Humour in Contemporary Indigenous Photography: Re-focusing the Colonial Gaze

Although photography has long been used as a tool of colonial oppression to portray Indigenous peoples as either a “vanishing race” or to confirm their assimilation into the dominant colonial culture, contemporary Indigenous photographers are using humour to turn the colonial gaze back on itself. This article discusses the use of humour as a teaching tool by exploring the role of the “trickster” as a mode of subversion. Five Indigenous artists’ works are analyzed through this lens in order to show how contemporary Indigenous photographers employ elements of irony and satire to reveal the insidious nature of colonial stereotypes.