turner terence- defiant images the kayapo appropriation of video

8/9/2019 Turner Terence- Defiant Images the Kayapo Appropriation of Video

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Defiant Images: The Kayapo Appropriation of VideoAuthor(s): Terence TurnerReviewed work(s):Source: Anthropology Today, Vol. 8, No. 6 (Dec., 1992), pp. 5-16Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and IrelandStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2783265 .Accessed: 26/01/2012 14:48

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conflict, he rejects the idea that the human pursuit ofviolence is biologically determined. But at the sametime he thinks it unlikely that future war will concernitself with strategic objectives that would make sense tostate officials or generals raised on Clausewitz. Instead,he offers the suggestion that violence of the kind cur-rently seen in Liberia, Mozambique, Angola andSomalia is an expression of the pursuit of extremefreedom from social limitations. When weapons arecheap (an AK47 rifle in Africa costs hardly more than a

cassette-radio), and where the state is weak, the men(and in Liberia, women) of violence are induced togamble with social constraints. Rebels and terroristsalike live (not as Margaret Thatcher thought) on theoxygen of publicity but on that of Schadenfreude. Theirexcitement comes from testing established norms todestruction: war is about casting social restraint o thewinds.

Having recently returned rom areas in eastern SierraLeone devastated by Liberian rebels, I find vanCreveld's argument depressingly convincing. Friendswho had survived the rebel terror found it hardest toaccount for the intensity with which the rebels hadwaged war on local societal values. Teenage children,forcibly conscripted o the rebel cause, had been drivenat gun-point to mutilate and kill members of their owncommunities, sometimes their own kin. Torn awayfrom their families, these youngsters are now a pur-poseless endemic fighting force in the forests of eastern

Sierra Leone, unable to surrender because of theatrocities they had been forced to commit, butprevented from retreating nto the territories controlledby their erstwhile captors for fear that their wild asocialviolence might be infectious. Similar accounts are givenof the emergence of Renamo as an endemic rebelmovement-without-cause n Mozambique.

What defences are there against the spread of thiskind of violence? What, if anything, does anthropologyhave to say about the capacity to generate a sense of

civil society in such an unpropitious setting - in cir-cumstances where there is no longer any normality towhich to return, where 'habitus' (to use Bourdieu'sterm) has been torn up and defiled? This, it seems tome, is the real theoretical challenge for famine and dis-aster studies in Africa today. When I reflect on theproblems of those who will have to take charge of thehabilitation (if not re-habilitation) of youngsters fromthe Liberian border ands, now lost to their natal com-munities, perhaps or ever, I begin to suspect anthropol-ogy will have to abandon ts preoccupation with socialcontinuities and inherited symbolic templates and fostera greater concern for the cognitive and performativeabilities through which human groups improvise freshbeginnings. Perhaps Megan Vaughan's focus on famineas expressed through song was even more apposite thanher readers realized at the time, for it may be that over-coming the effects of famine (and war) requires theability to dance to a new tune. C

1. Gordon & Breach. ?28.2. do., ?45 hardback, 17

paper.3. Cf. Henrietta Moore's

guest editorial, When isa famine not a famine?'"

in A.T., February 1990,which focuses on deWaal's book.

4. Brasseys, ?24.50.

efiant imagesThe Kayapo appropriation of video

TERENCETURNER

The author, professor ofanthropology at theUniversity of Chicago, hasundertaken ield researchin various Kayapo villagesin Amazonia, centralBrazil, since 1962, and hasextensive experience offilm-making with Britishtelevision teams. This isthe text of the FormanLecture which he deliveredin Manchester on 14September as part of theRAI's Third nternationalFestival of EthnographicFilm. Both the Lecture andthe Festival weresponsored by GranadaTelevision. The visits ofMokuka and Tamok weresubsidized by Unesco andby the RAI's Harry WattBursary.

A reply to this Lectureby James Faris willappear in a forthcomingissue of A.T

On behalf of my Kayapo colleagues, Mokuka andTamok, and myself, may I say that we are honouredthat the RAI has invited us to show and discuss ourwork at this Festival. It is an honour to be invited todeliver the Forman Lecture.

Introduction: Kayapo video in the context of'indigenous media'

The global expansion of telecommunications, coupledwith the availability of new and cheap forms of audio-visual media, above all video recording, have given risewithin the past decade to an unprecedentedphenomenon: the appropriation and use of the newtechnologies by indigenous peoples for their own ends.The peoples most involved in this development havebeen among those most culturally and technologicallydistant from the West: Australian Aborigines, CanadianInuit and Amazonian Indians. Among the latter, theKayapo provide perhaps the most striking and variedexamples of the indigenous use of video.

The use of video and other visual media such astelevision broadcasting by indigenous peoples differs ina number of ways from the making of ethnographicfilms or videos by anthropologists or other non-in-digenous persons. It has only recently begun to receiveattention in its own right from anthropologists andmedia theorists, and there are as yet only a few eth-nographic studies or descriptive accounts of specificcases of indigenous media use: of these, the work ofEric Michaels on Central Desert Aboriginal Televisionhas been the most theoretically important (Michaels

1984, 1986, 1991a, 1991b, Ruby 1991). Michaels' andthe other existing studies deal almost entirely with theAustralian and Canadian cases, in which state-sub-sidized indigenous TV broadcasting via communica-tions satellite is the principal medium in question.These cases present special problems of their own (e.g.the insidious effects of dependence on government sub-sidies, or the satellite-TV connection's also serving as aconduit for Western TV programming which is thendirectly received by Aboriginal, Inuit and Indianviewers; Kuptana 1988; Murin 1988; Ginsburg 1991,n.d.) These factors are absent in the Amazonian cases,where video-recorders and generator-powered VCRdecks and monitors comprise the limits of communica-tions technology and there is no question of govern-ment financial subsidy. The relatively small' world ofindigenous media thus nevertheless contains importantdifferences: hence the need for more empirical studiesof different cases. The present account of the Kayapocase represents an effort in this direction.

Faye Ginsburg, n the only general theoretical discus-sions of indigenous media thus far to appear, has notedthat the appropriation of visual media by indigenouspeoples typically occurs in the context of movementsfor self-determination and resistance, and that their useof video cameras ends to be 'both assertive and conser-vative of identity', focusing both on the documentationof conflicts with or claims against the national societyand the recording of traditional ulture (1991, n.d.: 11).She makes the important point that in contrast to anearlier generation of anthropological ilm makers but in

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY Vol. 8 No. 6, December 1992 5


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Mokuka with GranadaTelevision cameramenMichael Blakelev andHoward Somers duringthe ilming of theDisappearing World ilmThe Kayapo: Out of theForest. The video camerawas a gift from Granadato the Ka'apo. (Photocourtesy of Granada

.

Television.)

convergence with the work of contemporary filmmakers like Asch, the MacDougalls, Kildea, Preloran,Rouch and others, indigenous cultural self-documenta-tion tends to focus not on the retrieval of an idealizedvision of pre-contact culture but on 'processes of iden-tity construction' n the cultural present (n.d. 11). Here,indigenous video makers converge significantly withtendencies in Western cultural theory such as the workof Stuart Hall and the Cultural Studies group, whichrejects the notion of 'authenticity' as applied to anidealized conception of 'traditional' culture and em-phasizes the ongoing production of ethnic, cultural andsubcultural dentity through he construction of 'hybrid'representations, ombining aspects of mass culture andtechnology with

more traditional elements (Hall 1990;1992).Emphasizing the similarities as well as the differen-

ces between contemporary ethnographic film and in-digenous media, Ginsburg has suggested that bothshould be seen as 'cultural media', which use contem-porary Western film and video media technology forthe purpose of 'mediating culture' between socialgroups, whether societies of different culture, or olderand younger generations within the same indigenoussociety. The point is that 'cultural media' form part of asocial project of communication of cultural knowledgefor political and social ends, such as overcomingprejudice through inter-cultural understanding, orreproducing ethnic identity and political cohesion.Ginsburg's concept is an attempt to shift the focus ofthe term 'media' from the denotation of technologies ofrepresentation or the representations n themselves tothe social process of mediation n which they are used:

In order to open a new 'discursive space' for indigenousmedia that respects and understands t on its own terms, itis important o attend to the processes of production andreception. Analysis needs to focus less on the formalqualities of film/video as text, and more on the culturalmediations that occur through film and video works (n.d.4).

The emphasis on processes of production and recep-tion, and on media as 'mediation' provides a usefulpoint of departure or my account of Kayapo video, but'mediation' is a Protean notion that can subsume many

specific meanings. As I proceed it will be necessary toemphasize a number of differences between the sorts ofmediation going on in indigenous, or at any rate

Kayapo, media and those involved in ethnographic ilmand video.

Social effects of indigenous media in indigenouscommunitiesOne major difference concerns the act of video-makingitself. As video takes on political and social importancein an indigenous community, which member of thecommunity assumes the role of video cameraperson,and who makes the prestigious ourney to the alien citywhere the editing facilities are located, become issuesfraught with social and political significance, and con-sequently, social and political conflicts.

I have been surprised by how little this fundamental

point crops up in the literature or in presentations atfilm festival or discussions at conferences. It is com-mon to hear those involved in indigenous film andvideo, indigenous persons and sympathetic non-in-digenes alike, proclaim that the guiding principle oftheir work is the integral vision of the interconnected-ness of all things inherent n Amerindian, or as the casemay be, Aboriginal or Inuit cultures. Yet few of thesesame eloquent evocations of the spiritual interconnec-tedness of the whole are accompanied by any referenceto the effects of the activities of the film- or video-makers upon the communities n which they worked (insome instances, their own). Few reflect upon the pos-sible effects of an objectifying medium like film orvideo on the social or cultural consciousness of thepeople filmed (Michaels again being perhaps the mostnotable exception: e.g., Michaels 1984). Few discusswho ends up owning or controlling access to the filmsor videos at the community evel.

These may seem petty issues with no connection tothe grander issues of theory and politics normally ad-dressed in the anthropological and media literature; butthey are often the channels through which an in-digenous community translates he wider political, cul-tural, and aesthetic meanings of media such as videointo its own local personal and social terms. They canhave cumulatively important effects on the internalpolitics of a community and the careers of individuals.It is especially important for non-indigenous peopleworking in the field of indigenous media to pay atten-tion to this level of phenomena and to try to make al-lowance for the specific effects their projects or support

6 ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY Vol. 8 No. 6, December 1992


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may have in the communities where they work.Among the Kayapo, for example, becoming a video

cameraperson, and even more importantly, a videoeditor, has meant combining a prestigious role withinthe community with a culturally and politically impor-tant form of mediation of relations with Westernsociety. As a combination of the two main prerequisitesfor political leadership in contemporary Kayapo com-munities, it has been one way that people havepromoted their political careers. Several of the currentgroup of younger chiefs acted as video camerapersonsduring their rise to chieftainship, and a number of themore ambitious younger men have taken up video atleast in part n the hope of following in their footsteps.

My general point is simply this: an outsider attempt-ing to facilitate the use of video by a community, eitherfor political or research purposes, by donating a cameraor arranging access to editing facilities, quickly findsthat she or he does not escape the invidious implica-tions and responsibilities of 'intervention' simplythrough handing over the camera to 'them'. Preciselywhom she/he hands it to can become a very touchyquestion, and may involve consequences for which theresearcher bears inescapable responsibility. The act ofvideo making itself, when done by an indigenous per-son or member of a local community, begins to'mediate' a variety of social and political relationshipswithin the indigenous community in a way that has noexact parallel when the video maker s an outsider, as isthe usual case in documentary and anthropological ilmand video-making.

There is a complementary side eto this point, whichis that for a people like the Kayapo, the act of shootingwith a video camera can become an even more impor-tant mediator of their relations with the dominantWestern culture than the video document itself. One ofthe most successful aspects of the series of dramaticKayapo political demonstrations and encounters withthe Brazilians (and other representatives of the Western

World system such as the World Bank and GranadaTelevision) has been the Kayapo's ostentatious use oftheir own video cameras to record the same eventsbeing filmed by representatives of the national andinternational media, thus ensuring that their cameraper-sons would be one of the main attractions ilmed by theother crews. The success of this ploy is attested by thenumber of pictures of Kayapo pointing video camerasthat have appeared in the international press. TheKayapo, in short, quickly made the transition fromseeing video as a means of recording events to seeing itas an event to be recorded.[Video clip 1: Kayapo cameramen at Tucurui dam; atmeeting with Brazilian bureaucrats at Tucurui; at Al-

tamira rally; at constitutional convention; photograph-ing ceremonies; A'ukre villagers watching video inmen's house]

Let me illustrate rapidly with a few cuts of Kayapocamerapersons at work, taken by non-Kayapophotojournalists r documentarists. Early in 1989, at thebeginning of the mobilization of the great rally at Al-tamira against a government hydroelectric dam schemeon the Xingu River that would have flooded Kayapoland, Kayapo leaders made a tour of the huge dam atTucurui. They brought along their own video camera torecord for the people back in the villages what a bigdam does to a river and the land around it. They alsopointedly aimed their camera in the faces of Brazilianbureaucrats amely attempting o explain what had hap-pened to other indigenous peoples whose villages hadbeen flooded by the dam.

Then, at the Altamira rally itself, their cameras hereheld by Mokuka not only recorded he event but werethemselves one of the events most recorded byphotojournalists of the world press and documentarycrews like that of Disappearing World.

A year earlier, at the Brazilian constitutional conven-tion, the Kayapo not only sent a delegation to lobbydelegates debating the sections on indigenous rights butvideo-recorded themselves doing it, and were dulyphotographed doing so by every news photographercovering the event.

These cuts from the two Disappearing World filmson the Kayapo illustrate the important point that theprimary use the Kayapo have made of their videocameras has been to record their own ceremonies.

This scene, shot by Mike Blakely, the cameraman onboth Disappearing World Kayapo films, shows thepeople of A'ukre crowding into the village men's houseto watch a video of themselves being shown on a VCRand monitor powered by a petrol generator.

EditingBetween 1985, when they obtained their first videocamera, and 1990, Kayapo video capability remained atthe 'home movie' level. Their original video tapesrapidly deteriorated under village conditions, as theyhad no way of copying or storing them in a safe place.They also had no training in editing and no access toediting facilities. In 1990, with a grant from the Spen-cer Foundation, I started the Kayapo Video Project tosupply these needs, with the co-operation of the Centrode Trabalho Indigenista of Sao Paulo, which madeavailable their editing studio and technicians to trainKayapo in editing, and their video storage space for aKayapo Video Archive for original videos and editedmasters.

Our standard editing procedure is for me to gothrough the rushes with the Kayapo cameraperson whoshot them, making an annotated shot record, following

which the Kayapo takes over the editing controls whileI help with references to the shot record as required.Depending on the Kayapo editor's familiarity with theediting equipment being used, a technician may or maynot be present. We have tried to limit editing assistanceand advice to elementary technical procedures of inser-tion and assembly, compatibility of adjacent cuts, useof cutaways and inserts, and avoiding abrupt cameramovements or zooms. We have made no attempt toteach Western notions or styles of framing, montage,fast cutting, flashback or other narrative or anti-narra-tive modes of sequencing, nor have we sought to im-pose length constraints or other features that mightrender a video more accessible, or acceptable to a

Western audience. One of us may occasionally suggesta good point for a cut or a cutaway, but the Kayapoeditor remains free to reject such suggestions andretains control of both form and content.

On occasions what I feel to be fascinating material scut by a Kayapo editor, in which case it stays cut.There has also been a case when a Kayapo editor,working alone (I was not in Brazil at the time, and heneeded no assistance at the editing table) simply strungtogether scenes of various ceremonies and village ac-tivities in the order in which they occurred on theoriginal tape, with minimal editing consisting mostly ofcutting repetitive material, producing a two-hour longvideo which he entitled 'mixed-up dances'. I don't con-sider this a masterpiece of Kayapo post-structuralistanti-narrative; ather, as a minimal step from raw home-movie status, it serves to emphasize that for the



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Kayapo, even for accomplished Kayapo video editors,the difference between a fully edited and an uneditedvideo is not yet culturally significant for many pur-

poses. The Kayapo are happy to watch unedited 'homemovies' as well as the beautifully edited work nowbeing turned out by some of their video-makers.

Most of the Kayapo videos thus far have been of cul-tural performances uch as rituals or political meetingswhich form natural narrative units, with self-definedboundaries and sequential order. Both in camera-workand editing, Kayapo have spontaneously tended to usetechnically simple long shots, slow cuts, and alternatingpanoramics and middle-range close-ups, while avoidingextreme close-ups of the face.[Video cut 2: Mokuka editing at CTI studio and makingspeech about editing in Kayapo; Tamok editing onhigh-8 deck]

This is Mokuka working at the editing table at theCenter in Sao Paulo. He had already mastered he basicediting techniques and was able to work without theassistance of a technician. As in all cases, I first wentover his originals with him to do an ethnographicallyannotated shot record, then served as editing assistantkeeping the shot record. Mokuka directed the videofrom which these excerpts are taken about his ownwork, in order to bring back to his and other villages arecord and explanation of his editing work and why itis important o the Kayapo people as a whole. This ishis explanation, in Kayapo, which I will translate invoice-over:

Right. All over the world people are looking at thesevideos we are making of ourselves.

So I am glad to have come today to this place wherevideos are made.This had not yet appeared when I was a youth.Now that we are becoming more like the Whites, however,we are going to need to watch these videos we are makingof ourselves.It is not Whites who are doing this work, but I, a Kayapo,who am doing it, as all of you can see.These videos will be seen in all countries. Tell yourchildren and grandchildren, don't be deaf to my words,this [workl is to support our future generations, all ourpeople.This is what I want to say to you today.

I am a Kayapo doing this work.All of you in all countries who see the pictures I make canthereby come to know our culture,

my culture of which I tell you today.Look at these videos, stored here in this place where Iwork - it's not just my workplace, any one of you can

come for the asking, it's all of ours, for any one of us withenough understanding o come here to look at these videosof ourselves.Look, everybody, at all these videotapes of us here. SeeThey're all about us. This row of tapes are all pictures ofus Kayapo.These in the next section are of other indigenous people,our relatives.These tapes aren't ust left here idly.From here our videos of ourselves are sent far away to thelands of the whites, so our [white] relatives can see howwe truly are.This is what I want to explain to you today, what this edit-ing studio and these video tapes are all about, so you willunderstand.Do Whites alone have the understanding o be able tooperate this equipment? Not at all We Kayapo, all of us,have the intelligence. We all have the hands, the eyes, theheads that it takes to do this work.

I am not doing this work for my own selfish advantage. Ihave learned this skill to work for our common good.That's what I am doing here.This is what I am doing and telling you about.

This is a picture from another group of our people, fromCatete. This picture here.Is there someone somewhere who has learned somethingabout them too from having looked at this?Our young people can learn about our kindred peoples

from different places by looking at pictures like this. Weshould do the same for ourselves by making pictures ofourselves with which to teach and learn about ourselves.With this, my speech to you is ended.

At first Kayapo camerapersons were brought to SaoPaulo to the Centro de Trabalho Indigenista studio toedit the videos they had shot. For our most recent edit-ing sessions last July, however, Cleiton Capelossi, anediting technician from the Centro, and I brought theCenter's new portable hi-8 editing deck up to the townof Redencao in Southern Para, within air taxi range ofthe Kayapo villages. Here we are working with Tamokon the hi-8 deck in Redencao. We are hoping in futureto use the portable hi-8 to bring the editing as close tothe Kayapo as possible.

Cultural schemas and the production of the imageThe sort of cultural 'mediation' effected by indigenousvideo is also different from that effected by eth-nographic film or video for another important reason:an indigenous video maker operates with the same setof cultural categories, notions of representation, prin-ciples of mimesis, and aesthetic values and notions ofwhat is socially and politically important as thosewhose actions he or she is recording. Wirth and Adair,in their early project on Navajo film making, were thefirst to realize the potential significance of indigenousfilm making in this respect. The indigenous filmmaker's employment of his/her own cultural categories

in the production of the video may reveal their essentialcharacter more clearly than the completed video text it-self. This is true above all in one respect of greattheoretical mportance: as schemas guiding the makingof the video, cultural categories appear n their essentialsocial character as forms of activity rather han as statictextual structures r tropes.

Making the making of the video by the indigenouseditor, rather han the finished video text, the focus ofattention thus brings out another major difference be-tween indigenous media and ethnographic film andvideo from an anthropological point of view, which isthe way the production of the medium itself 'mediates'the indigenous categories and cultural forms that con-

stitute its subject matter as well. I have found thatkeep-

ing the shot record for the editors, which has been mymain practical role in the Video Project, affords an

Sg~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~.: :

.... .. .....

Tamok editing on theportable high-eight deck inRedencao.



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excellent vantage point for studying this process whilemaking myself useful and not being over-intrusive. Letme illustrate some of the points that have emerged.[Video cut 3: men's naming ceremony, same dance, 3repetitions]

This is a men's naming ceremony, the Mebiok, asperformed in the village of Kubenkakre; Tamok wasthe cameraman and editor (this was the video he was

editing in last cut you saw). The ceremony has the formof successive performances of the same suite of dancesteps, each with its own song. This one is called 'Raiseyour wings'. In the cut you see the three successiveperformances that constitute the framework of the se-quential order of the ceremony.

The initial performance, which marks the beginningof the ceremony as a whole, is held at a spot in theforest far from the village. You will have noticed theemphasis on uniformity of movement and singing inunison. Everyone is doing the same step, singing thesame song.

The second performance marks the temporal half-way point of the ceremony. The performers have alsocome half-way in their spatial trajectory rom forest tocentral village plaza, where the final performance willbe held. While the song, gestures and step are the same,the dancers now wear decorations, and women - thepaternal aunts or grandmothers of the little boys whowill be named - have joined the dancing line, somecarrying he boys.

The spectacular inal performance akes place in thecentral village plaza, with everyone performing thesame songs and steps, but now with a complete outfitof ritual regalia, including the gorgeous feather capesthat are the most valued items of Kayapo ceremonialfinery. Through successive replications he performancehas become simultaneously complete (all its parts beingpresent n the proper order) and fully socialized (movedinto the centre of the village), or in other words fullyreproduced as a social form.

In Kayapo thought, replication of originally 'natural'forms (like the ceremonial song, 'Raise your wings',originally taught to a shaman by a bird) through con-certed social action is the essence of the production ofhuman society. It is what 'culture' consists of. The per-fection of such socialized forms through repeated per-formance embodies the supreme Kayapo value, at oncesocial, moral and aesthetic, of 'beauty'. Note that'beauty', in this sense, comprises a principle of sequen-tial organization: uccessive repetitions of the same pat-tern, with each performance ncreasing in social valueas it integrates additional elements and achieves more

stylistic finesse, thus approaching more closely theideal of completeness-and-perfection hat defines 'beau-tv'.

This is what Tamok's video of the ceremony alsodoes. He faithfully shows every repetition of every per-formance, each with its successive increments of regaliaand participants. His video replicates, in its own struc-ture, the replicative structure f the ceremony itself, andthus itself creates 'beauty' in the Kayapo sense. Themaster categories of social production and culturalvalue, replication and beauty, thus become the masterschemas guiding Tamok's editing, his construction ofhis representation f the ceremony.

Not only hisediting, but his camera technique as

well. Look at this series of shots from his video of thewomen's version of the same naming ceremony.[Video cut 4: women's naming ceremony: framing ofdancers moving through stationary camera]

Holding the camera still in semi-close-up, so thatonly the feather capes of the dancers moving by appearas a succession of identical objects, Tamok in effectcreates a frame that focuses the quintessence of replica-tion as beauty.

Kayapo culture possesses a well developed set of no-tions of mimesis and representation that antedateWestern cultural influences, but which have also ex-erted their influence on Kayapo work in video andKayapo representations of themselves in social andpolitical interaction with the West. A locus classicuswhere these notions are expressed in traditional ulturalforms is in ceremonies involving ritual masking, likethe Koko naming ceremony with its anteater andmonkey masks. Consider the following series of cutsfrom Tamok's video of this ceremony as performed nhis village of Kubenkakre.[Video cut 5: anteater masks dancing]

The dancing of the two principal anteater masks sup-posedly imitates the real movements of anteaters. mita-tion here must clearly be understood n the Aristoteliansense of mimesis as imitation of the essence rather hanan attempt at exact naturalistic copying. The move-ments of the masks represent the Kayapo idea of the

essence of anteater movement. But now consider this:[Video cut 6: monkey masks bringing anteater masks tolife]

We are now at the very beginning of the ceremony.The anteater masks have just been finished in asecluded clearing in the forest. They are still inert, how-ever: just masks. They have yet to be animated, broughtto life, or, as it were, empowered as representations.And here come the monkey masks to do the job. Underthe vivifying influence of the monkeys, the anteatersslowly stir into life and take their first steps.

This is clearly a long jump beyond the simple imita-tion of the anteater dance. It is a dramatic composition,unreflective of any natural actions of either anteaters or

monkeys. Both types of animal masks now become ac-tors in a social drama of representation. This little skitplays reflectively (as it were) with the relation of cul-tural representations the masks) to the realities (theliving animals) they are supposed to represent but arenot. The gap between the two is closed by drama: themasks are brought to life, like anteater Pygmalions, bya meta-representation, dramatic mitation of bringingthem to life, a representation of the act of creating arepresentation: mimesis now reversing direction, trans-forming itself from a reflective to a creative principle;mimesis as poeisis.[Video cut 7: monkey masks as clowns acting as 'doc-tors ]

The monkeysin this skit are the meta-operators who

embody the creative power of representation tself, andthroughout he ceremony they act as comic mediators

Anteater masks dancing

... . '. '.'. ,



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of categories, mimetic operators, who constantly mountlittle skits among themselves or in relation to the ant-eaters, or, sometimes, as trickster-clowns, directly in

relation to ordinary people. Here several of thempretend to be visiting Brazilian doctors making housecalls. Here creative mimesis reaches further towardsdrama, with ritual masks engaging in improvised com-edic skits, the comedy playing overtly with the jux-taposition of mask and everyday reality, and in thiscase also comedically juxtaposing the 'otherness' of thetwo impersonated personages: monkeys and Brazilians.[Video cut 8: skit of Brazilians in war dance]

Kayapo dramatic representation, owever, is not con-fined to masked actors. In the ceremony for war,celebrated before the departure of the raiding party, askit is performed n which Kayapo actors take the partsof the intended victims, at the end fleeing from the suc-cessful attack of other Kayapo warriors playing them-selves. Here is Mokuka's video of such a performancein his village, A'ukre. The actors are representingBrazilians, mimetically evoking the Kayapo notion ofthe essence of Brazilianness through the imitation oftypical Brazilian ways of eating, dancing, music, etc.Here the comedic exaggeration of imitated qualities isadapted to a quasi-performative role: the satiricallydiminished intended victims are easily defeated; life issupposed to imitate art. The example helps to bring outthe close relationships between Kayapo notions ofmimesis or representation s imitation, on the one hand,and replication as the essential form of social and cul-tural production on the other. The two notions are infact continuous, drawing on the same notions of imita-tive or replicated action as an effective mode of con-structing reality, and culturally elaborated through thesame complex ritual forms. These same fundamentalcategories of Kayapo culture emerge as the mastertropes of Kayapo video camera work and editing. Rep-resentation, far from being an exclusively Westernproject foisted on the Kayapo through the influence ofWestern media, is as Kayapo as manioc meat pie.

While the Kayapo are accomplished n their own cul-tural modes of representation, heir supreme dramaticrole, their greatest feat of creative mimesis, has un-doubtedly been their enactment of themselves in theirself-presentations to Brazilians and other Westerners,from environmentalists to World Bank executives.

These self-representations have played a central role intheir successful political actions over the past decade.There has been a complex feedback relationship be-

tween Kayapo self-dramatization n these political en-counters, many of which have taken on an aspect asguerilla theatre, and the Kayapo use of video media. Onthe one hand, Kayapo leaders have planned political ac-tions like the Altamira rally partly with a view to howthey would look on TV (or video). On the other hand,Kayapo video camerapersons have been included inthese actions, as I have described earlier, not merely asrecorders of the event but as part of the event to berecorded.

This synergy between video media, Kayapo self-rep-resentation, and Kayapo ethnic self-consciousness iswell brought out in the two clips I want to discuss next.Neither were photographed by Kayapo; the first wasshot by the Brazilian crew who went in my stead torecord the new village of Juary at the community's in-vitation. The second is a moment of the Altamira rally,shot by a Brazilian from one of the indigenist supportgroups. Both were edited by me. The point of interestin both clips, then, is neither the camera work nor theediting per se, but rather he way Kayapo dramatic elf-representation n contemporary contexts of inter-ethnicconfrontation continues traditional cultural forms ofmimetic representation. t is important o recognize thiscontinuity in order to understand how the increased ob-jectification of Kayapo consciousness of their own cul-ture and ethnic identity in the contemporary nter-ethniccontext has not been merely the effect of Westernmedia or cultural influences, but has drawn uponpowerful native cultural raditions of representation ndmimetic objectification. These traditional mimeticmodes continue to influence Kayapo video makers intheir use of the video medium, as they have influencedthe specifically Kayapo forms that the objectification ofcultural self-representation has assumed in Kayapopolitical and social action.[Video cut 9: skit of capture of gold miners]

The first cut shows part of a dramatization by theKayapo of Juary of the way they would capture andexpel gold miners who invaded their territory. The ideaof the skit was suggested by the Brazilian video crew,but the Kayapo carried the idea much farther than theBrazilians had imagined. They were totally surprised bythe final scene of the Kayapo performance. Followingthe capture of the miners at their camp, the Kayapomen bring the captives back to their own village to begone over by the women, who await them, knives inhand. The irony of this dramatization s that the minersare played by real miners who were living and workingonly a kilometre from the community, with the fullconsent of the community leader, who was receiving a10% cut of the proceeds. The episode dramatically on-denses the ambiguities of the contemporary elationship

of the Kayapo with Brazilian miners and loggers, someof whom are repelled as invaders but others invited asroyalty-paying concessionaires, with identical environ-mental effects.[Video cut 10: war cry and enactment of killing at Al-tamira]

The second cut of this set shows an episode at Al-tamira in which the Kayapo, represented by Pombo, asenior chief, demonstrated he connotations, and by in-ference the implications for their own conduct towardsthe Brazilians, of naming the proposed dam near Al-tamira 'Karara'o' as the Brazilian government hadplanned. 'Karara'o' is in fact a Kayapo war cry, asPombo demonstrates as he enacts the killing of a

Brazilian enemy, and Payakan rather redundantly ex-plains from the podium. Karara'o s also the name of aKayapo village located near the dam site. The villagers

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Monkey masks clowningwith a woman: they arepretending o be doctorsmaking house calls.



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seem to get along without being driven to a murderousfrenzy by their collective sobriquet, but never mind. Ascreative mimesis (or as Pereira has aptly put it in anarticle on Kayapo self-representation nd use of video,'Como os Indios se travestem de Indios', 'How the In-dians dress up as Indians'). Pombo's performance wasa very palpable hit. The Brazilian government an-nounced immediately afterward that it would changethe name of its dam.

Kayapo uses of video as social and politicaldocumentFrom the moment they acquired video cameras of theirown, the Kayapo have made a point of making videorecords of their major political confrontations with thenational society, as well as more exotic encounters suchas their two recent tours to Quebec to support he CreeIndians in their resistance to a giant hydroelectric damscheme that would have flooded their land. They havealso employed video to document internal politicalevents such as meetings of leaders from different com-munities to settle disputes or the foundation of newcommunities.

An example of the latter may serve to illustrate thegeneral point. In December of last year a young leaderfrom the large village of Gorotire, who was about tolead some 60 followers to found a new village at one ofthe frontier posts the Kayapo have established along theboundaries of their reserves, telephoned me from anearby Brazilian town to ask me to come down andvideo the group's departure or the new village. 'Hurry,we're leaving Saturday', he said (it was then Tuesday).There were no Kayapo video cameras or camerapersonsavailable, and the leader of the group was intent onhaving a video documentary made of the foundation ofthe new village under his leadership. He wanted apublic record of what was to be, for him, his first majorchiefly act of authority, o help him in establishing hisclaim to chiefly status. He also hoped that the video

document would help to lend social facticity to the newcommunity itself, which needed all the reality reinfor-cement it could get (it actually fell apart as the result ofinternal squabbles only six months later, before wecould get the edited video back to show the com-munity). Although I was unable to go myself on suchshort notice, I was able to arrange or a Brazilian videomaker who had previously worked with the Kayapoand two colleagues to accompany the group and do thejob.[Video cut 11: enactment of founding new village ofJuary]

Here are some scenes from the video they made.They arrived after the group had arrived at the new site,

but the Kayapo, unfazed by this, and calling upon theirrich mimetic traditions, re-enacted their departure orthe new site, so that it could be put at the beginning ofthe video they were having made of themselves. Theycontinued to enact for the camera the aspects of villagelife they thought proper to a good community, whichthey wanted to represent themselves as being. Here,then, is an instance of spontaneous reflexive mimesis:the Kayapo acting themselves, for themselves.

This case illustrates several points about the purposesserved by Kayapo video records. The Kayapo do notregard video documentation merely as a passive record-ing or reflection of already existing facts, but rather ashelping to establish the facts it records. It has, in otherwords, a performative function. Political acts andevents which in the normal run of Kayapo political lifewould remain relatively contingent and reversible, the

subjective assertions or claims of one individual orgroup remaining open to challenge by other groupswith different objectives or interpretations for example,a young leader's claims to chiefly authority), can berendered by video in the form of objective publicrealities. The representation of transient events in amedium like video, with its capacity to fix the image ofan event and to store it permanently n a form that cancirculate n the public domain, objectively accessible toall in exactly the same way, make it a potent means ofconferring upon private and contingent acts the charac-ter of established public facts. The properties of themedium itself may in this way be seen to confer a dif-ferent kind of social reality on events than they wouldotherwise possess.

Here, then, is another way in which the mediation ofsocial reality by indigenous media may involve dif-ferent cultural and conceptual mediations than in thecase of ethnographic film. The medium mediates itsown properties as a permanent, objective, publicly cir-culating representation o the indigenous culture's con-sciousness of social reality. The Kayapo penchant forusing video not only to document historic encounterswith Brazilian state power but internal political eventsas well, such as meetings of chiefs or the founding of anew village, may be understood n part as an attempt oinfuse these events with the more potent facticity andhistorical permanence conferred on Western politicalevents by Western telemedia. The notion of an objec-tively determined social Reality permanently fixed bypublic documents, which many non-literate societiesfirst acquired hrough he medium of writing, has cometo the Kayapo and some other contemporary non-literate peoples through the medium of video. To thisextent, it seems fair to say that video has contributed oa transformation f Kayapo social consciousness, bothin the sense of promoting a more objectified notion ofsocial reality and of heightening their sense of theirown agency by providing them with a means of active

control over the process of objectification itself: thevideo camera.

Video as political rhetoricI now want to discuss a quite different kind of video,which brings out a number of different ways in whichindigenous cultural categories, in this case forms ofpolitical conflict-resolution and the rhetorical ropes ofpolitical oratory, may serve as schemas for the con-struction of a visual representation of a political event.This is an excerpt from a video shot and edited byMokuka of a meeting of Kayapo leaders in his homevillage of A'ukre. Called 'Peace between chiefs', it isthe only product of the Kayapo Video Project thus far

to have a version subtitled n another anguage - in thiscase English.[Video cut 12: meeting of Kayapo leaders and Funaiofficials]

The meeting in question was called to bring an endto a dispute between two senior Kayapo chiefs. Thedispute had been fomented by the Brazilian IndianAgency, FUNAI, in an attempt to undermine Ropni(known in the international press as Raoni), who hadrecently scored a smashing international inancial andpolitical success on a tour with the Rock star, Sting, toraise money and political support for the demarcationof a new Kayapo reserve. FUNAL, ealous of Ropni'sfinancial and political clout (at that point considerablygreater han its own) instigated Pombo, a rival of Ropniand chief of a different Kayapo community, to chal-lenge Ropni's leadership and to proclaim himself as the



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new paramount hief and spokesman of the Kayapo na-tion (fictitious positions to which Ropni himself hadnever pretended). The Brazilian press gleefully fell inwith this campaign, but Pombo failed to win supportfrom the Kayapo themselves, and eventually FUNAI,through its then Kayapo representative Payakan, wasforced to arrange he meeting of which this video wasmade, formally bringing the dispute to an end with apublic acknowledgement of Ropni's victory andPombo's ignominious defeat.

Mokuka's video was made as a record of this eventfor Kayapo who were not able to attend the meetingitself. He begins by showing the arrival of the mainKayapo chiefs in a sequence indexing their relative im-portance. Next he shows the arrival of the FUNAI offi-cials, including an episode of horseplay with Ropni inwhich they act like old friends: the scene is cut on thesentence, 'The most important hing in life is friends'.The irony is not lost on Kayapo audiences, fully awarethat the whole attack on Ropni had been instigated byFUNAI to begin with. The deft framing of the event bythese two opening sequences is immediately followedby an interlude of ceremonial dancing. This might seemoddly irrelevant o a Western viewer, but to a Kayapoaudience it appears as an integral part of the proceed-ings, since the joining of the representatives of thecommunities of the disputing leaders with members ofthe host community in the common ritual performanceprefigures the reaffirmation of collective peace andsolidarity he meeting was called to confirm.

Finally, the meeting itself is edited to show those fea-tures of greatest significance to Kayapo viewers. Onlythe speeches of the more senior chiefs are included,with Mokuka explaining in his Kayapo narration hatthe younger men respectfully repeated what was said bytheir elders. Most of the content of the speeches wascut, but the introductory passages in which the speakersitemize and affirm their kinship relations with oneanother are carefully preserved. Important Kayapometaphors of solidarity and community are also in-cluded when employed by a speaker. The extended in-terplay of metaphors of sexual potency, self-restraintand fertility through which the two main protagonists,Ropni and Pombo, code their respective victory andconcession, never once making explicit reference to theactual dispute at issue, is employed as the framework ofthe final segment of the video. Throughout, he contentand sequential ordering of the video follow the rhetori-cal tropes and structuring orms of Kayapo oratory andpolitical procedure.

'Voices', 'other' and otherwiseLetting the Others' voices be heard, or at least read

alongside that of the ethnographer n heteroglossic orpolyphonic texts, is one of the distinctive themes ofwhat has been called the 'new ethnography'. The use ofmedia like video by indigenous peoples shares with thisnew ethnographic urn a concern with the expression ofindigenous voices, but the similarity between the twogenres stops here. Indigenous film- or video makers arenot interested n producing 'dialogical' texts, with theirovertones of subtle cooptation of the so-called Others'voices, which implicitly serve by their presence tolegitimize the voice of the ethnographer within thesame text. Nor are they concerned with the political andepistemological questions currently bedevilling Westernethnography. They are, on the other hand, clearly inter-

ested in not leaving to Western commentators he 'lastword' about themselves (Tyler' rationale for thepolyphonic text as an ethnographic orm: Tyler 1986),

and in using their own video and Western telemedia tomake their voices heard - and in having the last wordthemselves if they can manage it.

A case in point: when I was with the Kayapo n July,a scandal exploded in the Brazilian news media aboutthe alleged rape of a Brazilian girl by the Kayapoleader, Payakan. In the Brazilian media, the case wasbeing built into a general attack on the Kayapo andother indigenous peoples, with emphasis on the cor-rupting effects of allowing them to control their own

lands and resources. Kayapo leaders, with considerablerestraint and collective discipline, had refrained fromreplying, waiting for the storm to pass before making aconcerted statement on the case and the Brazilianresponse to it on behalf of their people as a whole.When I arrived with a video camera, however, theyseized the opportunity o have leaders, both male andfemale, make statements which I could then subtitleand get broadcast on Brazilian television, so that theBrazilians could for a change hear the Kayapo side ofthe story through heir own media. Here then is anotherfacet of the Kayapo use of video media, in this case toinsert their own voices directly into the media of theWestern 'Other', an exercise that might better be char-acterized as defiant discord than cooptative polyphony.[Video cut 13: statements by Kayapo on Brazilian over-reaction to Payakan case]Text of statement by Tu'ire, a woman rom A'ukre nowliving at Gorotire

He did not penetrate her Her vagina remained empty Hiswife did not put in her hand, she only scratched her vulvaBut the whites are lying about it, they are liars and goabout spreading these lies everywhere. This is what theyare doing

Text of statement by Kuben'i, a man rom GorotireThe whites are saying all these things out of hatred for usIndians. All right, my kinsman did something minor withthis white woman. What exactly he did, only the two ofthem know. But the whites have blown this up out of allproportion, as a pretext for attacking us Kayapo.

Cultural mediation and 'hybridization' in theinterethnic situationOne of the most disconcerting hings about free-ranging'Others' to some current Western champions of cultural'difference' is how little concerned they tend to be withthe 'authenticity' or cultural purity of their life-styles,as defined from the base-line of nostalgic Frankfurtlichnotions of 'traditional culture'. The realities of culturalpolitics, in inter-ethnic situations like those in whichvirtually all the World's indigenous peoples now live,put a premium on the ability of these minorities to in-tegrate into their own cultures the institutional forms,symbols and techniques by which the dominant societydefines its relations to them, and thus in some measureto control them on their own terms. A condition of suc-cess in this, and thus a prerequisite of cultural andpolitical survival, is the ability of a group to objectifyits own culture as an 'ethnic identity', in a form inwhich it can serve to mobilize collective action in op-position to the dominant national society and Westernworld system. For contemporary ndigenous peoples, inother words, the objectification of their own culturestypically forms one side of the struggle for cultural andsocial survival, whose complementary aspect is thehybridization of their cultures in Hall's sense throughthe incorporation of elements, techniques and perspec-tives of the dominant culture. Indigenous media play akey role in both aspects of this struggle.

All this means that indigenous peoples like theKayapo tend to be far more concerned with the pursuitof inter-cultural dulteration, s far as possible on their



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structures, inds, echnologies. heepistemic rivilege ..permeates and dramatically nfluences most possibleprojects f others' presentations f themselves o us. [Suchprojects] re not co-constructions,heyare one-way ilters.

The message is that Western representation, n someway which Faris never feels the need to explain, is ir-resistible and absolutely dominating wherever it comesin contact with non-Western Others. Resistance is hope-less, for the very subjectivity of the Others is subornedand transformed nto a mere projection of the dominantWest. There is a powerful feeling of magical thinkingabout all this: the vampirish power to suck the subjec-tivity of the Other, reducing her/him to a mere objec-tified 'projection' of the desire of the Western con-sumer, which Faris attributes o the camera, s essential-ly akin to the belief so widely associated in the popularmind with the magical thinking of primitives andsavages that the camera steals the souls of those whosepictures t takes.

Faris dismisses the employment of media tech-nologies like video by indigenous peoples as 'arroga-tion ... by an expansionist capital', but his argumentderives from Foucault rather han Marx. For Faris, it isconsumption by a Western audience, not production bywhoever may actually make the video, that determines

its character as representation, which in this case meansits character as a commodity. Consumption in turn,Faris tells us, is the product of desire, and desires arefelt by individual subjects. Production, with all itsspecific relations and conditions, is of no consequence.We have, then, a market-driven model, in which theproducts on offer are determined n form and contentby their utility in satisfying individual consumers' sub-jective desires. Marginal utility, not social relations ofproduction or political economic forces, or indeed so-cial forces of any kind, drives Faris's recension of 'ex-pansionist capitalism'. In its post-modern guise as theEvil Empire of representation, his 'capitalism' is en-visioned as imposing itself in an inexorable process un-

troubled by internal contradictions, or the awkwardpropensity of historical capitalism to arouse resistantforms of subjectivity, critical representations nd politi-cal activity in its exploited victims. Faris's 'capitalism'thus betrays its lineage, not from Marx, but fromFoucault's notion of power, as a quasi-mystical, inex-orably effective force, unlocatable in specific socialrelations, which ultimately reduces itself to a sort ofnegative mana, an immaterial miasma of generalizednastiness.

Given these assumptions, the possibility that non-

Western Others might actually empower themselvesthrough the appropriation of the very Western tech-nologies of 'gaze', i.e. representation, which are sup-posed to transform hem into passive zombies of capitalbecomes epistemological anathema, and any empiricalevidence that it might have happened somewhere mustclearly be denied to save the theory. Hence the other-wise perplexing intensity of Faris's assault on theKayapo, and hence his categorical dismissal, onprogrammatic heoretical grounds, of the whole project

of indigenous media. The specific political consequenceof this post-modern trajectory across the political andepistemological spectrum rom red to ultra-violet s thusthe categorical assertion of the disempowerment ofnon-Western peoples and their absolute subordinationto the 'representations' f 'expansionist capital'.

I am in total agreement with Faris and the others whoargue in similar vein that this is a political position.What I find puzzling is their representation of it as acritique from the radical Left, when its ideological af-finities and practical political implications are so clearlyon the Right, converging with conservative neo-liberalfree-market economics, arguing the inevitability ofWestern/capitalist world hegemony and programmati-

cally denying the possibility of resistance or self-em-powerment by non-Western peoples. Faris's theoreticalargument tself uncritically embodies the very effects helays at the door of 'representation' and 'expansionistcapitalism'.

Faris's attack on indigenous media thus has the vir-tue of bringing out with stark clarity the political andideological implications of the broader post-modern at-tack on ethnographic representation while focusingthem on a series of specific issues within the field ofvisual anthropology. The fundamental problem inheresin the self-limitation of this critique to issues of repre-sentation; n other words, its inveterate extualism. That'representation' should have become not merely thefocus but often the limiting horizon of what purports obe a political critique is itself indicative that the real'crisis of representation' s not 'of representation' ut ofthe contradictory attempt to do political critique withconcepts whose social, and therefore also political,roots have been cut. When social and politicalphenomena are seen only through the filter of the textsin which they are represented, and thus seen as repre-sentations, social and political relations become textualrelations among representations; nd it is a short jumpto the proposition that textual relations among repre-sentations are social and political relations. The epitomeof this confusion is the proposition that representationis itself a political force or agent, a means of materialcontrol over its objects or referents.

We might paraphrase Whitehead and call this theFallacy of Misplaced Politics. As in the case of Hegel,the misplacement of politics in the de-materializedrealm of logical and cultural categories results in a pro-gram of practical political disempowerment of materialsocial actors; what began as a liberating critique be-comes, albeit unwittingly, a conservative brief for thehegemonic status quo. It also results in passivequietism. There remains nothing to be done, save tocriticize the political and theoretical aporias of whathas already been done. As far as visual anthropologyand indigenous media alike are concerned, Faris givesit to us straight: Perhaps we may help best by leavingthem alone' (176). Whether we or they hold the

camera, t's better to just keep the lens cap on.The positive moment of (some) post-modern critiqueis its shift from a focus on textual structures o a focus

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1_R.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~..B...._ ~~~~~~~/

tB$

Mokuka ilming at the greatrally at Altamira n 1989.

6:1 (92-112).n.d. Mediating culture:

indigenous media,ethnographic ilm, and theproduction of identity. InLeslie Deveraux andRoger Hillman, eds, Filmand the Humanities.

Hall, Stuart. 1990. CulturalIdentity and Diaspora. InJ. Rutherford, d., Identity,Community, Culture,Difference. London.Lawrence and Wishart(222-237).

1992. Cultural Studiesand its theoretical egacies.In L. Grossberg, C. Nelsonand P. Treichler, eds,Cultural Studies. NewYork: Routledge.

Kuptana, Rosemarie. 1988.Inuit BroadcastingCorporation. Commissionon Visual AnthropologyNewsletter. May 1988 (39-41)

Michaels, Eric. 1984. Thesocial organization of anAboriginal videoworkplace. AustralianAboriginal Studies I(26-34)

1986. The Aboriginalinvention of television:Central Australia1982-1986. Canberra. nst.for Aboriginal Studies.

199 a. Aboriginalcontent: who's got it -who needs it? VisualAnthropology V:3-4(277-300).

1991b. A model ofteleported exts (withreference to Aboriginaltelevision). VisualAnthropology V: 3-4(301-324).

Murin, Deborah Lee. 1988.Northern Native



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on the constructive activity of subjects. It unfortunatelytends to neutralize the constructive ethnographic andanalytical possibilities of a focus on constructive ac-tivity by employing it only as a principle of deconstruc-tion of anti-constructivist pproaches ike Malinowskianempiricism. It is possible, however, to move in a dif-ferent direction from the same point of departure, andapproach the ethnography, and theoretical analysis, ofcultural representation through the study of the ac-tivities of producing them. This is the turn being taken

by a numberof

contemporary theoristsin commu-

nication and visual anthropology, or instance Caldarolain his call for making the 'imaging process' the focusof ethnographic nquiry or Ginsburg's notion of media-tion to which I referred at the beginning of this talk(Caldarola 1988: Ginsburg n.d.).

Working with the production of indigenous visualmedia, observing the techniques of camera work andediting, and also the social activities and relationsthrough which videos are made, used and controlled,provides an opportunity o study the social productionof representations arely approached n non-visual eth-

nography, and different again from the insights affordedby ethnographic ilm. I would suggest that approachingthe study of cultural categories in this way can be asalutary corrective to the historic bias of the discipline,inherited from both Durkheimian and Anglo-Americanpositivism, towards conceiving of categories only in thestatic form of classification or collective repre-sentations, and not in the active form of schemas forproducing classes or representations.

A theoretical approach of this kind, as I have furthersuggested, is not inherently opposed to or exclusive ofa political approach o supporting ndigenous media asa means of indigenous empowerment and self conscien-tization. My own involvement with Kayapo mediastarted as a politically motivated effort along theselines, rather than from theoretical premises. I havefound, however, that working to promote political em-powerment hrough media has converged both concep-tually and practically with the theoretical interests ofmany visual anthropologists n image production andthe role of media (particularly ndigenous) as mediatorsof social and political activity. El

Broadcasting. Canada.Runge P.

Pereira, Renato. n.d. Comoos Indios se Travestemde Indios.

Ruby, Jay. 1991. EricMichaels: AnAppreciation. VisualAnthropology V: 3-4(325-344).

Tyler, Stephen A. 1986.Post-ModemEthnography: romDocument of the Occultto Occult Document. InJames Clifford andGeorge Marcus, eds,Writing Culture: ThePoetics and Politics ofEthnography. erkeley.U. of California P.

Worth, Sol and JohnAdair. 1972. ThroughNavajo Eyes.Bloomington. ndianaU.P.

Should anthropologists y t h i r

re spondents

VINAYKUMAR SRIVASTAVA

Vinay Kumar Srivastava s

a doctoral candidate insocial anthropology atKing's College Cambridge.

II began thinking of the issue of payment to respondentsin the initial phases of a fieldwork with the Raikas -the caste of traditional camel-breeders - of westernRajasthan n north-west ndia.

My stay in their hamlet, which I had first studied inBikaner, was facilitated by a local Raika school teacher.He mostly lived in Bikaner town, and on week-ends hevisited the hamlet where he owned one of the three ce-mented (pacca) houses. He not only introduced me tohis extended family, but also provided me with an out-house to live.

After a few days of fieldwork I discovered that theothers in this hamlet apart from his family were notparticularly friendly. Whenever I went to their malegatherings, they would all turn quiet, and if I stayed,one by one they would leave. Frustrated nd dismayed,I would return to my outhouse. A couple of weekselapsed. I was unable to break the barrier.

I might have been able to think of a strategy tobefriend them had I known why I was being treated nsuch a manner. Having conducted fieldwork in otherparts of India, I intuitively knew that it was not theusual lukewarm response anthropologists eceive at thebeginning of their research. My salutations(Ramashama, namaskara) to them did not go unan-swered; however, they lacked the warmth I expectedafter having been there for weeks. My interaction waspainfully confined to the teacher's family, and I wassensitive to being labelled as 'the teacher's friend fromDelhi' (master-ji ra Dilliwala bhaila). I knew that this

reputation would destroy my chances of becomingfamiliar with the rest of the hamlet.

I quickly learned that there were two factions in this

hamlet - the teacher's and the rest - although t was anextended kin group. Whenever I asked the teacher andhis family members why they did not have cordial rela-tions with the rest of the hamlet, their reply consisted ofstories of nasty and evil deeds their neighbours hadrelentlessly executed against them. These stories rangedfrom stealing to witchcraft, from argument to fight. Iwas also assured that whatever information I neededwould be available from them, so I should stop worry-ing about the others.

To understand his situation and, more particularly, oconduct peaceful and unrestricted fieldwork, I knewthat I had to move into a neutral space. On the pretextof being accustomed to working at night when therewas no electricity, I shifted from the teacher's out-house. With difficulty, I eventually learned to manageboth factions, and could move freely from one part ofthe hamlet to another without receiving frowns fromeither group. I gave the impression of a person whowas keen to speak to all, and not one interested n inter-personal squabbles.

As time went by, the reasons for factional enmity be-came clear. Many events, one related to another, wereresponsible, but an important one was the paymentmade to some and not to others by an outside agency. Itcould be argued that this selective payment served tounderline and aggravate pre-existing conflicts. Eventoday both parties talk about this issue, although thefacts are tailored according o each one's stand-point.

II

Some years before my arrival (1989), a team of filmmakers came to this hamlet. They got in touch with theteacher, as I did, because he happened to be at that


turner terence- defiant images the kayapo appropriation of video

Documents