By: Beverly

Ottawa, Canada-based Native American audio/visual collective A Tribe Called Red are remixing  pop culture from a first people’s perspective and it’s as right on and brilliant as a fashion shoot with emaciated European models in war bonnets is ignorant and lazy.

a tribe called red
A Tribe Called Red Vimeo screen grab.

There are a fair number of young Native American writers taking to the web to explain all the ways that freely borrowing the cultural symbols of indigenous people — or bastardized fantasy versions thereof — is richly and complexly lame. Native Americans re-appropriating said pop culture images to make sick videos that go with even sicker dubstep remixes of tribal drum circles and stuff like “I’m An Indian Too” from Annie Get Your Gun is sort of the rad non-text version of those writings.

It’s so rad, in fact, that Diplo will probably post about you on his blog if you do it, but only if you do it as well as DJ Shub, DJ NDN, Frame, and video artist Bear Witness do. There’s also this second Native North American music post on the Mad Decent blog featuring A Tribe Called Red’s Electric Pow Wow Mini Mix. Electric Pow Wow, incidentally, is also the name of the crew’s monthly party.

Check out this Jim Jarmusch-sampling video by Bear Witness for DJ Shub’s “Electric Pow Wow Drum”:



Electric Pow Wow Drum from Bear Witness on Vimeo.


Oh, and before you go, check the video for the remix of the Diplo track “Riddim”:

*          *          *