"Uniquely Navajo?": The Navajo Film Project Reconsidered

Abstract

This year marks the forty-year anniversary of the publication of Through Navajo Eyes: An Exploration in Film Communication and Anthropology (1972). This seminal study has profoundly impacted not only what would become known as the anthropology of visual communication but related fields such as psychology, sociology, and media studies, among others. The book has since been adopted into the visual anthropology canon, and it occupies a familiar niche at the end of most bibliographies in the field. Rightfully hailed as a classic, the Navajo Film Project's findings have largely gone unquestioned-until now.