From Filmmaker Warriors to Flash Drive Shamans

Description

From Filmmaker Warriors to Flash Drive Shamans broadens the base of research on Indigenous media in Latin America through thirteen chapters that explore groups such as the Kayapó of Brazil, the Mapuche of Chile, the Kichwa of Ecuador, and the Ayuuk of Mexico, among others, as they engage video, DVDs, photography, television, radio, and the internet.

The authors cover a range of topics such as the prospects of collaborative film production, the complications of archiving materials, and the contrasting meanings of and even conflict over "embedded aesthetics" in media production—i.e., how media reflects in some fashion the ownership, authorship, and/or cultural sensibilities of its community of origin. Other topics include active audiences engaging television programming in unanticipated ways, philosophical ruminations about the voices of the dead captured on digital recorders, the innovative uses of digital platforms on the internet to connect across generations and even across cultures, and the overall challenges to obtaining media sovereignty in all manner of media production.

The book opens with contributions from the founders of Indigenous Media Studies, with an overview of global Indigenous media by Faye Ginsburg and an interview with Terence Turner that took place shortly before his death.

Sujets

• Indigenous Studies
• Latin American Studies
• Media Studies
• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Anthropology

Informations

• Publié par: Vanderbilt University Press
• Date de parution: 22 octobre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780826522139
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

From Filmmaker Warriors to Flash Drive Shamans
From Filmmaker Warriors to Flash Drive Shamans
Indigenous Media Production and Engagement in Latin America
RICHARD PACE, EDITOR
Vanderbilt University Press
Nashville
© 2018 by Vanderbilt University Press
Nashville, Tennessee 37235
All rights reserved
First printing 2018
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file
LC control number 2017053890
LC classification number P94.65.L29 F76 2018
Dewey classification number 302.23089/98
LC record available at lccn.loc.gov/2017053890
ISBN 978-0-8265-2211-5 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-8265-2212-2 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-8265-2213-9 (ebook)
Dedicated to the memory of Terence Turner
Contents
Tables
Introduction
Embedding Aesthetics and Envisioning Sovereignty: Some Definitions and Directions in Latin American Indigenous Media Studies (Richard Pace)
Part One: Overview
1. Indigenous Media from U-Matic to YouTube: Media Sovereignty in the Digital Age (Faye Ginsburg)
Part Two: Indigenous Video and Videographers
2. Kiabieti Metuktire and Terence Turner: A Legacy of Kayapó Filmmaking (Richard Pace and Glenn H. Shepard Jr.)
3. Wallmapu Rising: Re-envisioning the Mapuche Nation through Media (Amalia Córdova)
4. Transformations of Indigenous Media: The Life and Work of David Hernández Palmar (Laura R. Graham)
5. Value and Ephemeral Materiality: Media Archiving in Tamazulapam, Oaxaca (Erica Cusi Wortham)
6. Making Media: Collaborative Ethnography and Kayapó Digital Worlds (Ingrid Carolina Ramón Parra, Laura Zanotti, and Diego Soares da Silveira)
Part Three: Sounds and Images
7. National Culture, Indigenous Voice: Creating a Counternarrative on Colombian Radio (Mario A. Murillo)
8. The Shaman and the Flash Drive (Guilherme Orlandini Heurich)
9. Kawaiwete Perspectives on the Role of Photography in State Projects to Colonize the Brazilian Interior (Suzanne Oakdale)
Part Four: Television
10. As Seen on TV? Visions of Civilization in Emerging Kichwa Media Markets (Jamie E. Shenton)
11. Reproducing Colonial Fantasies: The Indigenous Other in Brazilian Telenovelas (Antonio La Pastina)
12. Kayapó TV: An Audience Ethnography in Turedjam Village, Brazil (Richard Pace, Glenn H. Shepard Jr., Eduardo Rafael Galvão, and Conrad P. Kottak)
Contributors
Index
Tables
10:1. Media Type, Ownership, and/or Access among the Kichwa in Sacha Loma, Ecuador
10:2. Usage of Television and Other Media
10:3. First Impressions after Viewing Images
10:4. Responses to Magazine Image Prompts
12:1. Years of Televiewing among the Kayapó in Turedjam, Brazil
12:2. Overall Opinions about Television in Turedjam
12:3. “What Is Good about Television?” in Turedjam
12:4. Daily Television Viewing in Turedjam
12:5. Enjoyment of Television Viewing in Turedjam
12:6. Number of DVDs Watched in Previous Week in Turedjam
12:7. Genre of DVDs Watched in Turedjam
12:8. Favorite Genre of DVDs in Turedjam
Introduction
Embedding Aesthetics and Envisioning Sovereignty
Some Definitions and Directions in Latin American Indigenous Media Studies
By Richard Pace
The inspiration for this collection of Indigenous media research dates back to March of 2013 during field research in the Brazilian Amazon. On a hot day in the Kayapó-Mebêngôkre village of Turedjam, my co-researcher Glenn H. Shepard Jr. and I strolled through the circular village toward the river where we planned to take a dip to cool off. On the way, we were queried, as usual, as to our destination. “ Ba djua ” (to bathe), we responded multiple times. On this particular day I noticed between each inquiry and answer sequence there was an unbroken stream of sounds coming from different electronic and digital media devices in use. The sounds were easily audible through the palm thatching and makeshift plank walls of the dwellings, and people’s activities were visible through open doorways. 1
From a DVD playing on a television set, I heard Kayapó songs and speeches filmed during the Bep great name ceremony held in the village the previous month. On another TV in the following home, cartoons from a Brazilian commercial station entertained a young audience. Continuing along a couple of structures further, an elderly woman was using the community’s two-way radio to speak in Mebêngôkre to a relative in another village. Three houses beyond that, a young man standing just inside the doorway was talking in Portuguese on a cell phone hooked up to an antenna mounted on a wooden pole extending several meters above the home. As we left the village for the path to the river I heard more Kayapó music. But this time the song was Brazilian sertanejo (country music) sung with Mebêngôkre lyrics, stored on a USB flash drive and played on a portable, battery-powered radio.
That I paid attention to these background sounds was not unusual. Shepard and I were in Turedjam as part of a larger research project to study media engagement in five small communities spread throughout Brazil. 2 What struck me at this moment, due in large part to the seemingly routine and quotidian nature of media engagement I observed, was that much of the media-linked sociocultural transformation well underway in Turedjam (as well as countless other Indigenous communities) could easily escape scrutiny by ethnographic researchers—and often does. This is particularly true for anthropologists who have more often than not received minimal training in media studies and potentially continue to harbor apprehensions, if not antipathy, toward media impacts (the old fears of cultural contamination, cultural imperialism, and Faustian contracts—see Ginsburg 1991; Faris 1992; Moore 1992; Weiner 1997; and Deger 2006, 43–44).
Notwithstanding some anthropologists’ resistance, there is an important base of research on Indigenous media, albeit a literature that is uneven in scope and focus, with most scholarship centering on video production and far less exploring viewers’ / listeners’ / users’ engagement with radio, television, cell phones, and social media. 3 When considering the tremendous potential for sociocultural change associated with media as indicated by countless studies among non-Indigenous peoples, it appears that the range and number of current studies pales in relation to the amount of change actually occurring (just for Indigenous video, for example, see Pearson and Knabe 2015, 37). Additionally, many of the studies that exist to date involve limited fieldwork, few take into account viewers’ / listeners’ / users’ reception of media, and still fewer consider an overall media ecology (i.e., how multi-media engagement fits into the broader cultural milieu as understood in an ethnographic context—see Ginsburg, Chapter 1 in this volume). These types of studies, of course, are more difficult to conduct and tend to be time consuming endeavors (see La Pastina 2005). In sum, despite the potential for substantial sociocultural impact, particularly at this critical juncture of media phasing-in when rapid and fundamental changes can occur (see Kottak 2009 [1990]; Pace and Hinote 2013), it seemed to me not enough was being done to understand the process.
As Shepard and I pondered these changes, their consequences, and their relative neglect, we decided one way to help address the lacuna and encourage others to research the subject matter was to organize a conference as a forum to discuss the ever-widening range of media engagement occurring among Indigenous peoples. 4 After two years of planning and organizing, we held the first InDigital Latin American Conference in 2015, followed by a second one in 2017, on the campus of Vanderbilt University in Nashville. These events included significant interaction between media scholars from Latin America, North America, and Europe with Indigenous media makers from Brazil, Chile, and Guatemala. For many of the presenters this was the first time working through and writing up media-related observations. For others, the conference was a welcomed opportunity to discuss longer-term projects with a specialized and very attentive audience.
Among the many highlights of the first conference were Faye Ginsburg’s keynote address summing up Indigenous media’s past and exploring its current and future trajectories, and Terence Turner’s commentaries on Kayapó filmmaking over the decades. Together, Ginsburg and Turner are considered by many to be the founders of Indigenous media studies (Ruby 2005, 164; Wortham 2013, 5). Turner’s commentaries, alongside his long-time Kayapó colleague Kiebiete Metuktire, were particularly memorable as they were Turner’s last major public presentation before his death only eight months later. 5 In recognition of his pioneering work and steadfast devotion to Kayapó media, we dedicate this volume to his memory.
This volume, then, is the next step in disseminating this group’s diverse findings with respect to Indigenous media in Latin America. Many of the chapters are edited versions of papers presented at the first conference, although we have accepted a couple of submissions from people not in attendance and have incorporated a joint tribute to Kiabiete Metuktire and Terry Turner created from their presentations, interviews, and travel experiences in 2015. Altogether, the chapters in this volume e