I Am Ishi: The Performance Art Film

Drawing from and expanding on the late James Luna’s ISHI: The Archive Performance, Dana Claxton and members of the Ishi Collective recount the story of the last known member of the Yahi people, who appeared near the town of Oroville, California, in 1911. Taken in by University of California anthropologists, he became a subject of study and was brought to live in the museum on campus, where he worked as a janitor. Ishi’s tragic story, embodied and retold through the layered performances of collective members, serves as a haunting interrogation of the legacy of dehumanizing colonial anthropological and museum practices.