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.

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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.

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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

Anthropology.” in Remembered Lives: The Work of Ritual, Storytelling, and Growing Older, by Barbara Myerhoff, 307-340. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992.

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]