Post on 15-Mar-2016
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Mediations of Cultural Memory in Brazilian Indigenous Video
Melissa Rourke
Cinema & Media Studies BA Thesis BA Advisor: Prof. Mitchell
4/25/08
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“I don’t know if I will be alive until the next Wai’a. Remember well what you see on TV today. Learn how hard it is to live the Xavante tradition. That’s why I told my son, who is filming me, to keep well these images. I cannot tell everything about the Wai’a. That’s why you should pay attention to this video. If I die, it will always be remembered by the community. That’s why I like being interviewed by my son. Thank you very much and good luck with this video” (Xavante elder explaining the significance of video in Wai’a Rini: The Power of the Dream).1
In the 1970’s and 80’s, indigenous groups around the world began creating video
which conveyed their own visual representations and narratives. Attaining funding and
direction from various national and international sources, indigenous groups like the
Native Americans2, Inuit3, Aboriginal Australians4, and Brazilian Indians5 eagerly
learned and experimented with video. Today, these groups are expertly using video to
mediate their political and cultural realities and preserve their cultural traditions. They
have created vast amounts of work which has been translated into different languages,
circulated around the world, and praised in international video festivals.
Brazil is one context where indigenous video is thriving. There are many small
indigenous communities in Brazil, each with its own unique set of languages, traditions,
and perspectives. “Around 250,000 Indians—0.2 percent of Brazil's population—live
dispersed in small villages, scattered across a nation the size of the continental U.S.,
among 200 societies, speaking 170 languages”.6 One main organization facilitating
Brazilian indigenous video is the Video in the Villages Project. Founded in 1987 with 1 Wai’a Rini: The Power of the Dream. Directed by Divino Tserewahu, 2001. Translated from Xavante into English by Divino Tserewahu and Bartolomeu Patira. 2 See Worth & Adair. 3 See Roth. 4 See Ginsburg & Michaels. 5 See T. Turner and Aufderheide. 6 Patricia Aufderheide, “The Video in the Villages Project: Videomaking with and by Brazilian Indians,” Visual Anthropology Review 11.2 (1995): 83.
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the support of a Brazilian non-governmental association called Centro de Trabalho
Indigenista (CTI), and led by Vincent Carelli, this project assists numerous groups of
Brazilian Indians7 in learning video techniques, storing equipment and footage, and
circulating video work.8 The two main objectives of the Video in the Villages Project are
to “make accessible to Indians the vision, the production, and the manipulation of their
own image, and at the same time to see to it that these extremely isolated communities
get to know other groups, fostering comparisons of their traditions and experiences of
contact with national society”.9 The videos produced by Brazilian indigenous groups
often focus on cultural ceremonies,10 cultural myths,11 or daily social life.12
What distinguishes indigenous video from other cinematic styles and genres is the
collective, cultural production of identity which it undertakes. Indigenous video work is
conceived of, created, and analyzed by indigenous people as a cultural product, authored
by the whole community. As Faye Ginsburg points out, “for the most part, indigenous
producers reject the dominant model of the media text as the expression of an
individuated self and continue to stress their work as on a continuum of social action
authorizing Aboriginal cultural empowerment”.13 Indigenous video is importantly
created by people within the culture being represented; thus, indigenous cultural identity,
reflected in cultural aesthetics, values, beliefs, and perspectives, is embedded in the video
work. “The indigenous video maker draws upon his or her own cultural categories and
7 These groups include the Gaviao, Nambiquara, Waiapi, Xavante, Kuikuro, Tariano, Hunikui, Ikpeng, Waimiri, Asurini, Ashaninka, Enauene Naue, Kaiapo, and more. 8 See Aufderheide, 83-84. 9 Aufderheide, 88. 10 See Wai’a Rini or Daritidze. 11 See Ngune Elu, Imbe Gikegu, or Moyngo. 12 See Kiarasa yo Sati, Xena Bena, or Shomotsi. 13 Faye Ginsburg, “Embedded Aesthetics: Creating a Discursive Space for Indigenous Media.” in Planet TV, ed. Lisa Parks & Shanti Kumar (New York: New York University Press, 2003), 315.
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forms to guide the camera work and editing process. For the indigenous video maker, in
other words, the process of video production itself mediates the indigenous categories
and cultural forms that simultaneously inform and constitute its subject matter”.14 In
representing themselves through video, indigenous people have recreated and affirmed
their cultural identity. In the process, indigenous people have empowered themselves
politically (in the face of historic struggle, subjugation, and objectification), ensured the
future of their traditions, rituals, and culture, and educated international audiences about
their cultural realities (which hitherto have been frequently misrepresented and
misunderstood).15
Cultural identity however, fundamentally relies on a continued, underlying
cultural memory,16 which has yet to be analyzed within this context. As Victor Turner
posits, all cultural “meaning (Bedeutung) arises in memory, in cognition of the past, and
is concerned with negotiation about the ‘fit’ between past and present”.17 Cultural
memory retains what people in an indigenous society collectively believe to be most
important about themselves (their history, tradition, rituals, stories, etc.) and it is this
cultural memory that is reproduced and embedded into the videos they produce about
themselves. The video work serves to document not only specific memory details
(content), but how cultural memory functions (form); thus it exhibits the same structural
organization, functionality, and limitations as cultural memory. Since indigenous video
14 Terence Turner, “Representation, Politics, and Cultural Imagination in Indigenous Video: General Points and Kayapo Examples,” in Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain, ed. Faye D. Ginsburg, Lila Abu-Lughod, & Brian Larkin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 82. 15 Faye Ginsburg, “Rethinking Documentary in the Digital Age.” in Cinema Journal 46.1 (2006), 133. 16 By cultural memory I mean memories of culturally-based events, experiences, rituals, traditions, and stories which are shared within the cultural group and therefore help form cultural identity. 17 Victor Turner, “Social Dramas and Stories About Them,” in On Narrative, ed. W.J.T. Mitchell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 152.
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depends entirely upon cultural memory (it is essentially an embodiment of the cultural
memory of an indigenous society18), it presents a distinct subgenre of documentary video:
a cultural memory documentary. In this paper, I will address how indigenous video
documents the reflexive, indeterminate, reifying, and transformative elements of cultural
memory. To elucidate each of these issues, I will be analyzing two Brazilian indigenous
videos from the Video in the Villages Project: Wai’a Rini: The Power of the Dream
(2001) and Ngune Elu: The Day When the Moon Menstruated (2004). These case studies
will illuminate how, in indigenous video, memory-based reflexivity becomes manifest in
production techniques, indeterminacy in narrative gaps and multiplicities, reification in
video storage functions, and transformation in new conceptualizations of memory
transmission. Throughout my analysis I will be focusing solely on indigenous audiences
and their viewership patterns in order to highlight the functioning of video within the
context of indigenous society as a cultural memory text.
Reflexivity and Production
Reflexivity, or “consciousness about being conscious… turns us back to
contemplate ourselves”.19 The processes of both recalling and divulging culturally-
rooted knowledge from memory are deeply reflexive behaviors. First, when memory is
activated (through a stimulus, like being asked to tell a story) there is a moment of
remembering, where a person withdraws the relevant information and details from the
18 Therefore indigenous video is a unique way to understand the workings of cultural memory in an indigenous society. 19 Barbara Myerhoff & Jay Ruby, “A Crack in the Mirror: Reflexive Perspectives in Anthropology,” in Remembered Lives: The Work of Ritual, Storytelling, and Growing Older, by Barbara Myerhoff (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), 307.
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“storehouse”20 of memory. In this moment of re-tracing and remembering through
memory, the person actively contemplates, negotiates, and positions him/herself within
the meaning structures of the past, present, and/or perceived future. After remembering,
a person chooses what and how to divulge the remembered information; the method and
manner of this divulging is consciously decided by the teller (who is a social
agent/vehicle for memory) and often changes based on social conditions like context,
audience, and time. The telling of culturally-rooted information is often organized and
relayed through a narrative21. “Narrative is, it would seem, rather an appropriate term for
a reflexive activity which seeks to “know” (even in its ritual aspect, to have gnosis about)
antecedent events and the meaning of those events”.22 Thus the process of remembering
and then telling stories from memory involves a double reflexivity: in the combination of
reflexive remembering and reflexive narration.
This reflexive structure of memory embeds itself in indigenous video work.
Indigenous video not only documents indigenous people reflexively using cultural
memory to remember and tell cultural stories, but, in communicating through the medium
of video, a video-specific23 form of reflexive cultural memory emerges. This reflexivity
finds expression through the use of reflexive production techniques (the reflexive camera
language relating directly to reflexive cultural memory). As Myerhoff & Ruby point out,
“Reflexive knowledge…contains not only messages, but also information as to how it
20 Michell conceptualizes “memory as a storehouse in which experience is “deposited” (sometimes to accrue “interest”) and the memory technology characterized as a device for “withdrawing” these deposits on demand.” W.J.T. Mitchell. Picture Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 195. 21 By a narrative I mean a cultural story, containing cultural knowledge, which does not necessarily have to have a clear plot or linear structure. 22 V. Turner, 163. 23 With video, the divulging/narrating of remembered/essential cultural information now becomes video-based, mediated by/through video.
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came into being, the process by which it was obtained”.24 In this way, indigenous video
reflexively references how it came into being, illuminating the production processes that
went into its creation. These reflexive techniques include direct address, exposing the
identity and role of the videomaker, and purposefully showing videotaping/camera
processes onscreen in the finished video.
Most Brazilian indigenous video is structured as an intermixing of narrative
interviews and narrative action. In the narrative interview sections, indigenous people
(often elders25) tell relevant cultural stories and explain events taking place in the video.
In the narrative action sections indigenous people are, in most cases, either seen
participating in culturally significant ceremonies, re-enacting traditional stories and
ancestral myths, or performing daily social activities. The narrative interview and
narrative action sections are both reflexive; the former involves indigenous people
consciously talking about themselves and the latter involves indigenous people
consciously acting/participating as themselves in front of the camera.
By examining the role of the videomaker in Wai’a Rini: The Power of the Dream,
the video-specific reflexivity (reflexive production techniques) of indigenous video will
begin to be illuminated. The videomaker, named Divino Tserewahu, is a Xavante man
who visually appears throughout the video in three distinct roles: as a narrative
interviewee (explaining and narrating the initiation ceremony portrayed in the video), as a
leader in the initiation ceremony, and as a videomaker shooting the ceremony.
Throughout the course of the whole video, Divino appears onscreen at least eleven
24 Myerhoff & Ruby, 308. 25 Through elders “ceremonial and other kinds of knowledge ("law") critical to cultural identity are transmitted. Elders impart their knowledge at appropriate times over the life cycle.” Faye Ginsburg, “Indigenous Media: Faustian Contract or Global Village?” Cultural Anthropology 6.1 (1991): 98.
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times.26 Through his three roles, Divino exemplifies the video’s reflexive production
techniques: direct address, exposing the identity of the videomaker, and revealing
videotaping/camera presence onscreen.
Wai’a Rini: The Power of the Dream is a Brazilian indigenous video (produced
by Video in the Villages) portraying a Xavante male initiation ceremony. In this
ceremony, which is called Wai’a, young Xavante boys must undergo various endurance
trials and tests and learn socially important, male, adult knowledge; the ceremony
transforms them from immature, naïve boys into full-fledged members of Xavante
society. Structured as an intermixing of narrative interviews and narrative action, Wai’a
Rini presents both footage of Xavante interviewees describing the ceremony and footage
of the actual initiation ceremony taking place.
In Wai’a Rini, Divino assumes the role of a narrative interviewee.27 He appears
onscreen describing and explaining what is happening in the initiation ceremony through
direct address. His voice is also heard voiced-over in many scenes, explaining the
ceremonial events being shown. In this role of narrative interviewee, Divino tells
viewers how to interpret what is shown, what they should ultimately understand and take
away from the work, and often exactly why the video is being created (its cultural
significance). At the beginning of the video, after introducing himself onscreen to the
viewer,28 he explains who the onscreen participants are, what they are doing, and why
they are doing it.
26 The number of times Divino appears onscreen is probably more than eleven; he probably appears in group shots and long shots, but it is too difficult to say with certainty. 27 It is also important to note that Divino not only helps narrate the video, but also helps to translate the final video into English (he and Bartolomeu Patira created the translation/subtitling). 28 When Divino appears onscreen at the beginning of the video, the first thing he says is “I am Divino Tserewahu.”
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DIVINO: “Jair also belongs to my initiation group. He used to be a boy of the wood. Look, here he is singing. Today, Jair is guard. Look, he is running after the women. The guards always beat the ground for the boys. During our initiation, Benjamin was our guard. Today Benjamin is a singer. You see him here singing. This is how everyone is initiated into the functions of the Wai’a. This has been passed on to us from our ancestors”.29
Divino continues to describe and narrate different parts of Wai’a Rini until the video’s
end, where he concludes by saying (onscreen):
DIVINO: “So this is why the Xavante make their celebration. We are an authentic people that love their traditions. We will miss this celebration very much because we spent various weeks of suffering. Now my group will have to wait for the next fifteen years to initiate the new functions of the singer”.30
This conclusion serves to explain the cultural significance of not only the initiation
ceremony that the viewer just watched, but Xavante society in general.
In his role of narrative interviewee, describing and explaining events, Divino
directly addresses the camera (and implicitly the viewer). Direct address is a reflexive
production technique which makes the viewer aware of the camera’s presence and that
the discourse is being directed right at them and has been specifically constructed for
them. In Divino’s case, the type of direct address he enacts is unique in that it is a
reflexive direct address: he is talking to the camera, describing his own culture/cultural
memory for the viewer.
In addition to his role as a narrative interviewee, throughout the video Divino is a
participant in the Wai’a initiation ceremony. He acts as a ceremony leader31 for the
young initiates. Throughout Wai’a Rini, Divino is seen in the initiation ritual dancing
and stomping on the ground (acts of ceremonial strength, power, and stamina), leading
29 Wai’a Rini: The Power of the Dream. 30 Ibid. 31 Divino explains his leadership role in his own words saying “I am a guard in this new Wai’a. Here I’m beating the ground for the boys.”
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different parts of the ritual, and scaring away any ritual interference (like women entering
the ritual space). He thus importantly acts as role model for the new initiates,
encouraging the boys during their trials and showing them how to be strong Xavante
men. This process of exposing the identity of the videomaker is a reflexive production
technique, which reveals Divino’s identity and agency within the indigenous community.
Since Divino is exposed as a member of the Xavante community, the video production is
visually rooted in the Xavante community, as a cultural production. Thus the viewer
understands Divino as intimately connected and invested in the culture he is portraying
on video.
In Wai’a Rini, Divino is seen not only as a narrative interviewee and ceremony
participant, but in an important third role: as a videomaker. Two scenes in Wai’a Rini
display Divino in the process of shooting video footage of the Wai’a ceremony. In both
sequences, Divino is seen videotaping Wai’a ceremony leaders and initiates who are
dancing and participating in the ceremony (see Still 1 in Appendix). The sequences also
include close up shots of Divino holding the camera on his shoulder, shooting handheld
camera footage (see Still 2 in Appendix). In both scenes, Divino moves around the
ceremonial space with the camera to attain specific shots and shot angles. Like direct
address and exposing the videomaker’s identity, the presentation of videotaping
processes onscreen is another reflexive production technique. By intermixing scenes of
the actual organizing and shooting processes that went into making the video along with
the narrative, the viewer is made aware of the video’s production processes. Thus, the
viewer sees the making of the video within the finished video, better understanding the
interaction between camera and subjects.
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The three roles of Divino in Wai’a Rini illustrate the reflexive, video-specific
production techniques common in indigenous video: direct address, exposing the identity
of the videomaker, and revealing videotaping/camera presence onscreen. This reflexive
camera language is a direct embodiment of the reflexive cultural memory upon which the
video relies. Consciousness of consciousness begets consciousness of conscious video
production. Cultural memory however is not only structurally reflexive, but
indeterminate as well. The next section of this paper will address how the structural
indeterminacy of cultural memory becomes similarly embedded into indigenous video.
Indeterminacy and Narrative
Although seemingly precise and coherent, cultural memory does not always
function as smoothly and reliably as one might assume. Instead of clarification, memory
often confuses, complicates, obstructs, and forgets information; it is indeterminate.32
“Distortions result from numerous causes including selective forgetting and
remembering; the effects of prior knowledge; aspects of the retrieval environment; and
amnesia, trauma, and the workings of imagination. Distortions also result from the
shaping of individual memories by social norms and interactions, cultural practices,
socially structured patterns of recall, and by the fact that memories largely operate
through the consummately social medium of languages”.33 When memory is invoked
and negotiated to form culturally-based narrative (to divulge and explain cultural
information), this indeterminacy persists. W.J.T. Mitchell calls this narrative
32 “Indeterminacy is…that which is not yet settled, concluded, and known. It is all that may be, might be, could be, perhaps even should be… it is potentiality, the possibility of becoming” (V. Turner, 154). 33 Jacob J. Climo & Maria G. Cattell. Social Memory and History: Anthropological Perspectives (Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 2002), 13.
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indeterminacy a “shadow text”: “Narrative seems to be a mode of knowing and showing
which constructs a region of the unknown, a shadow text or image that accompanies our
reading, moves in time with it…both prior to and adjacent to memory”.34
The indeterminacies of cultural memory (the fact that people do not perfectly
remember or tell stories, intentionally or unintentionally) become embedded in
indigenous video work. What remains unknown, unclear, or layered in the cultural
memory (for whatever reason: cultural taboos, forgetting, repression, etc.) of a society
becomes transferred into video in this same indeterminate state of
remembrance/understanding. Thus, any memory gaps/unknowns or multiplicities that
exist within cultural memory become embedded within indigenous video. Documenting
these indeterminacies within cultural memory, indigenous video often presents
complicated, layered, unclear narrative structures, descriptions, and meanings. These
indeterminacies can be classified into two main phenomena: narrative gaps and narrative
multiplicities.
In Brazilian indigenous video, parts of the narrative are often purposefully left out
and remain mysteriously unseen and undescribed. Frequently, in indigenous videos
which present initiation ceremonies, certain ceremonial components (which contain
secret cultural knowledge that only cultural members can possess) are intentionally left
out of the video narrative.35 Likewise any gender-specific information and knowledge is
34 W.J.T. Mitchell. Picture Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 190. 35 Faye Ginsburg explains how Aboriginial Austrailians making indigenous video, monitor “the content of work shown—so that images are not circulated that violate cultural rules regulating what can be seen (e.g. taps of women’s sacred ceremonies are not edited and are only accessible to appropriate senior women) and the timing of viewing so that television transmission, whether locally produced or the national satellite feed, does not interfere with other cultural activities” (Ginsburg, Embedded Aesthetics 307).
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left out of the video, so that it remains secret (just as it does in the particular indigenous
society).
In Wai’a Rini, there are certain parts of the Wai’a initiation ceremony that are
neither talked about or seen/videotaped. During these narrative gaps, the video jumps
ahead in time from just before these specific ceremonies (that cant be shown) to right
afterward; the only transition being an elder/leader who explains why the segment cannot
be videotaped or seen. Three such narrative gaps occur throughout the course of Wai’a
Rini. One of these segments is a ritual entitled the “hunted game”.36 During this
narrative gap, an elder describes the reasoning behind there being such a conceptual void
in the video structure:
ELDER 1: “The hunted game is a secret of the Xavante man, that’s why it can’t be spoken of. If someone mentions it in front of the women he can be punished or killed without anyone knowing. The game is a sacred food for us within the Wai’a”.37
Another narrative gap occurrs at a stage of the Wai’a initiation called the “pumpkin
ceremony.” An elder explains that:
ELDER 2: “The pumpkin cannot be filmed by the river. Women cannot know about the ritual of the pumpkin, that’s why the elders do not authorize the filming. Only men know, this is our ritual, that’s why the women cannot know anything about it”.38
The third narrative gap occurs at a segment about the “launching of the Pi’u arrows”
(notably, it is Divino again taking on an important explanatory role).
DIVINO: “The secrets of our ancestors cannot be filmed. That’s why the launching of the Pi’u arrows was not filmed. We only filmed the boys with the Pi’u arrows in the clearing. A secret is a secret. I can’t say much more”.39
36 “Game” as in food. 37 Wai’a Rini: The Power of the Dream. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid.
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These examples from Wai’a Rini illuminate how secret ritual knowledge is
rendered indeterminate in video form. Within Xavante society, adult men share secret,
masculine cultural knowledge while adult women share their own secret cultural
knowledge. In this way, the cultural memories of Xavante men are slightly differenciated
from the cultural memories of Xavante women. These slight cultural memory differences
are what bring gender itself into existence (Xavante youth remain
undifferenciated/ungendered and it is only through gaining knowledge of these secrets
that they are initiated into Xavante manhood or womanhood). Talking openly about
these cultural secrets is taboo within daily Xavante life and they are likewise not openly
talked about or investigated in video. Thus, these taboos create knowledge gaps which
exist not only in video narrative, but within everyday conversation and knowledge in
Xavante culture.
In addition to narrative gaps, another common occurrence in Brazilian indigenous
video is narrative multiplicity. Throughout the video work, different indigenous people
are presented as storytellers, reciting culturally-based oral histories and narratives. These
stories, however, often vary from person to person, creating multiple versions of the same
narrative (which becomes infinitely layered with different meanings). This type of
narrative multiplicity is prevalent in the video Ngune Elu: The Day the Moon
Menstruated.
Ngune Elu: The Day the Moon Menstruated is a video made by the Kuikuro
people and produced by Video in the Villages. It documents the stories, traditions,
history and ceremonies surrounding what the Kuikuro call “the menstruation of the
moon”. The menstruation of the moon occurs during an eclipse and the Kuikuro people
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celebrate this special time with various dances and ritual activities. Ngune Elu heavily
relies on interviews with Kuikuro people, who describe the history and story behind the
menstruation of the moon. These resulting stories however, provide multiple reasons,
ideas, and beliefs about the same lunar phenomenon.
The video deceivingly starts out by presenting a clear, singular meaning of the
moon menstruation story and ceremony. At the beginning of the video, an elder tells the
story, describing how an eclipse signifies that the moon’s daughter is menstruating. The
video then proceeds to show ceremonial activities and rituals that take place between men
and women during an eclipse. However, near the end of the video, there are a series of
interviews with Kuikuro people, asking them about the meaning of an eclipse, which
throw the whole video (what was previously described) into question and add new layers
of meaning. At the end of the video, five different Kuikuro people are interviewed and
each explains the eclipse story differently.
“WOMAN 1: Why does the moon go into eclipse? It’s his daughter who menstruates, that’s why the moon goes into eclipse.
<cut> MAN 1: No, the moon is a man. It’s he who menstruates.
<cut> WOMAN 2: He menstruates while he is a woman. From a man he turns into a woman. That’s why the moon menstruates.
<cut> WOMAN 3: Why do we call the eclipse the menstruation of the moon? Who knows?
<cut> WOMAN 4: Why do we say this? I don’t really know. The moon is a man, they were born as two men: Sun and Moon. Afterwards they transform into women. How can that be?
<end>”.40
40 Ngune Elu: The Day the Moon Menstruated. Directed by Takuma & Marica Kuikuro, 2004.
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By choosing to edit this sequence together at the end of Ngune Elu, the
videomaker is not only presenting the fact that meaning multiplicity exists in Kuikuro
society, but is self-consciously structuring the footage so that this meaning multiplicity
becomes easily apparent to the viewer. Although “nearly all personal memories are
learned, inherited or, at the very least, informed by a common stock of social
memories,”41 this video sequence aptly displays how certain stories and ceremonies take
on various meanings for different people within the society. Variations of the same
cultural memory are possible through numerous means, including mnemonic fusing and
splitting, memory overlap, confusion, forgetting, personal experiences, or secret
knowledge. In conjunction with narrative gaps, narrative multiplicity creates a general
structure of indeterminacy which is unique to indigenous cultural memory videos.
Besides indeterminacy, another important aspect of cultural memory is preservation. The
next section of this paper will discuss how the storage function of cultural memory
becomes embedded into indigenous video.
Cultural Storage and Immortality
One of the vital functions of cultural memory is to preserve cultural life and thus
secure an ongoing cultural future. All of the cultural traditions, rituals, taboos, rules and
regulations governing a specific society (their cultural life) are stored within cultural
memory (shared by all the people of that society) to be passed down to future
generations. “Everyone is socialized into “mnemonic communities” where we learn to
remember much that we did not experience as individuals…memories cross time and
space, linking individuals within generations (cohorts) and across generations and tying 41 Jacob J. Climo & Maria G. Cattell, 23.
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individual identities to social identities”.42 Therefore without cultural memory, cultural
life and its continued existence would be impossible.
This storage function of cultural memory is embedded into indigenous video.
Indigenous video transports cultural memory from an abstract existence (within the
collective mind of a culture) to a replayable visual-aural existence. In this way,
indigenous video simultaneously documents and reinforces cultural memory through its
production and replayability. In the process of creating and watching indigenous video,
cultural memory (of experience, tradition, place, objects, stories, rituals, etc.) and thus a
cultural future is reified and preserved in indigenous societies.
By video-recording various ceremonies, traditions, and stories, indigenous
peoples are creating permanent, historical documents of their cultural memory. Thus,
indigenous video works to reify pre-existing cultural traditions and stories by preserving
essential cultural knowledge within such video documents. These video documents help
create and strengthen a connection between cultural past and present. Terence Turner
describes how “much indigenous video tends to focus on aspects of the life of
contemporary indigenous communities that are most directly continuous with the
indigenous cultural past. It is often undertaken by indigenous video-makers for the
purpose of documenting that past to preserve it”.43
Throughout their videowork, Brazilian indigenous groups are eager to explain
exactly how traditions presented are historically rooted (liking past memories with the
present). In Wai’a Rini, during a particular segment of the initiation ceremony, where the
lined up initiates receive cakes from their fathers, an elder encouragingly yells out loud
42 Jacob J. Climo & Maria G. Cattell, 35. 43 T. Turner, 77.
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so that everyone present can hear: “This is the way it was done in the old days. Very
good”.44 Similarly in Ngune Elu, during an eclipse ceremony a man ritually paints his
face black with charcoal, explaining: “I’m covering myself in charcoal so the moon’s
blood doesn’t stick to me. In the past, they used to do this”.45 By expressing the
importance of history and historically rooted tradition on video (in addition to showing it
being undertaken), socially important rituals and traditions are reinforced and preserved.
Thus, in Wai’a Rini the initiation ceremony is preserved/documented on video and in
Ngune Elu the story and ceremony of the moon’s menstruation is likewise
preserved/documented.
Since video is a permanent46 medium of documentation, it promises a kind of
cultural immortality. As Victor Turner aptly describes: “to be in the cast of a narrated
drama which comes to be taken as exemplary or paradigmatic is some assurance of social
immortality”.47 It is not only an immortality of personal image (like a photograph
provides), but a promise of continued remembering (and thus continued existence of
cultural memory) due to everlasting access to the memory video. In preserving their
cultural practices, they are ensuring not only their cultural permanence and immortality,
but their cultural future. This type of video document has been intentionally created to
relay important cultural knowledge to future generations. As Ginsburg points out, “Their
(indigenous people’s) efforts to develop new forms of indigenous media are motivated by
a desire to envision and strengthen a “cultural future” for themselves in their own
44 Wai’a Rini: The Power of the Dream. 45 Ngune Elu: The Day the Moon Menstruated. 46 Relatively permanent. 47 V. Turner, 151.
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communities and in the dominant society”.48 Due to the replayability of video, cultural
memory can reinforce cultural beliefs not only in the temporal present, but can continue
to do so far into the future.
This assurance of social immortality and securing a cultural future is expressed by
an elder in Wai’a Rini who is excitedly aware of the documentary immortality of the
video medium and its assurance/insurance of a Xavante cultural future:
ELDER 1 (Alexandre Tsereptse): “I don’t know if I will be alive until the next Wai’a. Remember well what you see on TV today. Learn how hard it is to live the Xavante tradition. That’s why I told my son, who is filming me, to keep well these images. I cannot tell everything about the Wai’a. That’s why you should pay attention to this video. If I die, it will always be remembered by the community. That’s why I like being interviewed by my son. Thank you very much and good luck with this video”.49
The elder realizes that when indigenous people watch a video of themselves performing a
certain ritual, for example, that ritual is reified as a vital part of cultural memory, thereby
ensuring a cultural future (through replayability).
The constant emphasis that indigenous people place on cultural permanence in
their videos conveys their notion of video as a tool for cultural invigoration and
preservation. In both the narrative interview and narrative action sections, indigenous
participants are always describing their activities through a language of cultural strength
and longevity, connecting their cultural past with present and perceived future actions.
This emphasis on tradition and immortality helps to reinvigorate and solidify cultural
memory/identity, by reminding people who they are (their history, ancestry, traditions
and rituals). This is especially poignant in Brazilian indigenous societies, which have
48 Faye Ginsburg, “Embedded Aesthetics: Creating a Discursive Space for Indigenous Media.” in Planet TV, ed. Lisa Parks & Shanti Kumar (New York: New York University Press, 2003), 303. 49 Wai’a Rini: The Power of the Dream.
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been frequently subjugated, marginalized, and politically disempowered in the past. In
addition to cultural preservation, another aspect of cultural memory is transformation.
The next section of this paper will address how the malleability of cultural memory
becomes embedded into indigenous video.
Cultural Transformation and Conceptualization
As Victor Turner has theorized, “the meaning of the social life informs the
apprehension of itself, while the object to be apprehended enters into and reshapes the
apprehending subject”.50 Cultural memory is not only equipped for storage but also for
transformation; it has the ability/flexibility to be changed, modified, added to, or taken
away from through time. Cultural memories “are marked by a dialectic between stability
or historical continuity and innovations or changes…Social, collective, historical memory
is provisional, malleable, contingent. It can be negotiated and contested; forgotten,
suppressed, or recovered; revised, invented, or reinvented”.51 Thus if a cultural ritual,
tradition, story, or ceremony transforms in some way, cultural memory can absorb and
relay the new reframing, accounting for creative additions, subtractions, modifications,
and transformations.
Since video is a new medium52 through which to express indigenous cultural
memory, it strengthens cultural memory while simultaneously changing it. Ways of
performing, perceiving, thinking about, identifying with, representing, embodying,
relaying, experiencing, and analyzing culture are changed with the introduction of a new
perspective: seeing and envisioning culture through video. In this way, video has
50 V. Turner, 152. 51 Jacob J. Climo & Maria G. Cattell, 4. 52 Video in the Villages was established in 1987, only 21 years ago.
21
changed indigenous cultural relations and ideas. Although accounting for all of the
cultural transformations rendered by the introduction of video into indigenous societies is
not within the scope of this paper,53 I will focus, on new conceptualizations which seem
to have emerged in relation to video’s storing and transmitting functions. In indigenous
societies, video production has motivated new conceptualizations of how video
functions/exists culturally as a medium for storing and transmitting memory.
Since video is a new medium of cultural expression, new conceptualizations of
video have been formed to understand its function/place in society. This includes a
crucial new conceptualization as to where cultural memory can be stored; it is no longer
only stored in people of the community, their stories, and their rituals, but now also in
video documents (technological form). To understand this new technological form of
memory, conceptions seem to have arisen of video as a person, a body, a storytelling
entity and it is often treated as such. Like the elder storytellers who historically passed
down memories/social knowledge, video is treated with great respect (likely because it
fulfills the same role). Indigenous video is indeed similar to a person; the cultural
memory stored in video is like a mind/soul (the mind/soul of the culture) whose body
takes the form of video technology. Thus, video becomes in essence a member of the
indigenous culture.
Both Wai’a Rini and Ngune Elu present scenes where video is treated like a living
entity. In Wai’a Rini during the initiation ceremony, an initiate complains to the camera
about the suffering he has endured throughout the grueling ceremony and refers to the
camera as if it were a remembering person. When confronted by the elders about his
53 It would be impossible to account for all of the cultural transformations incited by video without undergoing more detailed ethnographic research. This kind of ethnography would need to undergo a detailed account of the substantial and minute cultural changes caused by video production through time.
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complaining, he remarks: “I didn’t complain to you, I’m talking to the camera”.54 Like in
Wai’a Rini, in Ngune Elu the camera is similarly regarded as a living entity. In Ngune
Elu, during an eclipse an elder goes into each house to wake everyone and everything up.
When he gets to a television he tells it to wake up and, giving it a tap, the television
actually turns on: “Wake up. Wake up. [TV turns on] It awoke the moment I struck it!
It really awoke.”55 he exclaims. It is as if, through video, cultural memory is being
externalized outside of the cultural mind and therefore the indigenous people are reacting
by treating it as an internalized being or member of their culture. In this way, they are
recognizing the life and power of their cultural memory as well as the complete
integration of video into their society and means of expression.
Another main cultural change rendered by indigenous video production is a shift
in the way cultural memory is passed down through generations. With the advent of
indigenous video, cultural memory is now not only being transmitted through ritual
experiences, ceremonies, and storytelling, but video as well. Thus, new memories and a
new way of remembering are being created by this videowork. Through indigenous
video, new video-based memories (new memories from seeing cultural memory video)
are being created and established in the collective mind/memory of indigenous culture.
Ngune Elu displays this new form of memory transmission. Ngune Elu opens
with a shot of a projection screen that is playing an indigenous video; this indigenous
video portrays a group of indigenous people ceremonially dancing (see Still 3). The
video then cuts to a group of young indigenous people sitting around the screen watching
and interacting with the projected video (See Still 4). By experiencing their culture
54 Wai’a Rini: The Power of the Dream. 55 Ngune Elu: The Day the Moon Menstruated.
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through video, the indigenous people are establishing/creating new video-based cultural
memories. In addition these videos, as portrayed in Ngune Elu, are collectively viewed,
so watching them becomes a kind of ritual or ceremonial experience where culture is
expressed and transmitted.
This type of collective viewing practice is common for Brazilian indigenous
groups. Many indigenous groups have regular nightly showings of their videos, little
video-watching ceremonies. 56 In this way, video has become completely integrated with
daily life. Furthermore, in addition to watching their own videos, Brazilian indigenous
groups often watch the videos of other Brazilian indigenous groups through the support
of Video in the Villages. One of the goals of Video in the Villages is to stimulate and
foster relationships, discussions, and community between the different indigenous groups
in Brazil.57 To accomplish this goal “Video in the Villages circulates tapes, arranges
exchanges between different [indigenous] groups and organizes meetings between groups
that have "met" already by video.”58 This video exchange between different Brazilian
indigenous groups stimulates not only a reinforcement/reification of Brazilian indigenous
identity and solidarity, but also, in some cases, cultural transformation. One poignant
example of such a scenario arises with respect to Gaviao viewership. “In their evening
television viewing, the Gaviao watch not only their own ceremonies but tapes of other
groups, and showings with Video in the Villages help of tapes from other groups have
resulted in vigorous discussion of comparative ritual practice. Indeed, they [the Gaviao]
resumed the custom of lip piercing after watching the Nambiquaras' ritual tape.”59 As a
56 Aufderheide, 86. 57 Aufderheide, 88. 58 Aufderheide, 84. 59 Aufderheide, 87.
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new form of memory transmission, video stimulates not only cultural reification (through
cultural viewing) but has the power to render cultural change (through intercultural
viewing stimuli or “meeting” other cultures through video).
Conclusion
Cultural memory becomes embedded in indigenous video in a number of complex
ways, resulting in intricate structures of cultural-video expression. Indigenous video
embodies and documents the reflexive, indeterminate, reifying, and transformative
structures of cultural memory, becoming itself reflexive, indeterminate, reifying, and
transformative. Thus, in Brazilian indigenous societies, video has become a mnemonic
site for cultural memory. As cultural memory documentaries, these videos are vitally
integrated into the daily life of the indigenous society and play a crucial role in
reinforcing and renegotiating cultural identity.
Since indigenous video depends entirely upon cultural memory, it presents a
unique way to understand the workings of cultural memory in an indigenous society.
More ethnographic research needs to be done to fully investigate the cultural memory
documentaries within specific indigenous societies, including video-producing
indigenous societies outside of Brazil (like in Native American, Australian Aborigine,
and Inuit societies). This area of study has the potential for yielding interesting and
valuable research on both cultural memory and the integration of media into social life.
Since cultural memory has necessarily changed (at least slightly) each time a new
indigenous video is made, each video documents a different form of a dynamic cultural
memory. Therefore, research investigating how cultural memory documentaries change
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through time would prove especially interesting and fruitful. How, for example, will
conceptualizations of video and memory change through time? What are the limits to
video as a form of mnemonic mediation and what problems might emerge with the
advent of an increased technological presence in societies? How will video form and
content change over time? What new developments in video styles, editing, genres, and
themes will occur? How will the process of “meeting” other cultures through video
affect societies and their interaction with one another? What new collaborations might
occur in the future between different Brazilian groups or even internationally? How will
patterns of viewership change through time? How will video distribution and storage
methods influence future video production? How will other media, or new media,
interact with video in these societies? How will older videos interact with newer videos?
As indigenous video production continues through time, these changes in cultural
memory, manifest and visible in video form, will provide a ripe arena for historical and
ethnographic research.
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Work Cited Aufderheide, Patricia. “The Video in the Villages Project: Videomaking with and by
Brazilian Indians.” Visual Anthropology Review 11.2 (1995): 83-93.
Climo, Jacob J. & Cattell, Maria G.. Social Memory and History: Anthropological Perspectives. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 2002.
Ginsburg, Faye. “Embedded Aesthetics: Creating a Discursive Space for Indigenous
Media.” in Planet TV, edited by Lisa Parks & Shanti Kumar, 303-319. New York: New York University Press, 2003.
Ginsburg, Faye. “Indigenous Media: Faustian Contract or Global Village?” Cultural Anthropology 6.1 (1991): 92-112.
Ginsburg, Faye. “Rethinking Documentary in the Digital Age.” in “In Focus:
Documentary,” edited by B. Ruby Rich, 128-133. Cinema Journal 46.1 (2006): 108-136.
Michaels, Eric. The Aboriginal Invention of Television. Canberra: Australian Institute of
Aboriginal Studies, 1986. Mitchell, W.J.T. Picture Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Myerhoff, Barbara & Ruby, Jay. “A Crack in the Mirror: Reflexive Perspectives in
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Ngune Elu: The Day the Moon Menstruated, DVD. Directed by Takuma & Marica
Kuikuro 2004, MA: Documentary Educational Resources, 2007. Roth, Lorna. “The Crossing of Borders and the Building of Bridges: Steps in the
Construction of the APTN in Canada.” International Journal of Communication Studies. 62.3-4 (2000): 251-269.
Turner, Terence. “Representation, Politics, and Cultural Imagination in Indigenous
Video: General Points and Kayapo Examples.” in Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain, edited by Faye D. Ginsburg, Lila Abu-Lughod, & Brian Larkin, 75-89. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.
Turner, Victor. “Social Dramas and Stories About Them.” in On Narrative, edited by
W.J.T. Mitchell, 137-164. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Wai’a Rini: The Power of the Dream, DVD. Directed by Divino Tserewahu 2001, MA:
Documentary Educational Resources, 2007.
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Worth, Sol & Adair, John. Through Navajo Eyes: An Exploration in Film
Communication and Anthropology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1972.
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Appendix
[Still 1]
[Still 2]
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[Still 3]
[Still 4]