Embodying change: Cinematic representations of Indigenous women’s bodies, a cross-cultural comparison

Abstract

Abstract Indigenous women have been exoticized, objectified and hypersexualized throughout the history of cinema. As more Indigenous film-makers take the camera into their own hands, they challenge these representations and disrupt existing hierarchies of power. Here I examine the work of two Indigenous women film-makers, Tracey Moffatt (Aboriginal Australian) and Tracey Deer (Mohawk), whose films speak back to historical images of Native women. Rather than exotic objects of the man’s gaze, they are powerful agents of their own lives and identities. Through close readings of two films, Moffatt’s Nice Coloured Girls and Deer’s Club Native I argue that their work exemplifies a unique Indigenous aesthetic. Rooted in Fourth Cinema, this genre highlights such issues as performativity, motherhood and Indigenous women’s embodied experiences.