ABSTRACT
Noting the prevalence of supernatural language used to describe the body in cinema, and especially to describe depictions of Native Americans in both fiction and documentary filmmaking, this chapter uses that language to explore the contradictory state of Native bodies in film history as being both absent and present. This present-absence often served settler colonial narratives and was informed by Non-Native gender ideals. Summarizing the history of that present absence, this chapter makes a case for the significance of contemporary Native filmmakers representing Native bodies on screen, especially in films that seek to recover Native bodies that have been rendered ghostly by film and settler colonial history.
