Dr. Joshua Schwab Cartas

Dr. Joshua Schwab Cartas is a mixed race Indigenous Binnizá-Austrian, father, filmmaker, and Indigenous language scholar activist and an assistant Professor at NSCAD born outside his ancestral community on the traditional and unneeded territory of Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations (Vancouver). Also, for the last 18 years he has been an active member of a Zapotec media and cultural collective known as Binni Cubi based in his grandfather’s community of Ranchu Gubiña, Mexico. During that time, he has successfully worked on many community based initiatives aimed at celebrating and perpetuating the Zapotec language and culture, such as documentary films, urban murals, and establishing a community radio station. His research seeks to explore how best to combine mobile technology, specifically cellphilms, into Indigenous practice and land-based education as means to fostering intergenerational knowledge transmission and language reclamation.  Joshua also uses a cellphilm method as a means to unpack and examine the emotional work involved in the journey of language reclamation.