Viki Rey Eagle

VIKI EAGLE, then a graduate student at University of California, Los Angeles, California, was awarded funding in October 2021 to aid research on “Ancestors Rez Metal: An Indigenous Sonic Resistance,” supervised by Dr. Shannon Speed. Located within the Navajo Nation, this research explores Indigenous forms of “sonic resistance” through the underground Heavy Metal scene called “Rez Metal.” In North American tribal communities, “Rez” is an acronym for “Indian reservations.” “Rez” is a term that carries a physical location and cultural meaning. This research investigated how Rez Metal artists have challenged and reclaimed dominant historical narratives that promote the erasure of Indigenous Peoples and reinscribe stereotypes of poverty, isolation, desolation and colonial drawn boundaries of the reservation. This dissertation project thus explored how the sights, images, and sounds of Rez Metal reconfigure place-making and (re)map Indigenous experiences. Over twelve months in New Mexico and Navajo Nation the granteee conducted ethnographic fieldwork in New Mexico and Arizona interviewing and following Rez Metal bands in the southwest four corners representing Navajo, Apache, Pueblo and O’Odham Nations. Her work specialized in photo-ethnography to investigate how the term “the Rez” connects to Indigenous people’s spatialized, engendered, and lived experiences in ways that both redeploy and resist settler logics through photography.