The making and muting of an indigenous media activist

"Imagination and ideology in Charles Round Low Cloud's "Indian News

Bibliographic Data

ID2279090
AuthorsGrant Arndt (0000-0001-8534-4205, Iowa State University, corresponding author)
Year2010
Volume37
Issue3
Pages499-510
Publication date2010-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Ethnologist (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0094-0496 • E-ISSN: 1548-1425
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1548-1425.2010.01268.x
OpenAlexW1776594037
LanguageEN
Citations received14
References cited39

In this article, I examine an example of American Indian activism through the once-dominant mass medium of the newspaper. I focus on Ho-Chunk author Charles Round Low Cloud and his development of an "Indian News" column into a vehicle for activism against everyday forms of racial oppression in the 1930s and on the ways others involved in publishing his column used the medium to subvert his message. The analysis shows how nonindigenous actors can mute activist messages through practices designed to celebrate indigenous voices. I argue that both indigenous media activism and reactions against such activism rely on the "mediated imagination": the mediation of the use and reception of media messages by cultural ideologies and by individual creativity. Recognition of the mediated imagination, therefore, complements efforts to understand how language and other semiotic ideologies shape interpretations of social reality. It also facilitates analysis of the potentials and limitations of indigenous activism that uses existing media technologies

Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Ideology · Indigenous · Mass media · Media studies · Mediation · Newspaper · Oppression · Political science · Politics · Publishing · Semiotics · Social science · Sociology · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Gender Studies · Law · Media, Communication, and Education · Social and Cultural Dynamics

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