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Laura Graham is Professor Emerita of Anthropology at the University of Iowa and current President of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America.  Her research focuses on Indigenous agency and the politics of representation among Indigenous peoples of Lowland South America.

Laura Graham has carried out long-term field research among the A’uwẽ (Xavante) of central Brazil and among Wayuu peoples of Venezuela. She has written extensively on Indigenous speech and forms of self-representation in national and international arenas, including ethnographic spectacle and use of new media technologies. Presently, she is part of a team of scholars that is working in collaboration with A’uwẽ communities in Pimentel Barbosa Indigenous Land to build Rowasu’u. This is a collaborative, community-based digital archive that returns decades of scientific and anthropological materials to A’uwẽ. The site houses digitized scientific and ethnographic materials alongside collaboratively produced A’uwẽ audio narratives that interpret and contextualize them, demonstrating how the digital return of scientific objects can transform the asymmetries of earlier fieldwork into new, collaborative forms of knowledge production.

Laura Graham is author of multiple books and articles. He books include the award-winning, Performing Dreams: Discourses of Immortality among the Xavante of Central Brazil (U Texas Press 1995; in Portuguese edition with original field recordings 2018), Performing Indigeneity: Global Histories and Contemporary Experiences (U Nebraska Press 2014, with Glenn Penny) and the co-edited volume, Language and Social Justice in Practice (Routledge 2018, with Netta Avineri, Eric Johnson, Robin R. Conley and Jonathan Rosa).  She is producer and co-director, with David Hernández Palmar (Wayuu) and Caimi Waiassé (A’uwẽ-Xavante), of the film Owners of the Water: Conflict and Collaboration over Rivers (Documentary Educational Resources, 2009 that can be accessed through Kanopy). 

Graham served as founding chair of the American Anthropological Association’s Committee on Language and Social Justice. Since 2009, she has served on the Board of Directors of Cultural Survival. She is currently writing a book on A’uwẽ (Xavante) uses of audiovisual technologies and other forms of cultural outreach as part of Indigenous efforts to achieve representational sovereignty.

Research Interests

• Cultural Politics and Representation
• Language
• Expressive Culture and Performance
• Semiotics
• Indigenous Media
• Indigenous Peoples
• Human Rights
• Advocacy
• South America
• Amazonia
• Brazil
• Venezuela

Courses Taught

• Language, Culture and Communication
• Linguistic Anthropology
• Semiotics
• Language & Gender
• Multimedia Ethnography

Affiliations and Links

• Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America: SALSA
• Feminist Anthropology program
• Marketing Culture: the Xavante
• Collaborative Indigenous Film: Owners of the Water - see the trailer
• Graham in Native Networks
• 2009 Native American Film + Video Festival
• Cultural Survival
• Filmmakers Laura Graham And David Hernández-Palmar On Perceptions Of Indigenous People