1
Dr. Kerstin Knopf, University of Greifswald
Notes — Colonization
colonization
—occupy another country's territory
—rule over that territory and submission of its people
—economic, social, political, cultural hegemony of the colonizing country
EXPLOITER
EXPLOITED
control
elite
elite
consumer goods; technical know-how $
(nuclear) waste
accumulation
of capital
raw resources, tropical fruits, vegetables,
spices etc. $
mother country
metropole
center
colonizer
colony
Hinterland
periphery
colonized
underdevelopment
cultural colonization:
—creation of stereotypes/misconceptions of the colonized culture
—replacement of Indigenous languages
—destruction of Indigenous collective identities
—idea of Western cultural hegemony is invoked (Western cultures are superior to other
cultures)
—Western culture creates ideas/knowledge about Indigenous culture; this Western construct
becomes the normative/general knowledge about the Indigenous culture
—Western morals, values and ideologies become normative for Indigenous cultures
—cultural, political, ethnic, aesthetic, academic, and sociological discourses/texts are
infiltrated with/dominated by Western ideas
—appropriation of Indigenous images, stories, culture
mental colonization:
—production of texts about the colonial subject/education
—members of the colonized group inherit and internalize stereotypes/clichés about their own
culture as well as cultural hegemonies
—Indigenous people "learn"/ internalize a Western construct about their culture
—manipulation of minds; ideological control
—colonized minds have adapted their thought structures, their ideas about their own culture,
and their understanding of power relations to colonialist ideas and principles
—destruction of Indigenous collective identities
2
Notes — Decolonization of the Media
—cultural colonization meant destruction of culture and silencing of Indigenous
voicesraising their voices through writing and filmmaking
—Indigenous people need to control images; creation of self-controlled images (Indigenous
directors and producers)
—Indigenous media is devalued because there isn't a set of experiences as in Western
culturetraining of Indigenous filmmakers
—less than 2% of media funding in Canada and less in the USA are spent for Indigenous
people
—working against assimilation through Western media
—understanding history of colonization and oppression
—breaking stereotypes; working against preconceived notions about marginalized people
—assertion of Indigenous identity, history, traditions, present and change of Indigenous
cultures in films
—control over film-production; control over distribution and broadcast
—creation of films that are often different from mainstream films (other techniques, different
narrative structures—however not always)
3
Dr. Kerstin Knopf
Notes on Colonization and Decolonization of the Lens/Screen/Electronic Media
The colonization of the North American continent went hand in hand with the development of
a colonial discourse as a transmitter of colonial ideology. The contemporary North American
media are dominated by this discourse that legitimizes colonial politics, upholds cultural and
political hegemonies, transmits the colonial view on the colonized 'others,' and silences
Indigenous voices and those of other marginalized groups. If concerned with Indigenous
issues, stereotypes, appropriation, prejudice, and ethnocentrism show through in colonial
media discourse. Ethnographic filmmaking, Hollywood, and North American television have
constructed and sustained the imaginary and ideological Indian, an array of dehumanizing,
humiliating, and romanticizing stereotypes of the people who are indigenous to colonized
North America. They have been defined by this Western media discourse, the colonial gaze,
that has shaped perceptions of Indigenous cultures in mainstream society and furthered the
idea that Indigenous cultures are inferior to the 'advanced' and 'civilized' eurocentric cultures.
This idea gave way to rejection, disrespect, racism, patronage, injustice, marginalization, and
economic, political, and cultural oppression that characterize the societal contact between the
mainstream and the Indigenous societies. The effects of these contact phenomena are visible
in the contemporary state of Indigenous North America. Likewise, the self-perception of the
colonial subjects is channeled through this colonial gaze; Indigenous people have often
appropriated the image of the imaginary and ideological Indian, which has resulted in
confusion, self-denial, cultural alienation, and identity crises.1
Indigenous people are continually struggling for recognition, participation, and control
over their own affairs as the many successful land claim settlements and self-government
agreements show. Likewise in the media, they are striving for participation and productive
control over their images that are fed into the mediascape. Their voices are emerging in all
kinds of media outlets, be it television, radio, news media, and film. An array of Indigenous
radio stations, for example NCI FM in Winnipeg, the Aboriginal Voices Radio network with
its first station in Toronto, KNBA in Anchorage, and KINI in St Francis on the Rosebud
reservation as well as the first Indigenous television channel with a nationwide broadcast
license in the world, APTN, bear witness to this self-empowering development. The 1970s, a
period of intense Indigenous political activism (eg, the takeovers of Wounded Knee and
1
Cf Heather Norris Nicholson, "Introduction," in Screening Culture: Constructing Image and Identity, ed.
Heather Norris Nicholson (Lanham MD et al.: Lexington Books, 2003): 1.
4
2
Alcatraz Island) also gave rise to the development of Indigenous documentary that dealt
with cultural and social issues and political conflicts.3 The development of Indigenous
dramatized filmmaking started in the late 1990s, with the 1998 Smoke Signals by Chris Eyre
as the first Indigenous feature film to receive national and international acclaim.
Colonial discourse was created in the institutions of knowledge and education (presses,
publishers, universities, schools etc) and was/is furthered in the institutions of media (presses,
publishers, television broadcasters, film companies etc) of colonial England and the later
settler nations.4 The basic constructed opposition in North American colonial discourse, on
which discursive exclusion, marginalization, and objectifications rests, is that of self/other and
center/margin from which other binaries derive. This discourse defines the colonial group
through the difference and opposition to the colonized group in terms of 'race,' cultural
traditions, morals, beliefs, social systems, and other factors. In the Foucauldian sense, the
dominant group controls, selects, organizes, and channels this discourse. Shohat and Stam
explain tendencies and operations of eurocentric discourse, which is colonial discourse in the
case of North America, through five aspects:
1. it projects a linear historical trajectory leading from classical Greece to the
metropolitan capitals of Europe and the US, and it renders history as a sequence of
empires from Pax Romana to Pax Americana;
2. it attributes to the West an inherent progress toward democracy;
3. it elides non-European democratic traditions, while obscuring manipulations within
Western democracies and masking their part in manipulating/subverting non-Western
democracies;
4. it minimizes the West's oppressive practices by viewing them as contingent,
accidental, exceptional;
2
Elizabeth Weatherford, "Currents: Film and Video in Native America," Native Americans on Film and
Video Vol. II, ed. Elizabeth Weatherford & Emelia Seubert (New York: Museum of the American Indian, 1988):
7.
3
Alanis Obomsawin is undoubtedly the pioneer of Indigenous documentary making who started in the
early 1970s with the National Film Board of Canada. Her early films on cultural, social and political issues are
Mothers of Many Children (1977), No Address (1988), and Incident at Restigouche (1984). She later was to
direct the seminal Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (1993) that portrayed the Oka crisis from an Indigenous
perspective and provided historical background that the Canadian media coverage largely lacked.
4
On the formation of colonial discourse cf Ella Shohat & Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism:
Multicuturalism and the Media (1994; London & New York: Routledge, 1997): 55--99.
5
5. it appropriates the cultural and material production of non-Europeans while negating
both their achievements and its own appropriation, in that way consolidating its own
sense of self.5
The two major operational instruments of the visual colonial discourse in North America are
ethnographic documentaries6 and Hollywood narrative films, the latter being the dominant
mode of dramatic filmmaking. Because documentary form is most often understood as a
reflection of 'reality,' truth is applied to its images, and thus the 'truthfulness' of the
documentary narrative is often not questioned. Clifford holds that ethnographic texts are
systems of truth through which power and history work, and warns that ethnographic texts are
inherently only partially true.7 Bhabha observes that the 'entertaining' Hollywood discourse of
the 1950s operated with the agencies of voyeurism and fetishism, an idea that is applicable to
Hollywood narrative cinema in general.8 He applies Foucault's concept of 'surveillance'9 of
those in control to colonial power and links it with the "regime of the scopic drive," that is
"the drive that represents the pleasure in 'seeing,' which has the look as its object of desire."10
Bhabha thus defines the stereotype as the major strategy of colonial discourse and as an
ambivalent mode of knowledge and power.11
Foucault makes clear that the humanities and social sciences degrade their subjects of
analysis to mere objects and reveal 'truths' about them which are independent from their own
self-image. This discursive 'truth' is not the individual's 'truth' of him/herself but an 'individual
truth' about her/him.12 In that sense, the analyzing and scrutinizing gaze is objectifying. Thus,
5
Ella Shohat & Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multicuturalism and the Media (1994; London
& New York: Routledge, 1997): 2--3.
6
About ethnographic filmmaking and its criticism cf Tomothy Asch, "Ethnographic Film Production,"
Film Comment 7.1 (1971): 40--42; Timothy Asch, "The ethics of ethnographic film-making," in Film as
Ethnography, ed. Peter Ian Crawford & David Turton (Manchester & New York: Manchester UP, 1992): 196-204; Eva Hohenberger, Die Wirklichkeit des Films: Dokumentarfilm, Ethnografischer Film (Hildesheim, Zurich
& New York: Olms Verlag, 1988); Karl--Heinz Kohl, "Abwehr und Verlangen: Der Eurozentrismus in der
Ethnologie," Berliner Hefte 12 (1979): 28--42; Kathleen Kuehnast, "Visual Imperialism and the Export of
Prejudice: an Exploration of Ethnographic Film," in Film as Ethnography, ed. Peter Ian Crawford & David
Turton (Manchester & New York: Manchester UP, 1992): 183--95; David MacDougall, "Ethnographic Film:
Failure and Promise," Annual Review of Anthropology 7 (1978): 405--25; Bob Scholte, "Toward a Reflexive
and Critical Anthropology," in Reinventing Anthropology, ed. Dell Hymes (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972):
430--57; and Ellen Strain, "Exotic Bodies, Distant Landscapes: Touristic Viewing and Popularized
Anthropology in the Nineteenth Century," Wide Angle 18.2 (April 1996): 70--100.
7
James Clifford, "Introduction: Partial Truths," in Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of
Ethnography, ed. James Clifford & George E. Marcus (Berkeley CA et al.: U of California P, 1986): 7.
8
Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London & New York: Routledge, 1994): 68.
9
Foucault, in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, introduces the concept of 'surveillance'
within a society and describes it with the help of the Panopticon prison model (Michel Foucault, Discipline and
Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975; Surveiller et punir: La naissance de la prison New York: Vintage, 1979)).
10
Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London & New York: Routledge, 1994), 76; emphasis in
original.
11
Ibid.: 66.
12
Hans Herbert Kögler, Michel Foucault Sammlung Metzler Bd. 281. Realien zur Philosophie. (Stuttgart
6
with the rise of human sciences (wo)man becomes both the object of scientific and academic
discourse and the subject that sees and knows.13 In the colonial visual discourse, however, the
positions of knowing subject and object of knowledge were clearly defined: the first was
filled by members of the dominant group and the latter relegated to members of the oppressed
group. According to Foucault, vision can help to constitute an episteme without the implied
presence of an observer, "of an absent sovereign or his humanist surrogate, whose gaze
totalized the discursive field."14 This episteme abstracts the gaze to an invisible and
unspecifiable presence of control. In ethnographic filmmaking and Western feature
filmmaking, the director, camera operator, director of photography, and crew are the direct
observers, and the viewers of these films are abstracted into a seeming absence and thus
become indirect observers. Both groups 'gaze' at the object of knowledge and comprise the
unspecifiable presence of control and the gaze of surveillance and power. The camera lens
operating on behalf of this gaze is the Foucauldian lens of power.
Bannerji applies Foucault's concept of 'the gaze of power' to "racist-sexist-imperialist
constructions of otherness and difference" in prevalent societies.15 According to her, such
constructions are the gaze of the dominant group which contains unfiltered objectifying and
stereotyping images of marginalized groups. She identifies the theoretical writings of
marginalized scholars who analyze social and cultural agency of ruling coded as gender, race,
and class as "returning the gaze."16 This concept applied to the works of Indigenous
filmmakers permits seeing the process of filming as metaphorically returning the objectifying
and surveilling gaze, because the filmmakers avail themselves of colonialist means of
production (film technology) and employ them for creating self-controlled images that
critically look at colonialist images. They decolonize the Foucauldian lens of power by
quoting, discussing, and subverting such colonialist images of Indigenousness and by
projecting through this lens self-determined images free of stereotypization and
objectification (be it the filmic treatment of history, political incidents, cultural events,
tradition, or contemporary Indigenous experience). In this sense, the decolonized lens of
power is a second, self-controlled gaze, an anticolonialist gaze. Through their production of
& Weimar: J.B. Metzler, 1994): 122.
13
Michel Foucault, Die Ordnung der Dinge: Eine Archäologie der Humanwissenschaften (1966; Les Mots
et les choses: Une archéologie des sciences humaines Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1993): 377.
14
Martin Jay, "In the Empire of the Gaze: Foucault and the Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-century
French Thought," in Michel Foucault: Critical Assessments, ed. Barry Smart Vol. 1 (New York & London:
Routledge, 1994): 213.
15
Himani Bannerji, "Returning the Gaze: An Introduction," in Returning the Gaze: Essays on Racism,
Feminism and Politics, ed. Himani Bannerji (Toronto ON: Sister Vision Press, 1993): xxii.
16
Ibid.: xxii--xxiii.
7
media, Indigenous filmmakers cease to belong to the objectified group as objects of
knowledge and presentation and become subjects that know and present. They create a
discourse that responds to colonial media discourse. Thus, it is appropriate to analyze their
works within the framework of postcolonial theory that attempts to expose binary oppositions
and the mechanisms of colonial discourse. According to Said, such counter-discursive
attempts can disclose the misrepresentations of discursive power, contextualize the violence
done to psychically and politically repressed 'inferior' individuals in the name of advanced
culture, and commence the difficult project of formulating the discourse of liberation.17 This
media discourse of liberation decolonizes the Foucauldian lens of power.
In creating this discourse of liberation, Indigenous filmmakers are always in some state of
reaction to and dialogue with ethnographic filmmaking and to classical/conventional narrative
filmmaking and its epitome, the Hollywood cinema. Hollywood narrative cinema has come to
dominate cinematic discourses and has substantially reinforced cultural hegemonies around
the globe.18 There are deviations from this filmmaking convention, mainly in other national
cinemas, such as the French, the Brazilian, and the (Asian) Indian, but also within Hollywood
cinema. Nevertheless, these deviations are often based on reactions to Hollywood film, and
thus Hollywood cinema is a latent constant factor in the global cinema. Indigenous
filmmakers see themselves as responding to this colonial cinematic discourse which
developed a tradition of stereotyped, objectified, romanticized, and homogenized
representation of Indigenous people and which has created notorious clichés of them in the
Western media.19 The most prevalent ideological element of dominant media discourse that
17
Edward Said, "Foucault and the Imagination of Power," in Foucault: A Critical Reader, ed. David
Couzens Hoy (Oxford & New York: Basil Blackwell, 1986): 153.
18
I work with Hayward's definition of the concept of classical narrative cinema which she equates with
Hollywood cinema. Her definition consists of several points: cinematic style serves to explain, and not to
obscure; the narrative is presented as reality; this filmic 'reality' is ideologically charged; cause and effect move
the narrative along; the narrative achieves closure at the end; the narrative is psychologically, and therefore
individually, motivated; the representation of the successful completion of the Oedipal trajectory is central;
spatial and temporal continuity are paramount; cinematic techniques, such as shots, lighting, colour, editing,
sound, and mise-en-scene, must not draw attention to themselves but manufacture realism [an illusionist reality]
narrative and characters are goal-oriented; continuity is essential; the natural effect achieved through three-pointlighting supports the naturalness of the filmic realism; and sound serves to reinforce meaning, such as danger,
romance etc (Susan Hayward, Key Concepts in Cinema Studies (London & New York: Routledge, 1996): 45-49). Cf also David Bordwell, "Classical Hollywood Cinema: Narrational Principles and Procedures," in
Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology: A Film Theory Reader, ed. Philip Rosen (New York: Columbia UP, 1986): 17-34.
19
On the presentation of Indigenous people in Western media, including narrative and ethnographic films
cf Gretchen Bataille & Charles L.P. Silet, "The Entertaining Anachronism: Indians in American Film," in The
Kaleidoscopic Lens: How Hollywood Views Ethnic Groups, ed. Randall M. Miller (n.p.: Jerome S. Ozer, 1980):
36--53; Ward Churchill, "Smoke Signals: A History of Native Americans in Cinema," LiP Magazine (1998):
http://www.lipmagazine.org/articles/revichurchill_35_p.htm; Ward Churchill, "Fantasies of the Master Race.
The Cinematic Colonization of American Indians," in Ward Churchill, Fantasies of the Master Race: Literature,
Cinema and the Colonization of American Indians (San Francisco CA: City Lights Books, 1998): 167--224;
8
Indigenous filmmakers react to is their stereotypical visualization. Early Hollywood usually
presented Indigenous people in two groups that reflected this stereotypical dichotomy: one
docile and submissive, ready to cooperate with the army and/or settlers, and the other fierce,
ready to attack, take hostages, and kill (and of course take scalps). Very often Indians were an
indefinite mass attacking settlers, coaches, camps, and the likes. Most often their linguistic
abilities were restricted to a monosyllabic and/or "pseudo-poetic" babble, as Friar and Friar
call it.20 If Indian characters were singled out, they were stoic and taciturn and sometimes
mystic kidnappers. Still today, mainstream films make use of Indigenous cultures/figures as
composing exotic and enthralling backgrounds and elements for plots with non-Indigenous
protagonists, for example Dances with Wolves (1990), The Last of the Mohicans (1992), and
Natural Born Killers (1994).
The genesis of the stereotypical Indian begins with the colonization of the Americas.
Berkhofer elucidates that present Indian clichés are grounded in early colonial discourse, ie, in
the writings of Spanish and English colonizers and explorers such as Christopher Columbus,
Amerigo Vespucci, Richard Hakluyt, Thomas Hariot, John Smith, and the minister Alexander
Whitaker.21 Berkhofer points out that these accounts of the inhabitants of the New World
tended to be opposing descriptions. They either featured them as being insolent, cruel,
treacherous, loose/libidinous, and living in anarchy-like communities without government and
laws, or as handsome, friendly, hospitable, brave, dignified, loving, and modest people.
Indigenous cultures were measured against non-Indigenous cultures, and 'characteristic'
Indian features were derived from aspects of European cultures that Indigenous cultures were
lacking and vice versa from aspects of Indigenous people that Europeans were lacking and
Daniel Francis, The Imaginary Indian: The Image of the Indian in Canadian Culture (Vancouver BC: Arsenal
Pulp Press, 1992); Philip French, "The Indian in the Western Movie," Art in America 60 (July, August 1972):
32--39; Ralph Friar & Natasha Friar, The Only Good Indian: The Hollywood Gospel (New York: Drama Book
Specialists/Publishers, 1972); Jacquelyn Kilpatrick, Celluloid Indians: Native Americans and Film (Lincoln NE:
U of Nebraska P, 1999); Hartmut Lutz, "Indianer" und "Native Americans": Zur sozial- und literarhistorischen
Vermittlung eines Stereotyps (Hildesheim, Zurich & New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 1985); Hartmut Lutz,
"'Indians' and Native Americans in the Movies: A History of Stereotypes, Distortions, and Displacements,"
Visual Anthropology 3 (1990): 31--48; Rosalind C. Morris, New Worlds from Fragments: Film, Ethnography,
and the Representation of Northwest Coast Culture (Boulder CO et al.: Westview Press, 1994); John E.
O'Connor, The Hollywood Indian: Stereotypes of Native Americans in Films (Trenton NJ: New Jersey State
Museum, 1980); Louis Owens, Mixedblood Messages: Literature, Film, Family, Place (Norman OK: U of
Oklahoma P, 1998): 99-131; Hans--Peter Rodenberg, Der imaginierte Indianer: Zur Dynamik von Kulturkonflikt
und Vergesellschaftung des Fremden (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1994); Peter C. Rollins & John E. O'Connor,
ed. Hollywood's Indian: The Portrayal of the Native American in Film (Lexington KY: The UP of Kentucky,
2003); Beverly Singer, Wiping the War Paint off the Lens: Native American Film and Video (Minneapolis MN:
U of Minnesota P, 2001); Fatimah Tobing Rony, The Third Eye: Race, Cinema, and Ethnographic Spectacle
(Durham NC & London: Duke UP, 1996); and Elizabeth Weatherford, ed. Native Americans on Film and Video
(New York: Museum of the American Indian, 1981).
20
Ralph Friar & Natasha Friar, The Only Good Indian: The Hollywood Gospel (New York: Drama Book
Specialists/Publishers, 1972): 178.
21
Robert F. Berkhofer, The White Man's Indian (New York: Vintage Books, 1978): 3--22.
9
abhorred. These opposing images served to sustain the observers' image of their own
societies and whatever image of the Indian was needed as to the observers' judgment. 22 Lutz
also clarifies that eurocentric clichés about the Indigenous people of North America oscillate
between the two extremes of the 'bloodthirsty red devil' and the 'noble savage.'23 This polarity
results from the fact that stereotypes are constructed in a way that they can apply to possibly
all individuals of a certain group.24 Early Puritan chronicles reflect this polarity of perception
of Indigenous people: there is the "physically hard-working, honest, and proud Indian" beside
the "superstitious devil-worshipper."25 Present Indian clichés were mainly born out of Puritan
thought, early Puritan writings, and the descriptions of early explorers, who measured
Indigenous culture against European morals and values. Indigenous culture was judged
against the twin criteria of christianity and civilization.26 Mackenthun holds that early
colonizers in the Caribbean similarly constructed a dichotomous myth of the "peaceful
Arawaks" and the "ferocious Caribs" (also "Cannibals") as two different ethnic groups. She
writes that "the Caribs -- protectors of the desired gold -- proved a legitimate impulse for
colonial aggression (now 'defense') as well as a justification for the failure of obtaining the
desired object (due to the danger of being eaten)."27 The dichotomy legitimized colonial
intervention in favour of the Arawaks which had to be "defended" against the Caribs in
"knightly fashion." In that sense, the myth of the "man eaters" and "gold keepers" supported
official colonial policy insofar as Queen Isabel decreed that "Cannibals" could rightfully be
enslaved, because the "'good' Indians were dying so fast."28 This decree then began to be
understood as right to enslave any "potentially-cannibalistic" inhabitant of the "discovered"
islands.
It becomes clear that such dichotomies of the good and the evil Indian always existed in
eurocentric discourse. They were constructed myths to legitimize colonial policies and to
define European civilization, including its religion and moral values, as a role model for a
developed society to be begun in the New World against the background of the 'other
primitive' societies. Although present clichés still move between two extremes, their quality
has shifted to either the notion of the 'dumb, drunken, lecherous, and lazy Indian' or the
22
Ibid.: 19--20, 27--28.
Hartmut Lutz, "Indianer" und "Native Americans": Zur sozial- und literarhistorischen Vermittlung eines
Stereotyps (Hildesheim, Zurich & New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 1985): 3.
24
Ibid.: 9.
25
Ibid.: 131.
26
Robert F. Berkhofer, The White Man's Indian (New York: Vintage Books, 1978): 10.
27
Gesa Mackenthun, Metaphors of Dispossession: American Beginnings and the Translation of Empire
1492--1637 (Norman OK & London: U of Oklahoma P, 1997): 62.
28
Ibid.
23
10
'nature-loving spiritual traditionalist' and 'exotic lover.' The polarities of stereotypical
notions still work in such a way that they can accommodate almost all members of present
Indigenous cultures in the space between the two extremes. Berkhofer considers the image of
the drunken, poor, and degraded Indian as a third major "White image" of the Indian. 29 Since
the notions of the 'bloodthirsty red devil' and the 'noble savage' do not as readily apply to
contemporary imagery of Indigenous cultures,30 they need to be regarded as the basic stage of
image making from which the present pejorative stereotype of the 'drunk and lazy Indian' and
the romanticized stereotype of the 'nature-loving traditionalist and spiritualist' evolved.31
Kilpatrick crystallizes three categories of stereotypes of Indigenous people in Western film:
mental, sexual, and spiritual. She explains that Indian enemies or sidekicks were presented as
innately less intelligent than their Euro-American counterparts and that "this lack of mental
prowess may have something to do with the image of the Native American as intensely
sexual—more creature than human, more bestial than celestial."32 The "spiritual Indian" then
emancipated from the "primitive heathen" to the "nature-based noble savage" to the recent
"natural ecologist."33 In her report on Aboriginal Language Broadcasting in Canada of
November 2004, David states:
Stereotypes of the alcoholic on welfare, the wise elder, the squaw, the princess,
the noble savage, and the warrior are just a few of the images that the media
perpetuates through advertising, typecasting, and exclusion of contemporary
portrayals of Aboriginal people [...] there are very few programs where Aboriginal
people are not cast in stereotypical roles.34
These imaginary and ideological Indians have been "as real, perhaps more real, than the
Native American of actual existence and contact," says Berkhofer.35 And Cobb notes that
"American popular culture has been so saturated for so long with representations of
29
Robert F. Berkhofer, The White Man's Indian (New York: Vintage Books, 1978): 30.
Exceptions to this thesis are the polarized presentation of the Sioux and Pawnee in Dances With Wolves
(1990) and of the Mohicans and Hurons in The Last of the Mohicans (1992).
31
On the creation and operation of stereotypes cf further Homi Bhabha, "The Other Question: Difference,
Discrimination and the Discourse of Colonialism," in Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures,
ed. Russel Ferguson et al. (New York & Cambridge MA: New Museum of Contemporary Art & The MIT Press,
1990): 85; Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London & New York: Routledge, 1994): 79; Jacquelyn
Kilpatrick, Celluloid Indians: Native Americans and Film (Lincoln NE: U of Nebraska P, 1999): 1ff.; and Ella
Shohat & Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multicuturalism and the Media (1994; London & New York:
Routledge, 1997): 178--219.
32
Jacquelyn Kilpatrick, "Introduction," in Jacquelyn Kilpatrick Celluloid Indians: Native Americans and
Film (Lincoln NE: U of Nebraska P, 1999): xvii.
33
Ibid.: xvii--xviii.
34
Jennifer David, Aboriginal Language Broadcasting in Canada: An overview and recommendations to
the Task Force on Aboriginal Languages and Cultures. Debwe Communications Inc., (26 November 2004): 9 at
http://www.aptn.ca.
35
Robert F. Berkhofer, The White Man's Indian (New York: Vintage Books, 1978): 71.
30
11
Hollywood Indians that those representations have become a litmus test by which nonNative people judge whether or not an actual Native person is 'really Indian.'"36 As Foucault
suggests, vision dominates cognition and acquirement of knowledge; consequently, the
implications of clichéd visual images influence and spread into all other discourses. In that
respect, subaltern films almost necessarily become reflexive, dialoguing with the established
body of belief and method and directly or indirectly discussing established cinema 37 and the
imaginary Indian developed in this discourse. Through this dialogue each new film extends
and alters filmic discourse in general and Indigenous filmic discourse in particular. Bhabha
argues that this dialogue must transcend the mere recognition and dismissal of stereotypical
images and engage with their effectivity in the construction of fetishized colonialist
identification,38 ie, the subaltern film discourse must redirect the colonial discourse's
effectivity of constructing images and identity and thus deconstruct hetero- and
autostereotypified images and identities.
In the face of Eurocentric historicizing, Third World and minoritarian filmmakers
have rewritten their own histories, taken control over their own images, spoken in
their own voices. It is not that their films substitute a pristine "truth" for European
"lies," but that they propose counter-truths and counter narratives informed by an
anticolonialist perspective.39
With this statement Shohat and Stam summarize one important aspect of the global process of
decolonization which is the creation of anticolonialist media. Postcolonial criticism foremost
deals with literature but it is justified to open up the employment of postcolonial theory to the
field of film and video as well. The study of films/videos will move in a similar direction
because postcolonial filmmakers are subject to the same cultural hegemonies and
(post)colonial conditions as writers, ie, the socioeconomic, historiopolitical, and cultural
contexts of production, in short postcolonial experiences that condition the production
process, are the same. The decolonization of the media means foremost raising Indigenous
voices and creating self-controlled media in the process of asserting Indigenous identity,
cultural values, and historical and contemporary experiences as well as contesting the grand
Western narratives of Indigenous history, ethnography, and sociology. In this way,
36
Amanda J. Cobb, "This Is What It Means to Say Smoke Signals: Native American Cultural
Sovereignty," in Hollywood's Indian: The Portrayal of the Native American in Film, ed. Peter C. Rollins & John
E. O'Connor (Lexington KY: The UP of Kentucky, 2003): 217.
37
Ella Shohat & Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multicuturalism and the Media (1994; London
& New York: Routledge, 1997): 279.
38
Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London & New York: Routledge, 1994): 67.
39
Ella Shohat & Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multicuturalism and the Media (1994; London &
New York: Routledge, 1997): 249.
12
Indigenous filmmakers strive to work against assimilation through Western media
discourses and against the appropriation of Indigenous discourses. Within these works of
anticolonialist media, filmmakers attempt to break down stereotypes and pre-conceived
notions of Indigenous cultures that Western media discourses have established. Needless to
say, the creation of anticolonialist media requires that Indigenous filmmakers have control
over film production, and, if possible, over distribution and broadcast as well.
13
The Development of Fourth World Film
Like postcolonial literature in Indigenous North America, the development of postcolonial
films also had different stages. The first stage is formed by colonial filmic discourse about the
colonial subjects. The beginning of moving pictures at the end of the nineteenth century was
also the beginning of ethnographic filmmaking and modern anthropology. The first piece of
visual anthropology was created by Alfred Haddon, leader of the 1898 Cambridge expedition
to the Torres Straits, off the coast of Queensland, Australia. He took a kinematograph with
him and shot four minutes of Aborigine dances and fire making. This generation of
anthropologists regarded the camera as their "microscope" or "telescope" which would
solidify and preserve their work as well as lend it an objective character. In the 1920s,
anthropology became less iconographic and anthropologists began to see that the medium of
film was manipulative and would not assist them in developing anthropology as an
"objective" science such as physics or biology.40 Very often in such films, dances were
staged, dancers were wearing cardboard masks, people staged their daily chores and hunting
in pre-contact clothes and could not use tools that they had acquired through Western contact.
However, the making of ethnographic films (mostly in documentary form) continued and
developed further so that it became one major aspect in the process of mental colonization
and the creation of a discursive exotic other.41
Indigenous people of North America were filmed for the first time by Thomas Edison's
company in the short film Sioux Ghost Dance of 1894.42 At the beginning of the twentieth
century, the former United States Department of the Interior that was later to become the
Bureau of Indian Affairs commissioned anthropologists to collect film footage about
Indigenous people. Early American ethnographic films were composed out of this footage.
They include Life and Customs of the Winnebago Indians (1912), See America First (1912),
and Indian Dances and Past Times (1912).43 Edward S. Curtis produced his epic saga about
the Kwakiutl In the Land of the Head Hunters in 1914. Various other ethnographic films
followed, eg, History of the American Indian (1915) by Rodman Wanamaker, documenting
40
Paul Henley, "Fly in the Soup," London Review of Books (21 June 2001): 35.
In order to pinpoint the subject/object relation in ethnographic films, the French ethnographic filmmaker Jean
Rouch reversed the ethnographic scheme in one of his films. In Chronicle of a Summer (1960), he has a Black
man examined the habits and body characteristics of the 'Parisian Tribe' (Paul Henley, "Fly in the Soup," London
Review of Books (21 June 2001): 36).
42
Amy Lynn Corbin, Native American Narrative and Experimental Film: Aesthetics of Activism and
Resistance BA Thesis with Honors (Williamsburg VA: College of William & Mary, 1997, unpublished): 7.
43
Richard M. Barsam, Nonfiction Film: A Critical History (Bloomington & Indianapolis IN: Indiana UP,
1992): 45.
41
14
rites and ceremonies, Indian Life (1918), Nurse Among the Tepees (1920), and a few colour
documentaries shot in the 1920s, such as The Land of the Great Spirit, Life in the Blackfoot
Country, and Heritage of the Red Man. In 1922 Robert Flaherty released his largely staged
film Nanook of the North, which attempted to describe Inuit life by following Nanook and his
family on their hunting trips and everyday activities. In the 1960s, two anthropologists and a
cinematographer set out to produce a documentary series on the Netsilik Inuit, focusing on
life and survival in the Arctic. The Netsilik Eskimo Project consists of fifteen films, each
dealing with a special aspect in Inuit life. All these early ethnographic films form a stage in
which individuals from the colonial group were making films about individuals from the
colonized group. These films clearly resemble a subject/object relation (filmmaker/filmed)
with its underlying self/other dichotomy. Later, numerous other ethnographic films were
produced. Today there is a large market in the governmental and educational sector for
documentaries about Indigenous cultures and issues. Indigenous filmmakers only have a small
share of this market and these neo-ethnographic films44 remain strongly competing against
self-controlled documentaries by Indigenous filmmakers.
Already at the beginning of the twentieth century, there were two Indigenous filmmakers
James Young Deer (Winnebago) and Edwin Carewe (Chickasaw). Both of them made a series
of commercially successful films, such as Cheyenne Brave (1910), The Yaqui Girl (1911),
Lieutenant Scott's Narrow Escape (n.d.), and Red Deer's Devotion (n.d.) by Young Deer, and
The Trail of the Shadow (1917) and Ramona (1928) by Carewe.45 These men are probably the
first Indigenous filmmakers in North America but their accomplishments largely remained
obscure. Their careers as directors were short-lived and they did not seem to influence the
media (mis)representation of Indigenous cultures of their time. In contrast, Young Deer's
work was informed by contemporary Hollywood practice and portrayed Indian attacks with
simplistic plots, celebrating male heroism and unrequited love.46 These two early Indigenous
filmmakers could not initiate the production of Indigenous films on a broader scale and
Indigenous filmmaking was suspended for half a century. At the same time, until the late
44
The term 'neo-ethnographic films' is employed because, although there is a raised awareness about
Indigenous cultural, political, and economic issues, the colonial subject/object relation has not changed with the
production of videos/programs with Indigenous content by non-Indigenous filmmakers. Cf also Todd who holds
that contemporary mainstream documentaries with Indigenous content still have an ethnographic tone and seem
to scrutinize Indigenous cultures (Loretta Todd (1998 unpublished interview)).
45
Ward Churchill, "Smoke Signals: A History of Native Americans in Cinema," LiP Magazine (1998): 1
at http://www.lipmagazine.org/articles/revichurchill_35_p.htm; Beverly Singer, Wiping the War Paint off the
Lens: Native American Film and Video (Minneapolis MN: U of Minnesota P, 2001): 15--16. The sources do not
specify whether these are documentary or feature productions.
46
Beverly Singer, Wiping the War Paint off the Lens: Native American Film and Video (Minneapolis
MN: U of Minnesota P, 2001): 16.
15
1970s, Hollywood studios released approximately 2.000 feature films with 'Indian' content,
and between 1950 and 1970 circa 2.500 were made as television segments.47 These numbers
convey the dimension of mainstream Indian imagery that developed into a lopsided
stereotypical discourse. As discussed earlier, these stereotypes include the whole range of
clichéd Indian notions between the 'poles' of the 'noble savage' and 'bloodthirsty devil' as well
as between the 'poles' of the contemporary 'drunk and lazy Indian' and the 'handsome exotic
womanizer,' greatly exceeding the sexual qualities of Euro-American/Canadian lovers. In the
same vein, westerns by relaying the cowboy(settler)/Indian dichotomy were 'mapping the
terra incognita' in media discourse.
The 1966 project "Navajos Film Themselves" in Pine Springs on the Navajo reservation
marked the beginning of the second stage of Indigenous media development.48 The
anthropologist John Adair and the communication science professor Sol Worth trained six
Navajos how to use film cameras and how to cut and splice, and asked them to make a film
about Navajo life. The Navajos had till then been hardly exposed to film (except for the art
student Al Clah), and Worth and Adair did not teach them about the concept of film. They
studied how the Navajos used film as a form of cultural expression, how they structured their
view of the world through film, and in what ways their films differed from films made by
Western people, including film novices. The Navajos made a series of silent films on subjects
that they thought important and appropriate to be filmed. Like 'as-told-to' autobiographies,
this project can be seen as marking a stage in which individuals from the colonized group
were making films in collaboration with members of the colonizing group, whereby the latter
were in control. Although it is clearly a patronizing project and independence from imperial
control could not be gained, it must be understood as a step in the process toward decolonized
media making.
Itam Hakim, Hopiit by Hopi filmmaker Victor Masayevsa can be regarded as one of the
first fully self-determined documentaries. He made the film in memorial of the tricentennial
of the Pueblo Revolt in 1680. It was released in 1984 by IS Productions (Masayesva's film
company) in collaboration with ZDF (Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen; German public
broadcaster which commissioned and funded the film). According to Masayesva, ZDF gave
him free hand in the making.49 Likewise, the films of Shelley Niro (Honey Moccasin,
Overweight With Crooked Teeth), Chris Eyre (Tenacity), Lloyd Martell (Talker), and
47
Ward Churchill, "Smoke Signals: A History of Native Americans in Cinema," LiP Magazine (1998): 1-2 at http://www.lipmagazine.org/articles/revichurchill_35_p.htm.
48
Cf the discussion of the project in a footnote in chapter 4.3.2.
49
This information was provided in a personal conversation with Victor Masayesva, Jr.
16
Zacharias Kunuk (Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner)
50
reflect the creation of independent
Indigenous media which marks a third stage that comes closest to a decolonized media
making.
In a fourth stage of Fourth World filmmaking collaboration between mainstream and
subaltern filmmaking is chosen as the way of production and, foremost, the relation of
decision-power in the process of creation is balanced. In 1971 Alanis Obomsawin (Abenaki)
directed her first documentary film at the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and has since
then been making documentaries about social and political Indigenous issues with determined
perseverance. She is a pioneer in Indigenous filmmaking and won about thirty awards.51
Many other Indigenous filmmakers followed and made documentaries within major
companies, in Canada mainly with the NFB.52 Also the films Smoke Signals (dir. Chris Eyre)
and Big Bear (dir. Gil Cardinal), the first major motion pictures made by Indigenous
filmmakers in the US and Canada, are made in collaboration with mainstream film companies
and/or distributors. Smoke Signals' script and the text which it is adapted from were written
by an Indigenous author (Sherman Alexie), whereas Big Bear's script was co-written by an
Indigenous and non-Indigenous author (Gil Cardinal and Rudy Wiebe), and the script is based
upon a novel by the latter. On the one hand, these films cannot be regarded as fully selfcontrolled but on the other, they do not belong to the second stage since here the collaboration
is self-chosen and is largely restricted to providing technical and financial support. Coproducers, camera persons, editors, sound editors/managers and other crew members are
usually part of the respective mainstream company but what counts is that producer and/or coproducer, director, and script writer belong to the colonized group. Collaboration with major
film companies has become necessary and is sought because Indigenous companies do not
(yet) have the financial means to produce million-dollar budget films and because some
filmmakers do not regard it as important to exclude mainstream involvement in the making of
their films. To them, such collaboration is fruitful in the creation of Indigenous media.53
Indigenous filmmaking began as a "cinema of duty" discourse, which Bailey defines as:
"social issue in content, documentary-realist in style, firmly responsible in intention,"
50
In some of these examples, there are still non-Indigenous individuals involved in the production
process. Nevertheless, production control remained with the Indigenous filmmakers and the films are not made
in cooperation with non-Indigenous production companies so that they do not belong the fourth group.
51
Kerstin Knopf, Aboriginal Women and Film in Canada MA Thesis (Greifswald: U of Greifswald, 1996,
unpublished): 118.
52
Some filmmakers, such as Marjorie Beaucage and Victor Masayesva avoid mainstream film companies
and create documentaries independently.
53
Cf the interviews with Gil Cardinal (1998), Doug Cuthand (1998), Lloyd Martell (1996 and 1998), and
Rodger Ross (1996 and 1998), all unpublished.
17
positioning its subjects "in direct relation to social crisis" and attempting "to articulate
'problems' and 'solutions to problems' within a framework of centre and margin. [...] The goal
is often to tell buried or forgotten stories, to write unwritten histories, to 'correct' the
misrepresentation of the mainstream."54 To a large degree employing the documentary mode,
Indigenous filmmakers deal with social and political issues and presented historical and
cultural narratives from within the subaltern discourse. The documentary mode was/is
favoured because this genre requires much lower budgets and because the major funding
sources have traditionally supported documentaries.55 Leuthold outlines three other reasons
for the documentaries' prevalence: "the place of documentaries in education, the natural
adoption of electronic media documentaries by members of traditionally oral cultures, and the
desire to document disappearing cultural practices."56 As educational broadcasters also show
an interest in airing Indigenous documentaries and tribal councils and the Canadian
government commission Indigenous filmmakers to produce videos about important events,
about conditions on reserves, and videos with community profiles, the production of
documentary work is nurtured by this emerging market as well. 57 In that sense, Weatherford
observes: "Documentary has long been the genre of choice for Native directors concerned that
Native American history and contemporary viewpoints lack authentic representation in
American society."58 Tied in with the constraints of the 'cinema of duty' is what Mercer calls
the "burden of representation," a sense of urgency to comment on all social and political
problems and correct all misrepresentations in one film.59 This burden that many pioneer
Indigenous filmmakers may know bears a potential danger for filmmakers to succumb to
essentializing and moralizing tendencies. They did not always succeed in warding off such
tendencies.
In the last few years, there has been a movement away from a social and political realism
in documentary form to the dramatized mode in which filmmakers largely stay close to
conventional filmmaking but also experiment with style, techniques, narrative forms,
54
Bailey qtd. in Sarita Malik, "Beyond 'The Cinema of Duty'? The Pleasures of Hybridity: Black British
Film of the 1980s and 1990s," in Dissolving Views: Key Writings on British Cinema, ed. Andrew Higson
(London & New York: Cassell, 1996): 204.
55
Steven Leuthold, 'Telling Our Own Story': The Aesthetic Expression of Collective Identity in Native
American Documentary (AnnArbor MI: UMI, 1992): 145, 153, repr. as Steven Leuthold Indigenous Aesthetics:
Native Art, Media and Identity (Austin TX: U of Texas P, 1998).
56
Ibid.: 153.
57
Cf Rodger Ross (1996, unpublished interview).
58
Elizabeth Weatherford, "The Public Eye, Native Media-Making: A Growing Potential," Native
Americas: Akwe:kon's Journal of Indigenous Issues (Spring 1996): 56.
59
Sarita Malik, "Beyond 'The Cinema of Duty'? The Pleasures of Hybridity: Black British Film of the
1980s and 1990s," in Dissolving Views: Key Writings on British Cinema, ed. Andrew Higson (London & New
York: Cassell, 1996): 206.
18
metaphorical plots, and a humorous subversive play with the dominant media discourse. I
call this discourse the 'cinema of pleasure' in relation to the 'cinema of duty.' Presently, both
cinematic approaches coexist and their mixing is not the exception but rather becomes the
shaping norm. The movement toward the dramatic mode was enabled by filmmakers' growing
interest in the subversive potential of cinematic fiction as well as by their entrepreneurial
spirit to start small independent film companies and their ability to commit mainstream
companies to cooperative projects.
The release of Indigenous feature films increased in the past few years. Naturally Native
(1997) by Valerie Red Horse and Jennifer Wynne Farmer was financed with Indigenous
monies, casino profits of the Mashantucket Pequots.60 The films Tushka (1996) by Ian
Skorodin is labelled as the first all-Indigenous feature production. Shirley Cheechoo's
Bearwalker (1999, re-released as Backroads, 2000), Sean Morris' Kusah Hakwaan (2001), and
Zacharias Kunuk's Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2001) are the first Indigenous features partly
or completely in an Indigenous language: English and Cree, English and Tlingit, and Inuktitut
respectively, with English subtitles.61 Sherman Alexie has adapted his collection of poetry
The Business of Fancydancing (2002) for the screen and also directed this production. Last
but not least, Chris Eyre followed up his successful Smoke Signals with Skins (2002),
Skinwalkers (2002), Edge of America (2003), A Thief of Time (2004), and A Thousand
Roads (2005).
These recent developments indicate that Indigenous filmmaking is on the threshold of
taking a firm share in the media industry and of becoming a full-scale and internationally
acclaimed film tradition. These feature films show that Indigenous filmmaking is not only a
matter of adapting Western filmmaking techniques to Indigenous themes and creating mixed
film codes but that the film sources can be of mixed origin as well. Smoke Signals, The
Business of Fancydancing, and Skins are based on texts by Indigenous authors, but Big Bear,
Skinwalkers, A Thief of Time, and The Journals of Knud Rasmussen are based on texts by
non-Indigenous authors, Rudy Wiebe, Tony Hillermann, and Knud Rasmussen. The first two
are present names in the appropriation debate, and the choice of their texts indicates that
emphasis is put not so much on which texts are adapted for the screen but how they are
60
Beverly Singer, Wiping the War Paint off the Lens: Native American Film and Video (Minneapolis
MN: U of Minnesota P, 2001): 92. The Mashantucket Pequots in Washington receive nearly a half-billion US
dollar annual revenues from their casino and have begun to support and invest in Indigenous filmmaking (Ward
Churchill, "Smoke Signals: A History of Native Americans in Cinema," LiP Magazine (1998): 5 at
http://www.lipmagazine.org/articles/revichurchill_35_p.htm).
61
Cf schedule of the Taos Talking Picture Festival -- Native Cinema Showcase (2002) at
http://www.ttpix.org/native_copy.html and VOX of Dartmouth (5 November 2001): 8.
19
adapted. In that sense, the filmic translation of texts belonging to the colonial discourse
might be understood as a double act of decolonizing. It is imaginable that in the near future
all-Indigenous productions funded by Indigenous finance capital will be common, and
Indigenous filmmaking will have its grand entry into the mainstream industry as fully
decolonized and self-controlled media.
To Indigenous filmmakers, decolonization starts when they take their representation and
image making into their own hands, creating decolonized cultural, historical, and political
discourses in films, and progressively become emancipated in the Hollywood-dominated
industry. This decolonizing process works in a twofold manner: first, as a political struggle by
creating self-controlled images and anticolonialist history writing/filming, and secondly, as an
aesthetic struggle by defying and/or negotiating established feature film and ethnographic
film conventions.62
The 'parent--child' relation between mainstream governments and their colonial subjects
in North America is also demonstrated in the fact that there seems to be a paternalistic notion
that Indigenous people cannot speak for themselves, and that they do not have the potential
for making films. This paternalistic notion, coupled with prejudices and institutional and
structural racism, fosters a situation in which all kinds of obstacles bar the subalterns' way to
self-controlled films. Production companies, broadcasters, and funding agencies do not trust
Indigenous filmmakers, reasoning that they are not properly trained, that they are not reliable
or organized enough, or that they do not have the gist of making good films.63 As a result,
projects with Indigenous content are often placed in the hands of non-Indigenous filmmakers.
Documentaries, television series, and feature films with Indigenous content are made for them
instead of by them. For example, the federal government in Canada attempts to support
Indigenous film practice by consigning monies to big film companies and broadcasting
corporations, such as SaskFilm, Telefilm, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC),
Canadian Television (CTV), and the NFB, for the promotion, production and broadcasting of
Indigenous film and video productions. But most often the monies are not given directly to
Indigenous filmmakers but are distributed through such non-Indigenous companies so that the
62
In the field of postcolonial media, a clear distinction between documentary and fictional films/videos
cannot always be made, since many filmmakers create mixed forms outside Western genres and avail themselves
of the form of the docu-drama, which, as the term suggests, mixes fact and fiction often by re-enacting
historical/contemporary events.
63
Kerstin Knopf, Aboriginal Women and Film in Canada MA Thesis (Greifswald: U of Greifswald, 1996,
unpublished): 7--8. Cf also Beverly Singer, Wiping the War Paint off the Lens: Native American Film and Video
(Minneapolis MN: U of Minnesota P, 2001): 9 and unpublished interviews with Marjorie Beaucage (1998),
Lloyd Martell (1996 and 1998), Debra Piapot (1996), Evelyn Poitras (1998), and Rodger Ross (1996 and 1998).
20
discussed paternalistic procedures take effect.
64
The NFB has the greatest share in the
Canadian documentary production. On the one hand it has been supportive of Indigenous
documentary making through its "Challenge for Change"65 and "Studio One" programs that
trained and guided Indigenous media producers in the creation of documentaries. In 1996 the
decentralized "Indigenous Filmmaking Program" emerged from "Studio One" and finances
Indigenous documentary projects four times a year. On the other hand the NFB transmits
hegemonic structures since it hardly supports experimental or feature projects but only
conventional documentaries and usually provides the producer for a project.66 Monk observes
that the NFB "ghettoizes the Aboriginal experience within a government institution [...] and
limits not only the exposure of the art to a wider audience, but limits the content of the work
to fact-based, documentary exposés of real-life scenarios."67 Likewise, in the US the Native
American Public Telecommunications, Inc. (NAPT) allocates funds for Indigenous projects to
both Indigenous and non-Indigenous media makers. There have been concerns on the part of
Indigenous media producers that NAPT also funds projects of non-Indigenous media
producers as long as Indigenous media producers have key roles in the production process. As
such policy facilitates tokenism, Indigenous media producers believe that such funding for
Indigenous projects should be allocated to them only, and then they could decide to hire nonIndigenous participation in the project.68 Only in the past few years there seems to have been
recognition of Indigenous filmmaking potential and a gradual change toward placing
Indigenous image making into Indigenous hands.
But Indigenous and non-Indigenous voices are still far from being balanced in the
mainstream media as David observes in her report on Aboriginal Language Broadcasting in
Canada of November 2004:
The issue of appropriation is also a common issue for Aboriginal people in the
media. Well-intentioned non-Aboriginal people are often asked to comment upon
or categorize Aboriginal people or situations, leaving Aboriginal people without a
voice and creating a void in the media where Aboriginal people are being seen
and discussed, but not consulted or asked to contribute in a significant way.
64
Kerstin Knopf, Aboriginal Women and Film in Canada MA Thesis (Greifswald: U of Greifswald, 1996,
unpublished): 10. Cf also interview with Rodger Ross (1996 unpublished).
65
Elizabeth Weatherford, "Currents: Film and Video in Native America," Native Americans on Film and
Video Vol. II, ed. Elizabeth Weatherford & Emelia Seubert (New York: Museum of the American Indian, 1988):
7.
66
Kerstin Knopf, Aboriginal Women and Film in Canada MA Thesis (Greifswald: U of Greifswald, 1996,
unpublished): 15. Cf also Rodger Ross (1998 unpublished interview).
67
Katherine Monk, "First Takes: Our Home and Native Land," in Katherine Monk Weird Sex and
Snowshoes and Other Canadian Film Phenomena (Vancouver CA: Raincoast Books, 2001): 49.
68
Beverly Singer, Wiping the War Paint off the Lens: Native American Film and Video (Minneapolis
MN: U of Minnesota P, 2001): 40.
21
Finally, Aboriginal artistsperformers, writers, producers, directorsare often
excluded from mainstream television altogether, and have had to find access to
media through Aboriginal-specific venues such as APTN. Much-touted programs
such as North of 60 and The Rez, while employing Aboriginal people and telling
Aboriginal stories, were still a product of a mainstream network, subject to higher
management decisions and editorial control based on audience preferences and
network policies. These decisions are made without consultation with Aboriginal
people; mainstream television thus provides no consistent window on Aboriginal
reality.69
With respect to film conventions, classical documentary and Hollywood narrative cinema is
the shaping norm in both Canada and the US. In economic terms, Hollywood and the North
American mainstream also control the cinema market and the television sector. The
Indigenous-run broadcaster Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) (formerly
TVNC) in Canada has a minimal share of the public television sector. Nevertheless, this
minimal share of air space and access to viewers is controlled by Indigenous people,
employing basic Western television conventions while at the same time catering to culturespecific concerns. TeleVision Northern Canada (TVNC) emerged in 1992 on account of
continual lobbying of various Indigenous organizations and with the support of government
funds. It integrated the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation (IBC), nine smaller local Indigenous
broadcasters, and five non-Indigenous broadcasters.70 It ran education, children's, communal
and political discussion programs, documentaries and small features tailored to Northern
communities. TVNC aired in various Northern Indigenous languages belonging to fifteen
different language groups besides English and French.71 In 1999 TVNC became the
Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) with a country-wide broadcast license. It is
financially backed up by the Canadian government's Northern Native Broadcast Access
Program and the Northern Distribution Program, but is financed mainly through
advertisement and subscriber fees.72 As the first national Indigenous television network in the
world, its programs consist of Indigenous documentaries, news shows, live coverage of
special events, feature films, children's series and cartoons, youth shows, cooking shows,
69
Jennifer David, Aboriginal Language Broadcasting in Canada: An overview and recommendations to
the Task Force on Aboriginal Languages and Cultures, Debwe Communications Inc. (26 November 2004): 10 at
http://www.aptn.ca.
70
Knopf, "Geschichte filmen: die Perspektive kanadischer indigener Filmemacher(innen)," Zeitschrift für
Kanada-Studien 19. Jg. Nr.1 Bd.35 (1999): 181.
71
Ibid. On the development of television broadcasting in the Canadian North cf John Greyson and Lisa
Steele, "The Inukshuk Project/Inuit TV: The Satellite Solution," in Video re/View: The (best) Source for Critical
Writings on Canadian Artists' Video, ed. Peggy Gale & Lisa Steele (Toronto ON: Art Metropole & Vtape,
1996): 57--63 and Lorna Roth "Television Broadcasting North of 60," Images of Canadianness: Visions on
Canada's Politics, Culture, Economics, ed. Leen d'Haenens (Ottawa ON: U of Ottawa P, 1998): 148--66.
72
Whiteduck Resources Inc. and Consilium, Northern Native Broadcast Access Program (NNBAP) &
Northern Distribution Program (NDP) Evaluation: Final Report, 29 at http://www.aptn.ca.
22
educational programs and programs on culture, traditions, dance, and music. These
programs are broadcast in English, French, Inuktitut, Cree, Micmac, Ojibway, Mohawk,
Dene, and other Aboriginal languages. The shares of program languages are sixty percent
English, fifteen percent French, and twenty-five percent Aboriginal languages with six
hundred dialects.73 Aside from being broadcast by this Indigenous station, Indigenous media
works are largely shown at Indigenous film festivals such as the Dreamspeakers Festival in
Edmonton, the imagineNATIVE Festival in Toronto, the American Indian Film Festival in
San Francisco, the Annual Taos Talking Picture Film Festival, the Native American Film and
Video Festival at the NMAI in New York, and Two Rivers Native American Film and Video
Festival in Minneapolis. Beside presenting filmic works, these festivals are forums for
discussion, networking, and exchanging ideas among filmmakers.
The Aboriginal Film and Video Arts Alliance (AFVAA) in Canada, the Native American
Producers Alliance (NAPA), and the Native American Public Broadcasting Consortium
(NAPBC) in the US are organizations which create a network for/of Indigenous filmmakers,
support their projects and work against exclusion, silencing, and appropriation of Indigenous
voices in the film and video industry. NAPBC was founded in 1977 with funding from the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and thirty
other public television stations. In 1995 it was renamed Native American Public
Telecommunications, Inc. (NAPT). It operates the largest library for Indigenous video
programs in the US, provides structural support and access to national funding sources for
emergent Indigenous filmmakers as well as supplies small-scale funding.74 Film centers such
as the American Indian Film Institute (AIFI), which hosts the annual American Indian Film
Festival, The Center for Media, Culture, and History at the New York University, and the
Native Voices Public Television Workshop in the US similarly support the work of
73
APTN webpage at http://www.aptn.ca; Personal conversation with Kent Brown, Human Resources
Director with APTN in September 2004. For a an account of the development of Indigenous film and
televisionmaking in Canada cf Lorna Roth, "The Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) -- Going
National," in Lorna Roth Something New in the Air: The Story of First Peoples Television Broadcasting in
Canada (Montreal PQ & Kingston ON: McGill-Queen's UP, 2005): 201--18 and Kerstin Knopf, Aboriginal
Women and Film in Canada MA Thesis (Greifswald: U of Greifswald, 1996, unpublished): 6--28. For an
overview of the development of Indigenous film and televisionmaking in the United States, including the
founding of several institutions and the creation of specific programs by various TV-broadcasters cf Beverly
Singer, Wiping the War Paint off the Lens: Native American Film and Video (Minneapolis MN: U of Minnesota
P, 2001): 33--44.
74
Steven Leuthold, 'Telling Our Own Story': The Aesthetic Expression of Collective Identity in Native
American Documentary (AnnArbor MI: UMI, 1992): 148, 151, repr. as Steven Leuthold Indigenous Aesthetics:
Native Art, Media and Identity (Austin TX: U of Texas P, 1998); Beverly Singer, Wiping the War Paint off the
Lens: Native American Film and Video (Minneapolis MN: U of Minnesota P, 2001): 39. Cf discussion on
NAPT's funding policy earlier in this chapter.
23
Indigenous filmmakers, partly through funding.
75
Indigenous filmmakers also have access
to funds for media production for example through the Canada Council, the Canadian
Television Fund, APTN, and the NFB in Canada and the CPB in the US. However, as of 1998
less than two percent of media funding in Canada was spent for Indigenous filmmakers.76
Many filmmakers start within dominant documentary companies in order to get a
foothold in the industry. Later they either stay and become largely autonomous filmmakers
within such companies, an example being Alanis Obomsawin as respected staff-director in the
NFB, or they move on in order to become engaged in self-controlled projects as Loretta Todd
and Gil Cardinal did. Some filmmakers avoid mainstream companies altogether and start their
own small independent companies. Examples include Victor Masayesva (IS-Productions),
Shelley Niro (Turtle Night Productions), and Zacharias Kunuk (Igloolik Isuma Productions).
Such small Indigenous film companies can also engage in collaborations with mainstream
film companies, as was the case with Gil Cardinal's Kanata Productions and Doug Cuthand's
Blue Hill Productions for Big Bear. Projects realized in co-production with Western
filmmakers and film companies such as the Alaska Native Heritage Series (1972), The Native
American Series (1974), various NFB documentaries, the mini series Big Bear (1998) and the
feature Smoke Signals (1998) have the potential to overcome cultural hegemonies entrenched
in the film industry because both sides desired the collaboration and usually have an equal
share of decision-making power.
75
Cf Beverly Singer, Wiping the War Paint off the Lens: Native American Film and Video (Minneapolis
MN: U of Minnesota P, 2001): 42--43.
76
Loretta Todd, dir./writ., Through the Lens: Changing Voices, prod. Gretchen Jordan Basto & Fumik
Kiyooka, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) (Canada 1998): 60 min.