The Passamaquoddy Indians: Casinos, Controversy, and Creative Apparel

Indian enterprises often invoke images of casinos and powwows. In fact, entrepreneurial ventures and wealth among tribes are as diverse as the tribes themselves. Unlike one-source business models (i.e., casinos), for example, many indigenous activists favor a diversified economic plan, making the most of federal and state laws and grants as well as a volatile political and financial climate to best serve their people. This paper highlights the efforts of one such tribe. Leaders of Maine’s Passamaquoddy tribe have investigated several enterprise routes over the last few years, using Tribal 8A (a federally-sponsored set of policies for eligible Indian tribes, Alaska Native Corporations [ANCs] and Native Hawaiian Organizations [NHOs]) as an impetus for their development. The result is a flexible business paradigm that ranges from joint ventures in blueberry production and distribution to the manufacture of chemical protective apparel for the U.S. military. But at what cost? What happens to Passamaquoddy cultural values in the process of the tribe regaining its financial stability? The notion of living on a reservation, while making chemical protective apparel for the American government, paints a portrait of contradictory identities. In the end, earning a living should not preclude living and “(l)earning” about one’s heritage

Latin American telenovelas and African screen media: from reception to production

Latin American telenovelas began to be widely broadcast on African screens between the late 1970s and early 1980s, and today are among the most popular entertainment products on the continent. The content, aesthetic and narrative format of telenovelas have become a model for many African video film producers, who have incorporated some of telenovelas’ defining elements in their productions in order to attract local audiences. This special issue analyses the impact of telenovelas’ circulation in Africa by focusing on the ‘uses’ African audiences and media producers make of them. Why do telenovelas travel so well around sub-Saharan Africa? How do African audiences make sense of them? And what impact do these media products have on local media entrepreneurs and on the aesthetics and narrative aspects of the contents they produce? In this introduction we provide some background and data about the history and the political economy of telenovelas’ circulation in Africa, and answer the questions raised above by connecting the finding of the essays included in the special issue to ongoing debates on the global circulation of melodrama, on the transformation of African screen media, and on the performative dimension of African audiences’ engagement with foreign media forms