- I Am Ishi: The Performance Art Film
- Canada2023
- Dana Claxton
- 111 DCP
- NR
Screening Dates
Directed by acclaimed visual artist Dana Claxton (Hunkpapa Lakota) and produced by the Ishi Collective, this uncanny, experimental feature-length work serves as both document and expansion of a performance piece by James Luna (Payómkawichum/Ipai/Mexican), whose seminal Artifact Piece broke new ground for Indigenous art in the 1980s. The film, like Luna’s 2015–17 touring project, draws from the life of Ishi, last survivor of the Yahi people, who became a “living specimen” at a University of California museum following his 1911 appearance in Oroville, California. I Am Ishi intercuts and overlays a recording of Luna’s live performance with original material conceived by the Collective. In Claxton’s most striking filmic device, cycles of superimposed image and sound play in reverse—a suitably destabilizing effect for the subjugation of a man made into an anthropological attraction. Eerie and unsettling, I Am Ishi confronts the dehumanizing legacy of colonial institutions and their abhorrent, academic practices.
The Ishi Collective is Dana Claxton, Jeneen Frei Njootli (Vuntut Gwich’in), Heather Haynes, and the late James Luna (1950–2018).
Co-presented with the Vancouver Art Gallery
Media
Note
June 21 is National Indigenous Peoples Day, a celebration of Indigenous Peoples’ culture and heritage in Canada. Initiated by the Government of Canada in cooperation with Indigenous organizations, this event, occurring annually on the summer solstice, provides an opportunity to recognize, reflect on, and learn about the rich histories, diverse traditions, and outstanding contributions of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples.