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Indigenous media can reference film, video, music, digital art, and sound produced and created by and for indigenous people. It refers to the use of communication tools, pathways, and outlets by indigenous peoples for their own political and cultural purposes.

Definition

Indigenous media is the use of modern media techniques by indigenous peoples, also called Fourth World peoples. Indigenous media helps communities in their fight against cultural extinction, economic and ecological decline, and forced displacement.^[1] Most often in the field of indigenous media, the creators of the media are also the consumers, together with the neighboring communities. Sometimes the media is also received by institutions and film festivals located far away from the production location, like the American Indian Film Festival. The production is usually locally based, low budget, and small scale, but it can also be sponsored by different support groups and governments.^[2]^: 34–35 The concept of indigenous media could be extended to First World alternative media, like AIDS activist video.^[3]

Fourth Cinema explores issues that are associated with indigenous communities. Fourth Cinema takes the camera away from First Cinema, which is the camera that is associated with the gaze of the colonizer. The use of Fourth Cinema allows for the communities to rightly represent themselves, without the gaze of First Cinema. Which allows for better representation for Indigenous communities. Fourth Cinema incorporates the community that is being represented on screen, by incorporating the community in the production process. Behind the camera, or in front of the camera. However a film is not Fourth Cinema just because it has Indigenous characters, what makes it Fourth Cinema is that the representation is for the community by the community.

History

The research of indigenous media and the international indigenous movement in the process of globalization develop in parallel. In the second half of the 20th century, United Nations agencies, including the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations (WGIP), led the movement. The United Nations General Assembly adopted a declaration aimed at protecting the rights of indigenous peoples in 2007.

The theoretical development of indigenous media research first occurred in anthropology in 1980. It was accompanied by a critical research method that diverged from post-colonialism and post-structuralism. The newer method attempted to minimize the power imbalance between the researcher and the researched. Leading up to this, ethnographic films that gave photographic techniques to locals can be traced back as far as the Navajo Project in 1960. The project was the pioneering work of Sol Worth and John Adair, to which the origin of a new anthropological language and style of ethnography can be attributed.^[4]^[5]

However, the indigenous media movement was not a significant phenomenon for another decade. The widely recognized start of the new media movement was a collaboration between American anthropologist Eric Michaels and Australia’s Warlpiri Aboriginal Broadcasting.^[6]^[7]^[8] This new type of collaborative anthropological project exemplified a change from a simple observation of the life of the indigenous people to a cultural record by the indigenous people themselves. Following the Warlpiri project, the Brazilian Kayapó village project of Vincent Carelli^[9] and Terence Turner,^[10]^[11]^[12] and the indigenous series by Māori producer Barry Barclay^[13]^[14] in New Zealand, have been important milestones in the development of indigenous media.

However, it was Faye Ginsburg, an American anthropologist, who laid the theoretical foundation for the study of indigenous media. Her research in 1991 expounded the Faustian dilemma between technology and tribal life and inspired later indigenous media researchers.^[15]

The important theories of recent indigenous media studies have highlighted the dynamic relationship between local indigenous communities and their countries and globalization. Lorna Roth's research on the discourse rights of Canadian indigenous groups in 2005,^[16] Jennifer Deger's exploration of the media technology movement in the Australian Yolngu community in 2006,^[17] and Michael Robert Evans's ethnographic research on the Canadian Inuit community Igloolik in 2008,^[18] etc. are all development of high reference value since the 21st century.^[19] The idea that the media is a foreign power that affects the indigenous people is no longer accurate, now that indigenous people are working in media within all creative industries as an individual, collective or nationally which impacts the media as we know it.^[20]

Theories and concepts

Fourth cinema

It has origins in New Zealand, created by Barry Barclay, because he experienced that his films did not fit in to first, second or third cinema. The goal of fourth cinema is to give an accurate and dignified representation of an indigenous people, by having indigenous film-makers who will frame the indigenous people with an indigenous world-view.^[21]

De-colonial literary theory
Indigenous ontology

This theory involves several foundational concepts, such as: 1) expansive concepts of time, 2) interdependence with all matter on earth and in the universe and 3) multiple dimensions of reality.^[22]

Aboriginal Theory

Aboriginal theory indicates a theory of acquiring knowledge through ethnographic methods, in which the stimulation of established goals and outputs, as well as the communication between the indigenous people and the environment in which they exist, is minimized.^[23]

Indigenous Sociology
Indigenous librarianship

Indigenous librarianship theoretically study how knowledge, concepts, and the organization, management and practice based on these concepts are shaped and integrated through the cultural customs, empirical conditions and political aspirations of indigenous societies or communities.^[24]

Indigenous Epistemologies and Pedagogies
Holism
Indigenous Technological Sovereignty or Tecno-Sovereignty

Notable people within indigenous media

John Adair (1913–1997), American anthropologist, known for his 1972 book, Through Navajo Eyes: An Exploration in Film Communication and Anthropology, in collaboration with Sol Worth^[25]^[26]
Barry Barclay
Marian Bredin
Debbie Brisebois
Vincent Carelli
Corinn Columpar, Canadian academic; Director of the Cinema Studies Institute at University of Toronto; author, Unsettling Sights: The Fourth World on Film (2010) ^[27]
Jennifer Deger
Michael Robert Evans
Daniel Fisher, Australian cultural anthropologist; academic, University of California, Berkeley; author, 2016 book, The Voice and Its Doubles: Media and Music in Northern Australia^[28]
Faye Ginsburg
Kevin Glynn New Zealand media and cultural studies academic; known for analyses of media and cultural views of Māori activism, including that of Tame Iti ^[29]
Sigurjón Baldur Hafsteinsson (Ziggy Hafsteinsson), Icelandic anthropologist of media
John Hartley, British-Australian academic and researcher in cultural studies; anthropologist of media; researcher at Curtin University's Indigenous Culture and Digital Technologies program
Kate Hennessy, Canadian anthropologist; video artist^[30]
Jeff Himpele
Candace Hopkins
Zacharias Kunuk
Peter Limbrick
Eric Michaels
Mario Murillo
Sari Pietikäinen
Michelle Raheja
Lorna Roth
Freya Schiwy
Beverly Singer
Katarina Soukoup
Terence Turner (1935–2015), anthropologist and ethnographer; activist with Kayapo community from central Brazil^[31]
Richard Wilson, Canadian and Hwlitsum First Nation artist^[32]
Houston Wood
Sol Worth (1922 – 1977), American painter; scholar of visual communication and visual anthropology; co-author with John Adair^[26]

Examples of indigenous media

References

^ Ginsburg, Faye. "Indigenous Media: Faustian Contract or Global Village?". Cultural Anthropology. 6 (1): 94.
^ Stam, Robert; Shohat, Ella (2014). "From Eurocentrism to polycentrism". Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media. Routledge. pp. 13–55. ISBN 9781315771441.
^ Juhasz, Alexandra, “Re-Mediating Aids: The Politics of Community Produced Video,” Ph.D. dissertation, New York University (1991); forthcoming from Duke University Press.
^ Worth, Sol; Adair, John (1997) [1972]. Through Navajo eyes: An exploration in film communication and anthropology (With a new foreword, afterword, and illustrations by Richard Chalfen) (2nd revised ed.). Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. OCLC 35198575.ISBN 9780826317711
Originally published: Worth, Sol; Adair, John (1972). Through Navajo eyes: An exploration in film communication and anthropology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0253360153.
^ Ginsburg, Faye (2011). "Native Intelligence: A Short History of Debates on Indigenous Media and Ethnographic Film". In Banks, Marcus; Ruby, Jay (eds.). Made to be seen: Perspectives on the history of visual anthropology (PDF). University of Chicago Press. pp. 234–255. ISBN 978-0226036625. Retrieved 6 June 2021.
^ Michaels, Eric (December 1986). "Ask a foolish question: On the methodologies of cross cultural media". Australian Journal of Cultural Studies. 3 (2): 46–59 – via Murdoch University Reading Room.
^ Michaels, Eric (1986). The Aboriginal invention of television in Central Australia 1982-1986. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. ISBN 0642103887. OCLC 27518669. Report of the fellowship to assess the impact of television in remote Aboriginal communities.
^ Michaels, Eric (1994). Bad Aboriginal art: Tradition, media, and technological horizons. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
^ Carelli, Vincent (1988). "Video in the villages: Utilization of video tapes as an instrument of ethnic affirmation among Brazilian Indian groups." CVA Review: Revue de la Commission d'Anthropologie Visuelle, (4): 10–15.
^ Turner, Terence. "Visual media, cultural politics, and anthropological practice: Some implications of recent uses of film and video among the Kayapó of Brazil" (PDF). CVA Review: Revue de la Commission d'Anthropologie Visuelle (Printemps / Spring 1990): 8–13.
^ Turner, Terence (1990). "The Kayapó video project: A progress report" (PDF). CVA Review: Revue de la Commission d'Anthropologie Visuelle (Automne / Fall 1990): 7–10. Archived from the original (PDF) on 13 May 2022. Retrieved 13 September 2013.
^ Turner, Terrence (1992). "Defiant images: The Kayapó appropriation of video." Anthropology Today, 8(6), 5–16.
^ Barclay, Barry (1990). Our own image. Auckland: Longman Paul.
^ Barclay, Barry (2000). Mana Tuturu: Māori treasures and intellectual property rights. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2006.
^ Ginsburg, Faye D. (February 1991). "Indigenous Media: Faustian Contract or Global Village?". Cultural Anthropology. 6 (1): 92–112. doi:10.1525/can.1991.6.1.02a00040. S2CID 143628168.
^ Roth, Lorna (2005). Something new in the air: The story of first peoples television broadcasting in Canada. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
^ Deger, Jennifer (2006). Shimmering screens: Making media in an aboriginal community. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 978-0816649211.
^ Evans, Michael Robert (2008). Isuma: Inuit video art. Montréal: McGill-Queen's University Press. ISBN 978-0773533783.
^ Wilson, Pam (2015). "Indigenous Media: Linking the Local, Translocal, Global and Virtual". In Mains, Susan P; Cupples, Julie; Lukinbeal, Chris (eds.). Mediated geographies and geographies of media. Dordrecht: Springer. pp. 367–383. doi:10.1007/978-94-017-9969-0_22. ISBN 978-94-017-9969-0.
^ Hartley, John (February 1, 2004). "Television, Nation, and Indigenous Media". Television & New Media. 5 (1): 7–25. doi:10.1177/1527476403259750. S2CID 143647838.
^ Milligan, Christina (1 September 2015). "Sites of exuberance: Barry Barclay and Fourth Cinema, ten years on". International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics. 11 (3): 347–359. doi:10.1386/macp.11.3.347_1.
^ Blackstock, Cindy; Bamblett, Muriel; Black, Carlina (2020). "Indigenous ontology, international law and the application of the Convention to the over-representation of Indigenous children in out of home care in Canada and Australia". Child Abuse & Neglect. 110 (Pt 1): 104587. doi:10.1016/j.chiabu.2020.104587. PMID 32553847. S2CID 219902988.
^ Kariippanon, Kishan; Senior, Kate (2018). "Re-thinking knowledge landscapes in the context of Grounded Aboriginal Theory and online health communication". Croatian Medical Journal. 59 (1): 33–38. doi:10.3325/cmj.2018.59.33. PMC 5833103. PMID 29498496.
^ Gosart, Ulia (2021). "Indigenous librarianship: Theory, practices, and means of social action". IFLA Journal. 47 (3): 293–304. doi:10.1177/0340035221991861. S2CID 233955416.
^ Pace, Eric (29 December 1997). "John Adair, 84, Anthropologist Who Studied Navajo Culture: Obituary". The New York Times. New York City. Retrieved 2008-03-21.
^ ^a ^b Worth, Sol; Adair, John (1972). Through Navajo eyes: An exploration in film communication and anthropology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0253360153.
^ Evans, Cathleen (2015). "Contributors: Corinn Columpar". cléo - Journal of Film and Feminism. 3 (3). ISSN 2292-0668.
^ Duke University Press. "Anthropology > Cultural Anthropology: Australia, New Zealand, Oceania, Native and Indigenous Studies". dukeupress. Retrieved 3 June 2021.
^ University of Edinburgh (10 October 2019). "Journal paper explores Māori activist Tame Iti's portrayal". www.scoop.co.nz. Retrieved 3 June 2021.
^ Schneider, Arnd; Wright, Christopher (2020-05-18). "Contributors". Anthropology and Art Practice. Routledge. p. 12. ISBN 978-1-000-18947-6. Retrieved 3 June 2021.
^ Shepard, Glenn H.; Pace, Richard (1 June 2021). "Authenticity and Anthropophagy in Kayapó Film Production". Current Anthropology. 62 (3): 309–332. doi:10.1086/714080. ISSN 0011-3204. S2CID 234861521.
^ Hennessy, Kate (2020-05-18). "An Imaginary Line: Active Pass to IR9". In Schneider, Arnd; Wright, Christopher (eds.). Anthropology and Art Practice. Routledge. pp. 115–124. doi:10.4324/9781003084587-12. ISBN 978-1-000-18947-6. S2CID 219462492.