Smoke Signals is a historical milestone in Native American filmmaking. Released in 1998 and based on a short-story collection by Sherman Alexie, it was the first wide-release feature film written, directed, coproduced, and acted by Native Americans. The most popular Native American film of all time, Smoke Signals is also an innovative work of cinematic storytelling that demands sustained critical attention in its own right.Embedded in Smoke Signals s universal story of familial loss and renewal are uniquely Indigenous perspectives about political sovereignty, Hollywood s...

In Native Recognition, Joanna Hearne persuasively argues for the central role of Indigenous image-making in the history of American cinema. Across the twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries, Indigenous peoples have been involved in cinema as performers, directors, writers, consultants, crews, and audiences, yet both the specificity and range of this Native participation have often been obscured by the on-screen, larger-than-life images of Indians in the Western. Not only have Indigenous images mattered to the Western, but Westerns have also mattered to Indigenous filmmakers as...