Stephanie Foote’s Salvaging the Anthropocene series is one of our most active and provocative, offering scholarly but accessible books about daily intellectual, artistic, social, and aesthetic responses to global environmental degradation.

Introducing the concepts of d-ecocinema and d-ecocinema criticism, Salma Monani’s Indigenous Ecocinema expands the purview of ecocinema studies and not only brings attention to a thriving Indigenous cinema archive but also argues for a methodological approach that ushers Indigenous intellectual voices front and center in how we theorize this archive. Its case-study focus on Canada, particularly the work emanating from the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival in Toronto—a nationally and internationally recognized hub in Indigenous cinema networks—provides insights into pan-Indigenous and Nation-specific contexts of Indigenous ecocinema.

This absorbing text is the first book-length exploration foregrounding the environmental dimensions of cinema made by Indigenous peoples, including a particularly fascinating discussion on how Indigenous cinema’s ecological entanglements are a crucial and complementary aspect of its agenda of decolonialism.

What inspired you to explore the intersection of Indigenous cinema and ecological issues in this book?

When I was a PhD student examining the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) controversy that had once again erupted in U.S. politics, I was struck by how little attention was being given to Indigenous voices and relatedly, film expressions, in mainstream media. Despite the fact that there were such vibrant and complex ways in which Indigenous communities were sharing their perspectives onscreen, I also noticed there was little ecocritical scholarship on Indigenous cinema. These early engagements with Indigenous cinema speaking to environmental concerns started my journey into Indigenous cinema’s intersections with ecological issues.Read More »