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Indigenous Media Gone Global: Strengthening Indigenous Identity On- and Offscreen at the First Nations\First Features Film Showcase
KRISTIN DOWELL
New York University ABSTRACT For 12 days in May 2005, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and the Smithsonians National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), as well as several other screening venues in Washington, D.C., hosted a group of renowned indigenous lmmakers from around the globe for the groundbreaking lm showcase, First Nations\First Features: A Showcase of World Indigenous Film and Media. This lm showcase highlighted the innovative ways in which indigenous lmmakers draw on indigenous storytelling practices to create cinematic visions that honor their long-standing indigenous cultural worlds while reaching local and world audiences. In this essay, I highlight the onscreen impact through an analysis of several lms featured in First Nations\First Features, as well as the offscreen impact emphasizing how the indigenous directors used this opportunity to strengthen social networks and share experience in this industry, which may develop into future collaborative lm projects. [Keywords: indigenous media, indigeneity, representation, visual anthropology] For 12 days in May 2005, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and the Smithsonians National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), as well as several screening venues in Washington, D.C., hosted a group of renowned indigenous lmmakers from around the globe for the groundbreaking lm showcase, First Nations\First Features: A Showcase of World Indigenous Film and Media. In this lm showcase, the rst feature lms by indigenous lmmakers from around the world were screened to highlight an emergent world cinema. From the landmark lm Pathnder (1987), directed by Nils Gaup (Sami) from Norway, widely regarded as one of the rst such feature lms, to the more recent critically acclaimed Smoke Signals (1998) and Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2001), First Nations\First Features showcased the innovative ways in which indigenous lmmakers have drawn on indigenous storytelling practices to create cinematic visions that honor the longstanding indigenous cultural worlds within which these contemporary narratives are rooted while also reaching local and world audiences. Global indigenous media are a powerful arena of cultural production through which indigenous lmmakers and activists take up Western media technologies to document indigenous cultural traditions, counter dominant media misrepresentations of indigenous people, and articulate indigenous cultural futures. Indigenous media production is a practice that simultaneously alters the visual landscape of mainstream media by representing indigenous faces, histories, and experiences onscreen, while serving a crucial social role offscreen to provide a practice through which new forms of indigenous solidarity, identity, and community are created. In this essay, I highlight the onscreen impact by focusing on several lms featured in First Nations\ First Features as well as the offscreen impact by emphasizing the ways in which the indigenous directors in New York and Washington, D.C., used this opportunity to strengthen social networks and share expertise and experience in this industry, which may develop into future collaborative lm projects. ORGANIZING FIRST NATIONS\FIRST FEATURES In much the same way that indigenous media is produced through a patchwork of funding, production, and distribution venues, the First Nations\First Features lm showcase was the result of the collaboration between three organizations: the MoMA, the Smithsonians NMAI, and New York University. The lm showcase was the result of the scholarship and labor of curators from these institutions: Sally Berger, Assistant Curator in the Department of Film and Media at MoMA; Faye Ginsburg, Director of the Center for Media, Culture, and History, the Center for Religion and Media, and member of the Department of Anthropology at New York University; Elizabeth Weatherford, Director of the Film and Video Center at the Smithsonians NMAI; and lmmaker and independent curator Pegi Vail. First Nations\First Features is the culmination of the long-standing commitment to indigenous media by Berger, Ginsburg, Vail, and Weatherford. These curators have been programming indigenous media at their respective institutions for over 20 years and sought to create a venue where the remarkable achievements of indigenous directors could gain visibility within the prestigious mainstream venues of MoMA, NMAI, and associated screening venues. Additionally, the curators sought to create an environment in which New York and Washington, D.C., audiences could encounter the directors and their extraordinary lms (First Nations\First Features 2005). MoMA and NMAI served as the primary screening venues in New York City, whereas the screening venues in Washington, D.C., included the National Gallery of Art, Canadian Embassy, Freer Gallery of Art/Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Library of Congress, the National Museum of Natural History, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, in addition to the newly opened NMAI on the National

Visual Anthropology Mall.1 First Nations\First Features screened 25 lms, including three key documentaries as well as several short ctions and feature lms. These lms represented a host of First Nations communities, among them Australian Aborigine, Maori, Inuit, Native North and South American, Nenet, Sami, and Rotuman. A majority of the directors participated in the entire lm showcase, introducing their lms and answering questions after screenings, speaking at a symposium, Cultural Creativity and Cultural Rights: On and Off Screen held at the NMAI in New York, and traveling from New York to Washington, D.C., for the screenings held there. From May 12 to 23, 2005, over 11,000 audience members viewed indigenous feature lms that ranged from epic traditional tales to gripping contemporary indigenous urban dramas. The First Nations\First Features curators eloquently note in their curatorial statement that over the past two decades, these lmmakers have broken barriers to native lm production, garnering major awards worldwide, from Cannes to Sundance to Kautokeino. The works featured in this showcase, whether classics or premieres, are rsts for their directors and the First Nations communities they come from (First Nations\First Features 2005). Audience members were brought into the distinctive cultural worlds of the lmmakers through the unique visions, indigenous aesthetics, and dramatic storytelling of their lms. The MoMA screening theater, and additional screening venues in Washington, D.C., were transformed into indigenous spaces in which native stories, experiences, and histories were given center stage.

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a New Zealand tourism website, renowned Maori lmmaker Merata Mita noted the power of indigenous media proclaiming: Swimming against the tide becomes an exhilarating experience. It makes you strong. For 90 minutes or so, we have the capability of indigenizing the screen in any part of the world our lms are shown. This represents power and is one reason we make lms that are uniquely and distinctly Maori (New Zealand 2005). The lms showcased in First Nations\First Features demonstrate a tremendous range in content and style.2 Several themes emerge from the lms, including (1) the exploration of family dynamics, (2) the representation of epic traditional stories, (3) the hard-hitting contemporary urban realities for indigenous people, and (4) the strong ties to land and commitment of Native activists and communities to their traditional territories. In the next section, I examine several of the lms featured in First Nations\First Features through the lens of these four themes.

FAMILY DYNAMICS Family is a key feature to indigenous social life, and several of these lms explicitly address the often-complicated relationships between family members within indigenous communities. It is not surprising, given colonial efforts to disrupt indigenous family structuressuch as in the policy to remove mixed-race Aboriginal children from their families in Australia, or the residential school system in the United States and Canadathat many indigenous directors use media as a way in which to recuperate indigenous community structures and to make central the intricate dynamics of indigenous family life in lm narratives. In Radiance (1998), directed by Rachel Perkins (Arrernte/Kalkadoon), the narrative revolves around three Aboriginal sisters who have returned to their childhood home for their mothers funeral. As these three formerly estranged sisters recall their childhood memories, the past begins to unravel as family secrets are revealed that alter the kinship ties of the sisters. The dynamics of an extended family in a small rural Maori community are central to Merata Mitas seminal lm Mauri (1987), one of the earliest indigenous feature lms and the rst feature lm directed by a Maori woman. Mauri is set in a 1950s rural Maori community that is facing the loss of its land and of its young people moving to urban areas. The unexpected arrival of Rewi, a man on the run from prison, alters community and family dynamics. As part of Rewis journey, he reconnects with his spiritual traditions on a path of redemption guided by his relationships with two Maori women. Smoke Signals (1998), directed by Chris Eyre (Cheyenne/ Arapaho), was a groundbreaking lm; it was the rst feature lm written, directed, produced, and acted by Native Americans. This lm, critically acclaimed and a boxofce success, is based on the short stories of Sherman Alexie (Coeur dAlene/Spokane). It portrays the estranged relationship between Victor Joseph and his father, Arnold, as Victor reluctantly travels with his companion, eccentric storyteller Thomas Builds-the-Fire, from the Coeur dAlene

TELLING OUR OWN STORIES: ONSCREEN REPRESENTATION Indigenous media have reclaimed the screen from dominant media representations to tell stories from the perspectives of indigenous peoples. A burgeoning eld of scholarship on indigenous media has examined how media technologies are appropriated and transformed to meet the needs of local indigenous communities. This scholarship has revealed the ways in which indigenous media provide screen memories for local communities (Ginsburg 2002), the role of media in indigenous activism in the Amazon and Brazil (Conklin 1995; Turner 2002), community-based indigenous media initiatives throughout South and Latin America (Brgido-Corach n a 2004; Cordova 2005; Himpele 2004; Wortham 2004), the impact of Inuit lmmaking (Bessire 2003; Ginsburg 2003; Huhndorf 2003), the politics of representation in Native American video (Prins 1997), efforts to decolonize the screen (Barclay 1990; Kilpatrick 1999; Langton 1993; Singer 2001; Todd 1993), analyses of national cultural policies supporting and constraining indigenous media production (Alia 1999; Buddle-Crowe 2002; Himpele 2002; Molnar and Meadows 2001; Roth 2005), and the emergence of indigenous aesthetics in indigenous media (Ginsburg 1994; Johnson 2000; Leuthold 1998; Masayesva 1995; Michaels 1993; Weatherford 1996). In an interview for

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FIGURE 1. Photo still from 5th World (2005). (Photo courtesy of lmmaker Larry Blackhorse Lowe)

reservation to Phoenix to retrieve his fathers remains. An exploration of the relationship between fathers and sons, this lm poignantly and comically explores the dynamics of family within contemporary Native American reservation life. The newest lm to be screened in First Nations\First Features was the feature lm 5th World (2005), directed by emerging lmmaker Blackhorse Lowe (Navajo). A lyrical and poetic experimental lm, 5th World captures the stark Navajo landscape, while exploring the developing relationship between two Navajo young adults as they hitchhike through Navajo country. With a haunting soundtrack and striking visuals of the landscape as the backdrop to the budding romance, the lm centers on Navajo cultural traditions, clan identity, and taboos. Ultimately a story about Navajo kinship and the centrality of clan identity to cultural traditions, this lm provides an unconventional look at the way in which Navajo youth negotiate ties to cultural traditions within contemporary life (see Figure 1).

BRINGING TRADITIONAL STORIES TO THE BIG SCREEN Several of the most notable indigenous feature lms have translated epic traditional tales to cinema. From Pathnder

(1987), directed by Nils Gaup (Sami), to the more recent Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2001), directed by Zacharias Kunuk (Inuit), indigenous storytelling traditions and tales used by elders to teach moral lessons to indigenous youth are transformed into gripping dramatic feature lms. Pathnder, the rst Sami-language feature lm, received critical acclaim within Norway and internationally, including an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. Pathnder is an action-adventure story based on a thousand-year-old Sami legend often told to Sami youth. The lm focuses on a young man who witnesses the brutal death of his family by a band of marauders and subsequently leads his people in a ght against these outsiders. Vividly evoking the customs, traditions, family life, and spirituality of ancient Sami life, this lm presents a dramatic narrative about the morals of standing up for ones community to maintain traditional territory and cultural traditions. Likewise, Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, winner of the Camera dOr at the Cannes Film Festival in 2002 and an Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Film, is a traditional Inuit tale set in ancient times with a plot that examines the dynamics between rival families and supernatural forces manipulated by shamans. It is the rst feature lm

Visual Anthropology written, directed, produced, and acted by Inuit in the Inuktitut language. The lm follows the hero, Atanarjuat, who must struggle against a shamans curse to assure his communitys future. Atanarjuat is the production of Igoolik Isuma, a video production company that has been using media to make documentaries and short narratives about Inuit traditions and social life for over 20 years. The production of Pathnder and Atanarjuat required the mobilization of many community members in every aspect of production from acting and writing to directing and costume design. These productions strengthen intergenerational ties and nurture cultural traditions through the mobilization of traditional skills, indigenous knowledge, and storytelling throughout the production process. The fact that these traditional tales are now captured in these indigenous features will ensure that future generations of Sami and Inuit children can learn from these stories through the medium of lm.

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FIGURE 2. Film still from Beneath Clouds (2001). (Photo courtesy of Teresa-Jayne Hanlon and Autumn Film Productions)

CONTEMPORARY REALITIES AND URBAN LIFESTYLES The lms featured in First Nations\First Features spanned the range from ancient oral traditions to autobiographically inspired stories to comic narratives and politically charged activist dramas. A prominent theme among several lms is the exploration of the contemporary urban conditions facing many indigenous people today. Urban life is a social reality for a large number of indigenous people, and in the United States and Canada approximately 68 percent of Native populations reside in urban areas.3 The demands of urban life often pose challenges to the maintenance of indigenous traditions and cultural identity. Angels of the Earth [Los Angeles de la Tierra] (2001), directed by Patricio Luna (Aymara), is a cautionary tale about the dangers of urban life. It follows the story of two Aymara brothers who have left a poor mountain village in search of a better life in the city. Once Were Warriors (1995), directed by Lee Tamahori (Maori), is a gritty and often violent portrayal of contemporary urban Maori life. This lm was the debut feature lm for Tamahori, who has since gone on to direct such lms as Mulholland Falls (1996) and Die Another Day (2002), and it remains one of highest-grossing lms in New Zealand. Once Were Warriors follows conict and drama within the Heke family as Beth Heke challenges her volatile husband Jake while seeking to change their lifestyle. After a tragic family event, Beth realizes that she longs to return to her marae, her relatives, and the Maori traditions in which she was raised. Beneath Clouds (2001), directed by Ivan Sen (Gamilaroi) is the story of two hitchhiking Aboriginal teens as they travel to Sydney. Although much of the screen time is set against the landscape of the rural outskirts of Sydney, the lm also addresses racism, police brutality, and incarceration as contemporary social issues facing Aboriginal youth in Australia. This exquisitely shot lm examines Aboriginal identity through the lens of the reluctant friendship that develops between Lena and Vaughn. Lena, a lightskinned Aboriginal woman, is trying to reach Sydney to nd her absent Irish father, whereas Vaughn, a streetwise

angry Aboriginal teen, escapes a detention center in an effort to get to Sydney to see his dying mother. Lena and Vaughn are thrown together in their journey to Sydney, come to depend on one another, and eventually establish a tentative friendship. A subtle and artfully crafted lm, Beneath Clouds poignantly examines the issue of Aboriginality, allowing room for the diversity of Aboriginal identity, faces, and experiences while at the same time creating a space to interrogate social conditions such as racism and police brutality facing Aboriginal youth today (see Figure 2).

CONNECTIONS TO THE LAND The works screened at First Nations\First Features explore the ways in which indigenous communities maintain a strong connection to the land and depend on the seasonal cycles of their traditional territories. Itam Hakim, Hopiit (1984), directed by Victor Masayesva Jr. (Hopi), explores the centrality of corn, farming, and the desert landscape in traditional Hopi life. An early Native American feature, this experimental documentary is narrated by a Hopi elder who blends personal and cultural history to tell of seminal moments in Hopi history, including the oral tradition of the Hopi Emergence, as well as to detail historical accounts of the Pueblo Revolt and the age of the conquistadors. Evoking a quiet reverence for the earth, this critically acclaimed video was lmed in the Hopi language (with an English voice-over) and offers a unique poetic visualization of Hopi prophecy and worldview. Likewise, the documentary Powerful Mountain [Guia To ] (1998), directed o by Crisanto Manzano Avella (Zapotec), is a visual meditation on the delicate balance the indigenous people of Oaxaca create with the environment of the Guia Too cloud forest. The video provides stunning documentation of the tremendous biodiversity within this cloud forest, and the local knowledge with which indigenous people maintain a balance with the environment as they farm the area. Many indigenous cultural traditions are rooted in a spiritual connection to the land and the strength of these ties is revealed in the tenacity of indigenous activists in struggles over land claims. The groundbreaking lm Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (1993), directed by renowned lmmaker Alanis Obomsawin (Abenaki), is a feature-length

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American Anthropologist Vol. 108, No. 2 June 2006 digenous lmmakers to see each others work, which can be difcult to access in the remote home communities of several lmmakers, as well as to discuss the commonalities and differences they each face in working in their respective First Nations communities and countries of production. Filmmakers, established and emerging, remote and urban, were brought together in shared dialogue. For some lmmakers, this showcase was an opportunity to reunite with long-time friends and colleagues; for others, it was an opportunity to see their lm in a new light by having it screened for the rst time with international indigenous lms (see Figure 4). The symposium Cultural Creativity and Cultural Rights: On and Off Screen, hosted at NMAI in New York, provided an opportunity for the participating lmmakers to discuss their work in light of the themes of cultural rightssuch as access to the means of production and various national cultural policies that shape, enable, and constrain indigenous media productionand cultural creativitysuch as the challenges, concerns, and technical possibilities of translating indigenous storytelling and aesthetic traditions to lm. This lively symposium raised issues from the constraints of funding structures to the impact of indigenous media on cultural identity to lmmakers aspirations for future directions within indigenous media. Filmmaker Marcelina C rdenas Sausa (Quechua), director of a Loving Each Other in the Shadows [Llanthupi Manakuy] (2001), described the collective nature of her communitys production process, proclaiming, Our goal is to strengthen our cultural identity, to show our own model for development through indigenous media. In that sense, our work with media has a sense of community, of reciprocity, of complementarity (First Nations\First Features 2005:3). Anastasia Lapsui (Nenet), writer and director of A Bride of the Seventh Heaven [Jumulan Morsian] (2003), echoed this sentiment as she discussed the way in which she mobilizes her community to create her lyrical lms. She declared, I am a nomadic person, I come from a family of reindeer herders, hunters, and shermen. I just take a slice of life, of my life or the life of my neighbors, I write it up and a lm comes out. We the nomadic people live collectively and our lms are born collectively as well (First Nations\First Features 2005:6). Merata Mita (Maori) and Chris Eyre (Cheyenne/ Arapaho) both raised the questions who is the primary audience for indigenous media? and can indigenous lms appeal to a mainstream audience despite the ways in which indigenous lms differ aesthetically from Hollywood formulas? Mita called for indigenous lmmakers to draw on their storytelling traditions as the basis for writing lm scripts, acknowledging that I think its a mistake to cast aside whatever has served us so well in the past, to think that, because we are writing scripts for lm, that this is something totally different, that we dont need those lessons of the arts of storytelling that we got from our oral tradition (First Nations\First Features 2005:10). Mita advocates using indigenous oral traditions as a cultural resource from which to draw on when making lms. She also counters the notion prevalent in mainstream

documentary that follows the 1990 Oka crisis, a 78-day armed standoff between Mohawk activists and the Quebec Provincial Police and Canadian Army. Mohawk activists barricaded a portion of their traditional territory known as the Pines, which contains a Mohawk burial ground and on which the town of Oka sought to expand a golf course. Obomsawin traces the history of this confrontation over the course of several hundred years, noting that the tensions over this area of land are rooted in the colonization, dispossession, and illegal transfer of Mohawk land to the town of Oka. This remarkable lm captures the tremendous dedication, commitment, and strength of the Mohawk activists and articulates this land struggle within the framework of indigenous political sovereignty and spiritual traditions. This armed standoff in 1990 drastically altered the political relationship between the Canadian government and Aboriginal peoples, and Kanehsatake has had a tremendous impact by giving voice and visibility to the struggle for Aboriginal rights in Canada while inspiring indigenous activists around the world.

BUILDING COMMUNITY: OFFSCREEN SOCIAL NETWORKS Indigenous lmmakers alter the world as seen onscreen by presenting indigenous stories that draw on uniquely indigenous cultural traditions and aesthetic styles to reimagine the possibilities of lmic representation. Additionally, the practice of media production itself alters indigenous social relations offscreen by providing a crucial practice through which new forms of indigenous solidarity are formed. As a cultural event, First Nations\First Features Film Showcase facilitated these social networks by bringing together over 20 indigenous lmmakers to New York and Washington, D.C., to participate throughout the course of the 12-day showcase. First Nations\First Features is linked to the broader cultural world of the ever-expanding Native lm festival circuit, which serves a vital role in promoting, showcasing, and gaining visibility for indigenous media. There are a large number of Native lm festivals in the United States and Canada as well as in South America, Australia, and New Zealand.4 At the various sites along the increasingly global Native lm festival circuit, Native people from various tribal, cultural, and national backgrounds come together to see the latest work in the eld of indigenous media, discuss the obstacles and achievements in the indigenous media industry, build professional alliances, and catch up on the latest news from friends and colleagues. First Nations\First Features strengthened social networks through formal activities such as the symposium Cultural Creativity and Cultural Rights: On and Off Screen and more informal activities such as lunches, including one hosted by the American Indian Community House in New York and one at the NMAI in Washington, D.C., as well as evening events, conversations over coffee, and late-night celebrations (see Figure 3). First Nations\First Features enabled the participating in-

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FIGURE 3. First Nations\First Features lmmakers in Washington, D.C., from left to right: Patricio Luna (Aymara), Pegi Vail (First Nations\First Features curator), Nils Gaup (Sami), Markuu Lehmuskallio, Crisanto Manzano Avella (Zapotec), Larry Blackhorse Lowe (Navajo), and Johannes Lehmuskallio. Standing in front on left Marcelina Cardenas (Quechua) and Anastasia Lapsui (Nenet). (Photo by Kristin Dowell)

media that all lms need to appeal to a wide audience and obtain high-grossing numbers at the box ofce. She denes the power of indigenous lm in its reconguration of movie audiences by constructing indigenous people as the primary audience and creating lms that appeal to and resonate with indigenous audiences. She exclaimed, We have every right to make lms for ourselves, just as Hollywood has every right to make lms for whatever their audience is. Why should we be excluded from making our own stories for our own people to see? (First Nations\ First Features 2005:11). Jolene Rickard (Tuscarora), the moderator of the panel on cultural creativity, emphasized the social role of indigenous lmmakers as they work to ensure the maintenance of indigenous cultural traditions through their lms. She aptly noted, I think all of these lmmakers are demonstrating in some way a condence, a commitment to the ongoing construction of ourselves as indigenous peoples in a world that is putting great pressure on all peoples to let go of their deep knowledge systems (First Nations\First Features 2005:13). By taking the means of production into their own hands, indigenous

lmmakers reclaim the right to tell indigenous stories in a way that honors the oral traditions and cultural worlds within which these stories are rooted. The afternoon symposium panel at NMAI addressed the theme of cultural rights offscreen, including the national cultural policies shaping and constraining indigenous media production as well as the activism of indigenous lmmakers to gain greater access to production resources. Much of the discussion revolved around the difculties of gaining access to funding to produce indigenous media, particularly as many indigenous lmmakers make their lms for local indigenous audiences. Nils Gaup (Sami) articulated the difculty of trying to nance feature lms while honoring Sami storytelling traditions. He explained, Because we dont tell the stories for a large audience, its very, very difcult to nance the lms, because making lms means to nd a story that can sell, that can travel, that can give a lot of money for the producer. And of course, to do that, you have to nd a commercial story, and thats kind of wrong in the Sami way of thinking (First Nations\First Features 2005:3).

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FIGURE 4. First Nations\First Features lmmakers and NMAI staff at a lunch hosted by NMAI at the Cultural Resources Center in Suitland Maryland. (Photo by Kristin Dowell)

Rachael Maza (Yidinjdi, Torres Strait Islander) also highlighted the institutional framework in Australia, describing how Indigenous lm in Australia is in its early stages with only a handful of Indigenous feature lms having been produced.5 Maza, like other lmmakers, connects the emergence of lmmaking opportunities for Indigenous lmmakers as the direct result of the political work of Indigenous activists in the 1960s in Australia. She proclaimed, Whats resonating within the progress of developing an Indigenous voice in our country is the political journey thats happened. What has been integral and absolutely important to us nding our voice, is developing the skills base in all aspects of the [lmmaking] industry (First Nations\First Features 2005:11). Sally Riley (Wiradjuri), director of the Australian Film Commissions Indigenous Unit, remarked on the diversity of Indigenous Australian lmmakers, as well as the content of Indigenous media that ranges from documentaries to short dramas to language programming and documentation of bush knowledge. She called for institutional changes within distribution venues emphasizing that

in Australia, Aboriginal people are invisible on television at the moment. . . . Were not in control of the cinemas or the television stations, and we really need to start getting our lmmakers in those key decision-making positions in television stations. Its the only way well get people on screen (First Nations\First Features 2005:14). From the calls to open up funding and institutional access to indigenous lmmakers to the debates over how to balance expressing indigenous storytelling traditions while reaching broader audiences, these lmmakers raised important debates around the social conditions of indigenous lmmaking. One thing is clear, as moderator Paul Chaat Smith (Comanche) noted: Indigenous cinema doesnt look like anything that has come before, and indigenous lmmakers come from a land of a thousand dances and our cinema, if it is really ours, will celebrate each and every one of them (First Nations\First Features 2005:16). The lms included in First Nations\First Features celebrate and reect the tremendous diversity, ingenuity, and tenacity of indigenous cultural ways of life, storytelling, and lmmaking.

Visual Anthropology CONCLUSION The First Nations\First Features Film Showcase was a groundbreaking cultural event bringing together indigenous lms and lmmakers from around the globe to screen their work for audiences in New York and Washington, D.C. While participating in this lm showcase, lmmakers were able to strengthen and create relationships and a shared discourse of the obstacles and achievements within this emerging world cinema. Several of the participating lmmakers have made plans to collaborate in the future, and institutions in other countries, including Norway and Australia, have expressed interest in screening a portion of the showcase. Showcasing the work of emerging lmmakers alongside the established lmmakers who were instrumental in paving the way for future generations of indigenous lmmakers, the First Nations\First Features Film Showcase was an invaluable lm series reecting the diversity of indigenous cultural traditions and cinematic visions while simultaneously recognizing and celebrating the achievements of indigenous media in the last 20 years and eagerly anticipating the new directions to come. NOTES
Acknowledgments. My deepest gratitude to Faye Ginsburg, Sally Berger, Pegi Vail, and Elizabeth Weatherford for extending me the opportunity to work as a festival assistant for the First Nations\First Features Film Showcase. I was fortunate to be able to work on the organization of this landmark lm showcase and I am honored to have been able to spend time getting to know all the lmmakers who participated in the lm showcase. Their lmmaking, activism, and dedication to their communities and cultural traditions remain an inspiration. Also, thank you to Jeff Himpele for extending the invitation to write a review of First Nations\First Features in the pages of AA. 1. A lm showcase of this magnitude also required the collaboration between many funding organizations and sponsors, including the Ford Foundation, John and Margot Ernst, Penelope Seidler, the Canadian Embassy, the Finnish Film Foundation, the New Zealand Film Commission, the Australian Film Commission, the Australian Consulate, the Norwegian Film Institute, Pacic Islanders in Communications, the Mexican Cultural Institute (Washington, D.C., and New York), the Royal Norwegian Consulate General, Secretaria del Estado de Michoac n, and Foreign Affairs Canada. In addition, a major support was provided by OgilvyOne Worldwide, which designed the remarkable website (www.rstnationsrstfeatures.org) that accompanied the lm showcase. 2. Although I do not have enough space here to review every lm included in First Nations\First Features, I encourage readers to view the website (www.rstnationsrstfeatures.org), which provides indepth information about all the lms and directors included in the lm showcase. 3. See Ogunwale (2002) and Statistics Canada Aboriginal Peoples Survey (2003) for further statistical information. In 2000, the Native American population in the United States was 4.1 million, or approximately 1.5 percent of the total U.S. population of approximately 281 million people; of this population, close to 70 percent live in urban areas. In Canada the Aboriginal population is approximately 1.3 million, or 4.4 percent of the total Canadian population; approximately 68 percent reside in urban areas. 4. Among these festivals are the following: IMAGeNation Aboriginal Film and Video Festival in Vancouver; ImagineNative Film Festival in Toronto; Dreamspeakers Film Festival in Edmonton; Winnipeg Aboriginal Film and Video Festival; the American Indian Film Festival in San Francisco; Native American Film and Video

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Festival in New York City; the American Festival of Film and Video of Indigenous Peoples, an annual festival held in various countries throughout Latin and South America annually and organized by the Consejo Latinoamericano de Cine y Video de Pueblos Indgenas (CLACPI); the Wairoa Maori Film Festival in New Zealand; the Native Voices Film Festival in South Dakota; and the Native Cinema Showcase in Santa Fe. These festivals are in addition to mainstream lm festivals such as the Sundance Film Festival and the All Roads Film Festival with National Geographic, both of which include international indigenous lms as part of their programming. 5. In Australia the preferred convention in regard to terminology is to capitalize Indigenous Australian. As this is the convention only in Australia, I use the capitalized Indigenous only when discussing lms by Indigenous Australians and when using quotes from Indigenous Australian lmmakers who participated in the lm showcase. Throughout the rest of the article, I lowercase indigenous as this is the convention in most national contexts.

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Alia, Valerie 1999 Un/Covering the North: News, Media, and Aboriginal People. Vancouver: University of British Columbia. Barclay, Barry 1990 Our Own Image. Auckland: Longman Paul. Bessire, Lucas 2003 Talking Back to Primitivism: Divided Audiences, Collective Desires. American Anthropologist 105(4):832838. Brgido-Corach n, Anna a 2004 An Interview with Juan Jose Garca, President of Ojo de Agua Comunicacion. American Anthropologist 106(2):368 373. Buddle-Crowe, Kathleen 2002 From Birchbark Talk to Digital Dreamspeaking: A History of Aboriginal Media Activism in Canada. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, McMaster University. Conklin, Beth 1995 Body Paint, Feathers, and VCRs: Aesthetics and Authenticity in Amazonian Activism. American Ethnologist 24(4):711 737. Cordova, Amalia 2005 Resources for Indigenous Film and Video Makers. Cultural Survival Quarterly 29(2):14. First Nations\First Features 2005 First Nations\First Features Symposium Transcript. Electronic document, www.rstnationsrstfeatures.org, accessed January 9, 2006. Ginsburg, Faye 1994 Embedded Aesthetics: Creating a Discursive Space for Indigenous Media. Cultural Anthropology 9(3):365382. 2002 Screen Memories: Resignifying the Traditional in Indigenous Media. In Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain. Lila Abu-Lughod, Faye Ginsburg, and Brian Larkin, eds. Pp. 3958. Berkeley: University of California Press. 2003 Atanarjuat Off-Screen: From Media Reservations to the World Stage. American Anthropologist 105(4):827831. Himpele, Jeff 2002 Arrival Scenes: Complicity and Media Ethnography in the Bolivian Public Sphere. In Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain. Lila Abu-Lughod, Faye Ginsburg, and Brian Larkin, eds. Pp. 301319. Berkeley: University of California Press. 2004 Packaging Indigenous Media: An Interview with Ivan Sanjin s and Jesus Tapia. American Anthropologist e 106(2):354363. Huhndorf, Shari 2003 Atanarjuat, the Fast Runner: Culture, History, and Politics in Inuit Media. American Anthropologist 105(4):822826. Johnson, Darlene 2000 Indigenous Protocol. Electronic document, http://www. sbs.com.au/sbsi/documentary.html, accessed January 9, 2006. Kilpatrick, Jacquelin 1999 Celluloid Indians: Native Americans and Film. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

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American Anthropologist Vol. 108, No. 2 June 2006

Wortham, Erica Cusi 2004 Between the State and Indigenous Autonomy: Unpacking Video Indgena in Mexico. American Anthropologist 106(2):363368.

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FILMS CITED
5th World 2005 Blackhorse Lowe, dir. 75 min. Blackhorse Films. Mesa, Arizona. Angels of the Earth (Los Angeles de la Tierra) 2001 Patricio Luna, dir. 40 min. Centro de Estudio, Formacion y Realizacion Cinematograca (CEFREC). La Paz, Bolivia. Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner 2001 Zacharias Kunuk, dir. 175 min. New Yorker Films. New York. Beneath Clouds 2001 Ivan Sen, dir. 90 min. New South Wales Film and Television Ofce. Sydney, Australia. Bride of the Seventh Heaven, A 2003 Anastasia Lapsui and Markuu Lehmuskallio, dirs. 85 min. Finnish Film Foundation. Kanavakatu, Finland. Die Another Day 2001 Lee Tamahori, dir. 135 min. MGM. Hollywood. Itam Hakim, Hopiit 1984 Victor Masayesva Jr., dir. 58 min. Documentary Educational Resources. Watertown, Massachusetts. Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance 1993 Alanis Obomsawin, dir. 120 min. National Film Board of Canada. Montreal, Canada. Loving Each Other in the Shadows (Llanthupi Munakuy) 2001 Marcelina C rdenas Sausa, dir. 47 min. Centro de Estudio, a Formacion y Realizacion Cinematograca (CEFREC). La Paz, Bolivia. Mauri 1987 Merata Mita, dir. 99 min. New Zealand Film Commission. Wellington, New Zealand. Mulholland Falls 1996 Lee Tamahori, dir. 107 min. MGM. Hollywood. Once Were Warriors 1995 Lee Tamahori, dir. 102 min. Fine Line Features. New York. Pathnder (Ofelas) 1987 Nils Gaup, dir. 90 min. Norwegian Film Institute. Oslo, Norway. Powerful Mountain (Gua Too) 1998 Crisanto Manzano Avella, dir. 53 min. Ojo de Agua Comunicacion Indigena. Oaxaca, Mexico. Radiance 1998 Rachel Perkins, dir. 83 min. National Film and Sound Archive. Queensland, Australia. Smoke Signals 1998 Chris Eyre, dir. 89 min. Miramax. New York.