlight the voices of powerful and important media makers, from Indigenous video game creators to animators to social media influencers and from theorists of early Indigenous digital media to current practitioners, including trans and nonbinary creators often left out of public narratives about the digital. Creating a space to hear critical voices on Indigenous media history, theory, and production, the contributors share stories, genealogies, and practices behind Indigenous women's power and presence in the digital world.
Focusing on the history of digital media as a whole, this collection presents a compelling case for Indigenous women's crucial roles across the history of digital forms and platforms. In doing so, By Their Work transforms digital Indigenous studies in the twenty-first century.
Contributors: Nanobah Becker; Reilley Bishop-Stall, McGill U; Meagan Byrne; Tawny Trottier Cale; Dana Claxton; Crystal Harrison Collin; Elizabeth Day; Kristin L. Dowell, Florida State U; Miranda Due; Heid E. Erdrich; Marcella Ernest, U of New Mexico; Marisa Erven; David Gaertner, U of British Columbia; Carol Geddes; Faye Ginsburg, New York U; Patuk N. Glenn; Lisa Jackson; Jacqueline Land, William Jewell College; Jason Edward Lewis, Concordia University, Montreal; Joshua D. Miner, U of Kansas; Salma Monani, Gettysburg College; Jas M. Morgan, Simon Fraser U; Archer Pechawis, York U; Mikhel Proulx, Queen's U Canada; Ryan Rice; Jolene Rickard, Cornell U; Channette Romero, U of Georgia; Wendi Sierra, Texas Christian U; Skawennati.
Indigenous women form a vital force in digital media production now and have over the past several decades-in fact, nearly three quarters of the projects at the 2017 imagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival were created by women. By Their Work highlights the prismatic nature of Indigenous women's digital media, connecting the digital arts with their creative labor and adaptive activism.
Joanna Hearne and Karrmen Crey bring together a collection of essays and interviews to highlight the voices of powerful and important media makers, from Indigenous video game creators to animators to social media influencers and from theorists of early Indigenous digital media to current practitioners, including trans and nonbinary creators often left out of public narratives about the digital. Creating a space to hear critical voices on Indigenous media history, theory, and production, the contributors share stories, genealogies, and practices behind Indigenous women's power and presence in the digital world.
Focusing on the history of digital media as a whole, this collection presents a compelling case for Indigenous women's crucial roles across the history of digital forms and platforms. In doing so, By Their Work transforms digital Indigenous studies in the twenty-first century.
Contributors: Nanobah Becker; Reilley Bishop-Stall, McGill U; Meagan Byrne; Tawny Trottier Cale; Dana Claxton; Crystal Harrison Collin; Elizabeth Day; Kristin L. Dowell, Florida State U; Miranda Due; Heid E. Erdrich; Marcella Ernest, U of New Mexico; Marisa Erven; David Gaertner, U of British Columbia; Carol Geddes; Faye Ginsburg, New York U; Patuk N. Glenn; Lisa Jackson; Jacqueline Land, William Jewell College; Jason Edward Lewis, Concordia University, Montreal; Joshua D. Miner, U of Kansas; Salma Monani, Gettysburg College; Jas M. Morgan, Simon Fraser U; Archer Pechawis, York U; Mikhel Proulx, Queen's U Canada; Ryan Rice; Jolene Rickard, Cornell U; Channette Romero, U of Georgia; Wendi Sierra, Texas Christian U; Skawennati.
Reviews / Votes
ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction. By Their Work, They Are Vital to the People
Karrmen Crey and Joanna Hearne
Part I. Histories
1. CyberPowWow and the First Wave of Indigenous Media Arts: A Roundtable
Skawennati, Archer Pechawis, Ryan Rice, Jason Edward Lewis, and Mikhel Proulx
2. Twenty-Five Years after Nation to Nation: Digital Space as Place
Jolene Rickard
3. Loretta Sarah Todd's Screen Sovereignty
Faye Ginsburg
Part II. Animation and Gaming
4. "Women Had to Be Strong": An Interview with Carol Geddes
Jacqueline Land
5. Curation and Collaboration: An Interview with Heid E. Erdrich and Elizabeth Day
Joanna Hearne
6. Modeling Resistance: Indigenous Computational Bodies and Settler Colonial Violence
Joshua D. Miner
7. Gender and Indigenous Gaming: A Roundtable
Meagan Byrne, Marisa Erven, Wendi Sierra, Miranda Due, David Gaertner, Karrmen Crey, and Joanna Hearne
Part III. Short Forms
8. Stitching Kinship through Media: Indigenous Women's Experimental Short Films in Canada
Kristin L. Dowell
9. "It's Not the What, It's the How": An Interview with Lisa Jackson
Karrmen Crey
10. Inuit Remix: Body and Sonic Sovereignty in Inuit Women's Digital Music Videos
Channette Romero
11. Indigenous Ecofeminisms as (Re)Mapping Projects: An Interview with Filmmaker Nanobah Becker
Salma Monani
Part IV. Social Media and Digital Platforms
12. #FinePeopleFromIndigenousLands: Selfie Presencing and Radically Relational Aesthetics in Native Twitter's Virtual Reservation
Jacqueline Land
13. Gender and Indigenous Social Media: A Roundtable
Patuk N. Glenn, Tawny Trottier Cale, Crystal Harrison Collin, Jacqueline Land, Joanna Hearne, and Karrmen Crey
14. "I Was Jumped": "Queer" and Trans Indigenous Feminist Micro-Influence on TikTok
Jas M. Morgan
Part V. Remix: Archives and Experiments in Digital Photography
15. Past Projections: Resilience, Resurgence, and Spectral Presence in Meryl McMaster's Ancestral
Reilley Bishop-Stall
16. Native Feminist Remix: 16 mm Film, NDN Telephone Etiquette, and Basic-Ass Settler Colonialism
Marcella Ernest
17. Woman in Black: Mourning Wounded Knee
Dana Claxton
Coda: Shared Futures
Joanna Hearne and Karrmen Crey
Contributors
Index
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Minnesota
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Illustrations
25 black and white illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 254 mm
Width: 178 mm
Thickness: 17 mm
Weight
765 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5179-1905-4 (9781517919054)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Joanna Hearne is Jeanne Hoffman Smith Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of Oklahoma. She is author of Native Recognition: Indigenous Cinema and the Western and Smoke Signals: Native Cinema Rising and coeditor of ReFocus: The Films of Wallace Fox.
Karrmen Crey (Sto:lo and a member of the Cheam Band) is associate professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University and author of Producing Sovereignty: The Rise of Indigenous Media in Canada (Minnesota, 2024).
Karrmen Crey (Sto:lo and a member of the Cheam Band) is associate professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University and author of Producing Sovereignty: The Rise of Indigenous Media in Canada (Minnesota, 2024).