Disrupting White Settler Colonial Narratives: Leslie Marmon Silko's use of Photography in Storyteller and Sacred Water

Abstract

This history of photography of Indigenous communities and individuals in the United States of America is plagued with power imbalances, violence, dehumanization, appropriation, and cultural inconsistencies that stem from White settler colonialist practices. In Leslie Marmon Silko’s Storyteller and Sacred Water, Silko responds to this history through the composition, organization, and placement of her Indigenous photographs within her text. The composition of the photographs re-centers Indigenous voices through camera angle, perspective, and form. The placement within the texts mimic Laguna Pueblo oral storytelling and worldview. The organization of the photographs possibly respond to and subvert the history of invasive ethnographic studies and the tradition of surveillance, humanist, and commercial photography