What lives in the spaces between dreams and apocalypse? What can Aboriginal filmmaking reveal about Indigenous presence and futures? The product of years of embedded fieldwork within Indigenous film crews in Northwestern Australia, William Lempert’s Dreaming Down the Track delves deeply into Aboriginal cinema as a transformative community process. Here, Lempert is joined in conversation with Karrmen Crey about the process of preserving community stories and enacting sovereign futures.

William Lempert is assistant professor of anthropology at Bowdoin College and author of Dreaming Down the Track: Awakenings in Aboriginal Cinema.

Karrmen Crey is associate professor of Aboriginal communication and media studies in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. Crey is author of Producing Sovereignty: The Rise of Indigenous Media in Canada and coeditor (with Joanna Hearne) of By Their Work: Indigenous Women’s Digital Media in North America. 

REFERENCES/MEDIA:

Donna’s Story (film)

Indians + Aliens (reality television series)

The Visit (animated documentary short)

Tjawa Tjawa (film)

Rutherford Falls (sitcom)

REFERENCES/PEOPLE:

Mark Moora

Faye Ginsburg

Jesse Wente

Doug Cuthand

Donna Gamble

Lisa Jackson

Billy-Ray Belcourt

Jeff Barnaby

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

Cynthia Lickers-Sage

Taiko Waititi

Foucault

Coulthard

Audra Simpson

REFERENCES/OTHER

Mark Rifkin / Beyond Settler Time

ImagiNATIVE Australia

Dreaming Down the Track: Awakenings in Aboriginal Cinema by William Lempert is available from University of Minnesota Press, and has an open-access edition through Manifold. Karrmen Crey’s Producing Sovereignty: The Rise of Indigenous Media in Canada and By Their Work: Indigenous Women’s Digital Media in North America (a collection co-edited with Joanna Hearne) are also available from University of Minnesota Press.