Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve
and extend access to Anthropology Today.
http://www.jstor.org
Defiant images
The Kayapo appropriation of video
On behalf of my Kayapo colleagues, Mokuka and 1984, 1986, 1991a, 1991b, Ruby 1991). Michaels' and
TERENCE Tamok, and myself, may I say that we are honoured the other existing studies deal almost entirely with the
TURNER that the RAI has invited us to show and discuss our Australian and Canadian cases, in which state-sub-
work at this Festival. It is an honour to be invited to sidized indigenous TV broadcasting via communica-
The author,professor of
deliver the FormanLecture. tions satellite is the principal medium in question.
anthropologyat the
Universityof Chicago, has These cases present special problems of their own (e.g.
undertakenfield research Introduction: Kayapo video in the context of the insidious effects of dependence on governmentsub-
in various Kayapo villages 'indigenous media' sidies, or the satellite-TV connection's also serving as a
in Amazonia,central The global expansion of telecommunications,coupled conduit for Western TV programmingwhich is then
Brazil, since 1962, and has with the availability of new and cheap forms of audio- directly received by Aboriginal, Inuit and Indian
extensiveexperience of
film-makingwith British
visual media, above all video recording,have given rise viewers; Kuptana 1988; Murin 1988; Ginsburg 1991,
television teams. This is within the past decade to an unprecedented n.d.) These factors are absent in the Amazonian cases,
the text of the Forman phenomenon: the appropriationand use of the new where video-recorders and generator-powered VCR
Lecturewhich he delivered technologies by indigenous peoples for their own ends. decks and monitors comprise the limits of communica-
in Manchesteron 14 The peoples most involved in this development have tions technology and there is no question of govern-
Septemberas part of the
RAI's ThirdInternational
been among those most culturally and technologically ment financial subsidy. The relatively small' world of
Festival of Ethnographic distantfrom the West: AustralianAborigines, Canadian indigenous media thus nevertheless contains important
Film. Both the Lectureand Inuit and Amazonian Indians. Among the latter, the differences: hence the need for more empirical studies
the Festival were Kayapo provide perhaps the most striking and varied of different cases. The present account of the Kayapo
sponsored by Granada examples of the indigenous use of video. case representsan effort in this direction.
Television. The visits of
The use of video and other visual media such as Faye Ginsburg,in the only general theoreticaldiscus-
Mokukaand Tamokwere
subsidizedby Unesco and television broadcastingby indigenous peoples differs in sions of indigenous media thus far to appear,has noted
by the RAI's Harry Watt a number of ways from the making of ethnographic that the appropriationof visual media by indigenous
Bursary. films or videos by anthropologists or other non-in- peoples typically occurs in the context of movements
A reply to this Lecture digenous persons. It has only recently begun to receive for self-determinationand resistance, and that their use
by James Faris will attention in its own right from anthropologists and of video camerastends to be 'both assertive and conser-
appear in a forthcoming
issue of A.T media theorists, and there are as yet only a few eth- vative of identity', focusing both on the documentation
nographic studies or descriptive accounts of specific of conflicts with or claims against the national society
cases of indigenous media use: of these, the work of and the recordingof traditionalculture (1991, n.d.: 11).
Eric Michaels on CentralDesert Aboriginal Television She makes the importantpoint that in contrast to an
has been the most theoretically important (Michaels earlier generationof anthropologicalfilm makersbut in
convergence with the work of contemporary film Kayapo, media and those involved in ethnographicfilm
makers like Asch, the MacDougalls, Kildea, Preloran, and video.
Rouch and others, indigenous cultural self-documenta-
tion tends to focus not on the retrieval of an idealized Social effects of indigenous media in indigenous
vision of pre-contactculture but on 'processes of iden- communities
tity construction'in the culturalpresent (n.d. 11). Here, One majordifference concerns the act of video-making
indigenous video makers converge significantly with itself. As video takes on political and social importance
tendencies in Western culturaltheory such as the work in an indigenous community, which member of the
of Stuart Hall and the Cultural Studies group, which community assumes the role of video cameraperson,
rejects the notion of 'authenticity' as applied to an and who makes the prestigiousjourney to the alien city
idealized conception of 'traditional' culture and em- where the editing facilities are located, become issues
phasizes the ongoing productionof ethnic, culturaland fraught with social and political significance, and con-
subculturalidentity throughthe constructionof 'hybrid' sequently, social and political conflicts.
representations,combining aspects of mass culture and I have been surprisedby how little this fundamental
technology with more traditionalelements (Hall 1990; point crops up in the literatureor in presentations at
1992). film festival or discussions at conferences. It is com-
Emphasizing the similarities as well as the differen- mon to hear those involved in indigenous film and
ces between contemporaryethnographic film and in- video, indigenous persons and sympathetic non-in-
digenous media, Ginsburg has suggested that both digenes alike, proclaim that the guiding principle of
should be seen as 'cultural media', which use contem- their work is the integral vision of the interconnected-
porary Western film and video media technology for ness of all things inherentin Amerindian,or as the case
the purpose of 'mediating culture' between social may be, Aboriginal or Inuit cultures. Yet few of these
groups, whether societies of different culture, or older same eloquent evocations of the spiritual interconnec-
and younger generations within the same indigenous tedness of the whole are accompaniedby any reference
society. The point is that 'culturalmedia' form partof a to the effects of the activities of the film- or video-
social project of communicationof cultural knowledge makersupon the communitiesin which they worked (in
for political and social ends, such as overcoming some instances, their own). Few reflect upon the pos-
prejudice through inter-cultural understanding, or sible effects of an objectifying medium like film or
reproducing ethnic identity and political cohesion. video on the social or cultural consciousness of the
Ginsburg's concept is an attempt to shift the focus of people filmed (Michaels again being perhaps the most
the term 'media' from the denotationof technologies of notable exception: e.g., Michaels 1984). Few discuss
representationor the representationsin themselves to who ends up owning or controlling access to the films
the social process of mediationin which they are used: or videos at the communitylevel.
In order to open a new 'discursive space' for indigenous These may seem petty issues with no connection to
media that respects and understandsit on its own terms, it the grander issues of theory and politics normally ad-
is importantto attend to the processes of productionand
reception. Analysis needs to focus less on the formal dressed in the anthropologicaland media literature;but
qualities of film/video as text, and more on the cultural they are often the channels through which an in-
mediations that occur through film and video works (n.d. digenous community translatesthe wider political, cul-
4). tural, and aesthetic meanings of media such as video
The emphasis on processes of productionand recep- into its own local personal and social terms. They can
tion, and on media as 'mediation' provides a useful have cumulatively important effects on the internal
point of departurefor my account of Kayapo video, but politics of a community and the careers of individuals.
'mediation' is a Proteannotion that can subsume many It is especially important for non-indigenous people
specific meanings. As I proceed it will be necessary to working in the field of indigenous media to pay atten-
emphasize a numberof differences between the sorts of tion to this level of phenomena and to try to make al-
mediation going on in indigenous, or at any rate lowance for the specific effects their projectsor support
. .: From here our videos of ourselves are sent far away to the
Sg~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~.
lands of the whites, so our [white] relatives can see how
we truly are.
.... .. ..... This is what I want to explain to you today, what this edit-
ing studio and these video tapes are all about, so you will
understand.
Do Whites alone have the understandingto be able to
operate this equipment?Not at all! We Kayapo, all of us,
have the intelligence. We all have the hands, the eyes, the
heads that it takes to do this work.