Indigenous Environmental Activism and Media Depiction: Using Critical Dispositioning to ‘Read’ Protest Photography Ethically

Using Critical Dispositioning to ‘Read’ Protest Photography Ethically

Abstract

Media bias is a reality of the infoglut we are bombarded with every day. However, we often consider bias to be consigned to the textual realm of information. I argue that anything human-mediated holds bias, including photographs. Because of this, I propose reading the performance of Indigenous-led environmental activism through media representation, specifically photographs used in media coverage of Indigenous environmental activism. This paper considers open-access media photographs of Indigenous-led environmental protests, such as the Kanehsatake Resistance (1990) and Wet’suwet’en Blockade (2020), as springboards for practicing ethical reading. As a settler-scholar, this work is mostly geared towards a settler-scholar or non-Indigenous audience interested in Indigenous literary studies, as a way to find tools to engage in this scholarship. The purpose of this article is to elucidate media bias as a way of informing our individual teaching and learning practice, as well as shaping how we engage with and talk about Indigenous issues. While all public activism engages with some levels of performance, the performance itself and larger narrative being told by the activists is filtered through who is able to tell the story. Here, I use a methodology that I am developing as part of my ongoing dissertation work, Critical Dispositioning, which is an ethical reading praxis designed for settlers to use when engaging with Indigenous literatures. Critical Dispositioning requires community-specific reading of Indigenous materials and rejects settler imposition or appropriation of Indigenous voices and texts. This work is essential in building anti-racist practices and equity, diversity, and inclusion into the classroom space, as well as a tool for consideration when building syllabi.