Bøger af Valerie Alia

Around the planet, Indigenous people are using old and new technologies to amplify their voices and broadcast information to a global audience. This is the first portrait of a powerful international movement that looks both inward and outward, helping to preserve ancient languages and cultures while communicating across cultural, political, and geographical boundaries. Based on more than twenty years of research, observation, and work experience in Indigenous journalism, film, music, and visual art, this volume includes specialized studies of Inuit in the circumpolar north, and First Nations peoples in the Yukon and southern Canada and the United States.

This book addresses cross-cultural representations of ethnic minority peoples by dominant society 'outsiders' and indigenous self-representation in the context of the 'New Media Nation'. In doing so, it explores the role of language, culture, identity and media in liberation struggles and the emergence of new political entities, and opens up issues of colonial oppression to public debate. It is intended to help inform policy in a variety of settings. Grounded in current perspectives on diaspora and homeland and drawing on Alia's work on minorities, media and identity as well as Bull's work on Maori socio-cultural issues and criminalisation of minorities, this volume offers a comparative, international perspective on the experiences of a broad range of ethnic minority peoples. These include Inuit and First Nations people in Canada; Native Americans and African Americans in the United States; Sami in northern Europe; Maori in New Zealand; Aboriginal people in Australia and Roma in Ireland and Britain.

On the surface, naming is simply a way to classify people and their environments. The premise of this study is that it is much more - a form of social control, a political activity, a key to identity maintenance and transformation. Governments legislate and regulate naming; people fight to take, keep, or change their names. A name change can indicate subjugation or liberation, depending on the circumstances. But it always signifies a change in power relations. Since the late 1970s, the author has looked at naming and renaming, cross-culturally and internationally, with particular attention to the effects of colonisation and liberation. The experience of Inuit in Canada is an example of both. Colonisation is only part of the Nunavut experience. Contrary to the dire predictions of cultural genocide theorists, Inuit culture - particularly traditional naming - has remained extremely strong, and is in the midst of a renaissance. Here is a ground-breaking study by the founder of the discipline of political onomastics.