Video in Villages 4

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Video Kinship: A Review ofA Arcas dos Zoe andEu Ja Fui Seu Irmao

Faye Ginsburg

Director, Center for Media, Culture, and HistoryDepartment of Anthropology, New York University

New York, N.Y. 10003

for

Cadernos de Antropologia e Imagem

A Arcas dos Zoe,(1993, 22 minutes, in Tupi with English subtitles)

Directors: Vincent Carelli and Dominique Gallois; Camera: Vincent Carelli and Kasiripina

Sound and Translation: Dominique Gallois; Editor: Tutu Nunes; Post: Cleiton Capellossi

Awards: Sol de Ouro (First Prize, 9 th Rio-Cine Festival, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1993JVC Presidents Award, 16 th Tokyo Video Festival, Japan, 1993

Prix du Court Metrage, Cinema du Reel, 1994

Eu Ja Fui Seu Irmao (1993, 32 minutes, Portuguese with English subtitles)

Director and Camera: Vincent Carelli; Sound: Cleito Capellossi, Pedro Correia

Editor: Tutu Nunes; Consulting Anthropologist: Gilberto Azanha

Awards: Best Video (Publics Award), Sao Luis Trophy (Critics Award), Jangada Trophy

(International Catholic Film Organization), 17th Guarnice de Cine Video, Maranhao, Brazil. 1994

Video works cited here are available from:Centro de Trabalho Indigenista, Rua Fidalga, 548 #13, Sao Paulo 05432-000, Brazil

Tel: 011-55-61-813-3459; FAX: 011-55-61-813-0747

or:

Video Databank, 37 S. Wabash, Chicago Illinois, USA, 312-899-5172

I never imagined that there could exist, even today, a village celebrating as my ancestors .

did. (Translated comments of Kokrenum, Gaviao Chief, on viewing tapes of a Kraho

ceremony in 1991. Quoted in Carelii 1995: 5)

Now well go see our images together. In the past, we Indians didnt know about this. ..Inthe white mans language, its called television. And in our language? I dont know. (From

Arcas dos Zoe, 1993)

Its Indian with Indian. Weve just become friends. But from here on, the tape theyre

making, theyre going to take it for them to watch, and theyll send a copy for us to


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watch. A road has been opened between us. (FromEu ja fui seu Irmao, 1993)

A Arcas dos Zoe andEu Ja Fui Seu Irmao are two remarkable videos that invite us to

rethink the possibilities of small media in the late 20th century as technologies that facilitate

kinship, cultural self-consciousness, and political awareness, inverting what people presume the

usual causal relationship is between media and alienation.. Directed and photographed byVincent Carelli , both tapes are part of the Video nas Aldeias (Video in the Villages) project he

has been directing in association with the Centro de Trabalho Indigenista (CTI)1 , an advocacy

group working since 1979 with and for Brazils indigenous people, located in Sao Paolo. Of the

13 or more video works produced by the project to date, they are among the most interesting

because they dramatize so clearly how new cultural , social, and political relations are being

constituted among indigenous people of the Amazon and beyond, and how technologies such as

video are a productive part of that process. By any cultural standard, the pieces are beautifully

shot and edited and communicate a rich sense of long-term trust and collaboration between Carelli

and the subjects of the tapes (Waiapi, Zoe, Kraho, and Gaviao/Parakateje peoples) who as we

see in the tapes are also making their own video documentation of the same events forthemselves.

In its current popular usage, the word media evokes large multinational conglomerates,

the commodification of daily life in late capitalist culture, and the increasing globalization of

images and information, so that cultures and people appear ever more deracinated and

disconnected. Yet, in its original English language meaning, media is defined as an intervening

substance through which a force acts or an effect is produced; it is something that mediates,

acting between parties to effect an understanding, compromise, or reconciliation. These notions

of media and mediation are whatA Arcas dos Zoe and Eu ja Fui Seu Irmao indeed all the

video works of the Video in the Villages project represent. They fall somewhere between

indigenous media made by and for aboriginal communities, and ethnographic film which hastraditionally been framed by categories of anthropological interest. Instead, these videos

chronicle for outsiders (as well as insiders) the social processes generated by the catalytic effect

the presence of video has had, within a context of political and cultural advocacy.2 As Pat

Aufderheide explains in her article on the work of Vincent Carelli and CTI,

Video in the Villages responds to the expressed needs of Indian groups, within the context

of the organizations focus on Indian rights. It is not a film production unit; in fact the

bulk of the work is in facilitating Indians video use. Indians produce videos that they

conceive jointly with the organization , and they dictate the thematic and compositional

choices. VIV also circulates tapes, arranges exchanges between different groups and

organizes meetings between groups that have met already by video. It helps buildarchives and videotheques, and replaces moldy or damaged tapes. Its choices for video

work are driven by ways in which video can foment the larger project of cultural integrity

and reconstruction..

. ..These videos have an activist, political rationale, and a didactic documentary format.

They are intended to explain to as-large-as-possible, often non-Indian audiences why


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video is a useful tool for Indian cultural survival. (1995: 84)

As Carelli has made clear in his work, Video in the Villages has developed two different

dimensions of using video. He (and others such as American anthropologist Terry Turner with

whom Carelli has worked on The Kayapo Video Project) have been providing video equipment

and training for members of indigenous communities interested in using video for their ownpurposes (Turner 1992; Feitosa 1991, 1993) Additionally, Carelli makes tapes about the process

of introducing video and its effects, both for these communities but also for outsiders who help

fund the projects that have been so crucial to helping sustain the possibility of advocacy

internal and external for Brazils indigenous people who have suffered a long history of

colonialism. The tapes that Carelli makes (as opposed to those made by and for indigenous

people themselves) are not only of great interest for native people concerned with recording and

reviving their ritual life and exchanging tapes with other groups; they also are often more

successful than written documents in garnering support from NGOs and other sources of

support of indigenous people. This is increasingly important as these groups face new threats to

their lives and territories. Most recently, as is evident in the discussions we hear in the tapes,they have felt the impact of incursion of gold miners and their pollution of water supplies, and

of ranchers and loggers who have been destroying their forest lands.

This kind of process, of course, is not simply a product of working with video but is part

of a broader process that is occurring with indigenous people throughout the Americas and even

across the globe, what some have called ethnogenesis (Whitten 1996). In a recent essay

introducing an edited collection on ethnogenesis in the Americas, John Hill describes this process

as:

not merely a label for the historical emergence of culturally distinct peoples but a concept

encompassing peoples simultaneously cultural and political struggles to create enduring

identities in general contexts of radical change and discontinuity...a creative adaptation toa general history of violent changes including demographic collapse, forced relocations,

and genocide imposed during the historical expansion of colonial and nation states in

the Americas.(Hill 1996: 1)

Or, put in terms of other theoretical debates, one might look at these projects as demonstrative of

ways in which they indigenize modernity (Sahlins 1993).

The works of Video in the Villages (VIV) are almost unique as documents about what

happens when video is put into the hands of indigenous communities and how it is embraced as a

technology of mediation. It is part of a particular moment when Amazonian people are becoming

newly self-conscious of themselves, of the fragility of their cultural practices under pressure of

contact and of the importance of making connections with other indigenous groups andestablishing ongoing contact with them as a way to strengthen their position locally and in

relation to the incursions of outsiders and government agents.

Rather than following ethnographic tropes, as if the tapes were providing transparent

visual descriptions about the Waiapi or the Zoe or the Kraho as static and frozen

cultures, these works both represent and are a crucial part of a social process, catalyzed and


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supported in part by sympathetic white activists from the CTI and elsewhere, along with the

interest of a number of dynamic indigenous Amazonian leaders and their communities who have

recognized the power that small media like video can offer to them on a number of levels.

Permanently breaking older paradigms of representation, the VIV tapes (along with those made

with and by other indigenous groups all over the globe) are part of a project of cultural activism,

in struggles that range from land rights to the protection of cultural property.Carelli began VIV as an experimental project with the Nambiquara in 1987, which

dramatically demonstrated its productive potential; as with other groups, one of the first and

primary interests they had in video is to use it to reflect on their own cultural practices (and their

potential loss) and to record them as a way to both revive and preserve these cultural practices

for future generations, much as early ethnographic filmmakers recorded aspects of ritual and

material culture as a project of salvage ethnography. In the case of the Nambiquara, seeing images

of themselves performing a girls puberty ritual (Festa da Moca, 1987, 18 min,) triggered a revival

of a nose-piercing ritual for male initiation (and other traditional practices) that had been waning

almost since contact (Carelli 1988, Auderhiede 1995: 85). A later tape, O Espirito da TV(1990,

18 min.) , resulted from collaboration with Waiapi -- and especially chief Wai Wai -- living in thestate of Amapa who have been very active in fighting both state and commercial threats to their

land and autonomy. Anthropologist Dominique Gallois, (who worked on this project) and

Carelli found that these people -- who had had negative experiences with outside filmmakers --

wanted very much to control their own image making, and to document the process of coming

into contact with other communities. The tape shows their reactions and reflections to seeing

images of themselves and others through the medium of video for the first time, and demonstrates

how video was quickly assimilated to a project of inter-tribal diplomacy.

Such efforts to link different Indian groups through video and the social relations being

produced by this process are the central subject, in different ways ofA Arcas dos Zoe andEu

Ja Fui Seu Irmao . In the case of the latter tape, Carelli explains:One of the most significant results of this project occurred when a group, having

discovered through video that it had many things in common with another, actually made

contact in real life. This was the case of the Parakateje (Gaviao) the Kraho and the Canela,

three groups that come from the same branch of the Timbira culture, speak the same

language, and have the same cultural base. However, their differences were also enormous,

resulting from their different historical experiences of contact.

The Gaviao, who live in the south of Para, were contacted less than 30years ago,

but have lost all of their elders and with them, a large part of the tribal memory. Their

younger people no longer speak their mother tongue. The Kraho and the Canela who live

in the states of Tocantins and Maranha, were contacted more than 300 years ago butcontinue to be more isolated. Unlike the Gaviao, they are extremely poor and practice an

intense ceremonial life. In this respect, the Kraho..represent for the Gavio what they

have lost. (Carelli 1995: 5)

The tape actually has its roots in 1991, when VIV recorded a Kraho ceremony at Tocantins


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and sent the tape to the Parakateje (Gaviao) of Para. The Gaviao chief, Kokrenum, was

impressed by what he saw, and in September 1992, with the assistance of the VIV project

(partially supported by the Rockefeller Foundation), he brought 50 young men by truck to

Tocantins to participate in a Kraho initiation ceremony at the invitation of their chief Diniz

Tebiet. The video record of the event -- which includes chanting and dancing, body painting,

and preparations for the arduous relay race in which huge logs are passed from youthful shoulderto shoulder as they run across the savanna -- was screened nightly in the Gaviao village after

they returned. The intensity of the experience helped galvanize a return visit following year,

when a contingent of Kraho came to visit the Gaviao during a corn harvest festival which also

includes the log relay race. This exchange, and its obvious impact on both groups, is the

substance ofEuja fui seu Irmao. As Chief Kokrenum explains:

Those young ones are always wanting to do what the whites do...

So I think we ought to take the youngsters to see the Krahos dances, how they do their

festivals. Because theyre keeping their ways. So thats why they took all the teenagers,

so they could see the Krahos activities for themselves. To see if the kids will believe

what I say, to come thinking like that again, right?...I thought they didnt speak Portuguese, but they speak really well, better than we do

here..They speak more correctly. But theyre always [also] using their language..Even the

little ones speak in their language.

This sense of cultural and historical difference between the groups is reflected in the

visual images of the tape, showing the propensity for western clothes among the Gaviao, for

example. It is also encoded in a charming and illuminating conversation between the two chiefs as

they comment on each others customs, (in what occasionally seems like an unwitting gentle

parody of the narrative style of ethnographic film.) In addition to their commentary, there are

many other dimensions of reflexivity throughout the piece. Indeed, the tape is reflexivelystructured around such meta-level observations and exchanges, as it elegantly cuts from scenes of

the ceremonies themselves with both hosts and guests, to scenes of Gaviao (and later Kraho)

watching the videos of the visits to the other villages on their home turf (via generators set up in

structures in the middle of the villages) and commenting on them. In yet another reflexive move,

we watch their own videotaping of the events, subtly clarifying how the tape we are seeing is

being produced about the event for cultural outsiders (as well as as insiders).

Potential audiences, broadly speaking, are also conceived across time. In the final scene

of the tape shot in the Gaviao village, the chiefs announce to the camera and those assembled:

Were doing this for our young ones, not for us. Thats why I want to know everyones

name. So we can visit each other, do things together. Thats right, were going to do that.And then slowly and systematically, in a moving and dramatic enactment of that desire to create

kinship across the divisions of history and space, one child after the next is brought forward and

their name enunciated and repeated for the sake of the other group: , This is Hok Hi, Hok Hi.

And so on.

Kokrenum continues:


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When these kids grow up, theyll think, Back then nobody knew anybody. We only

heard Krahos name and we only heard Paraketejes (Gaviaos) name. But we never met,

we never talked. But those two old me were smart and opened the way. You arrived in

my village and there wasnt time to get to know everybody and we had this gathering so

we could meet. At my next festival, Im going to present the rest because not everybody

came. I also want you to meet those who stayed behind. If your people go home andleave a seed to make people stronger, I think its good. I want to see my people grow. At

the next feast, Im going to get everybody together so well be one big family.

As Carelli points out, this tape is not only about the emerging social relations between these

groups, but is also a profile of Kokrenum, whose charisma, foresight, and political strategies

have been essential to the Waiapis survival ( CTI 1994).

In A Arcas dos Zoe , which was also motivated by the emerging relations among different

indigenous groups enhanced by video exchange, the Waiapi, who have a long history with whites,

began to communicate with the Zoe who were only contacted around 1989 in the north of Para.

(Both are part of the Tupi culture but speak divergent dialects, which began to be mutually

intelligible after speakers spend a few days together. ) For these groups, their desires to meeteach other encapsulated the histories of contact, loss, and nostalgia. According to Vincent Carelli:

One of the Waiapi expectations for this meeting was to re-encounter the way of

life, techniques, and decorations of their ancestors, which they wanted to film and rescue

for their own young people. On the other hand, the impetus for the meeting resulted

from the Zoe living through one of the most delicate moments in their history

confronting the risk of contagion, the fascination they felt toward white people, and so

on. The Waiapi, who had already lived through all of this, wanted to bring along and

comment on videos that show the white world that the more isolated group was just now

encountering.

For the Zoe, the most important result was to begin an unprecedented self-reflection process, and to discover that the world outside is more differentiated than they

imagined. Besides whites, there exist other Indians, others like us. (1995: 6)

As part of the ongoing work of Video in the Villages, Carelli and anthropologist Dominique

Gallois, who has worked with the Waiapi for many years, helped arrange and document the first

actual meeting of Wai Wai and several other Waiapi who flew in to meet with Zo e people who

they had first encountered on video. That meeting (and the perceptions of each group about each

other as they reflect on it) forms the narrative structure of A Arcas dos Zoe, with Chief Wai

Wai being the key interlocutor of the story and the apparent catalyst for the event.

The tapes opening images of the Kasarapina, a Waiapi cameraman shooting scenes ofZoe daily life are accompanied by Chief Wai Wais (subtitled translated) comments:

We knew these people from television images. And thats when I decided to visit their

village...Theyre different because they go naked...but the color of their skin is the same as

ours. Theres no problem. Thats really how they are. Around the men I felt no shame

but around the women, yes, because its different here. Because thats their custom and I


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got used to it.

The visual imagery is appropriately edenic to the commentary; Zoe women, naked except for

the monkeys perched on their shoulders, long lip plugs, and elaborate headresses of feathers that

resemble 18th century bonnets, and long tubular lip plugs, seem utterly un self conscious and

deeply curious about the clothing and tools of their Waiapi guests.

The tape then shifts scene to Wai Wai back at home, telling his own people about the tripas they watch the video of his journey. The commentary by Wai Wai repeatedly underscores

their sense of these people as like their ancestors. As we watch a woman pull a spider monkey

out of a pot and prepare to eat, he remarks:

They dont use dishes, only gourds, like our ancestors. Were the ones who changed after

meeting whites. Theyre identical to those from the time of the creator.

In an uncanny resemblance to early encounters with anthropologists, the tape chronicles the

material culture of the Zoe, from the making of arrows, to technologies of food preparation, to

the use of Brazil nut trees and bark, to magic for hunting tapirs, to the division of meat to the

community, to ritual initiation of young men who must hold their hands inside a pot filled with

biting ants. In a similar reprise of primal encounters, Zoe women check out the cloth used byWaiapi men for loincloths and ask them to be sure to bring some back.

Much as Wai Wai is moved by their knowledge of ancestral ways, he is also worried

about the innocence of the Zoe, and tries to warn them about the danger of goldminers, the ways

they can destroy the forest and pollute the rivers. As if to underscore the potential gravity of

contact with whites, his parting comment as he boards the airplane to return home is:

See you later. If I die from a white mans disease, I wont return. If I die, we wont see

each other again.

Conclusion

These tapes are significant on a number of levels. First, they are delightful to watch, notonly because of Carellis technical facility with video, but also because of his long knowledge of

and intimacy with the different groups and the conditions they face. The level of trust and

rapport in the tapes is palpable in multiple ways, from the gentle humor of many of the

interactions, to the ease with which quotidien scenes were shot, to the philosophical reflections

on their conditions that the circumstances of encounter provoked for each group. As such, we

get a remarkably intimate sense of daily life as well as the thoughts of indigenous intellectuals and

leaders trying to lead their people into a future with some sense of the integrity of their culture,

language and political autonomy. These are representations of the natives point of view

rarely achieved in ethnographic film.

At another level, these tapes are extraordinarily valuable historical documents regardingthe taking up of new technologies video in this case by people for whom they are novel,

and seeing how they use it to mediate their relations with the fellow Indians. Considering the

amount of ink spilled by western intellectuals over the presumed deleterious effects of cameras

on indigenous people (cf. Weiner et al, 1996), it is far more useful to recommend to such

doomsayers that they watch these tapes than to argue with them in the abstract. In both of


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these productions, the natives can tell and show you quite directly why these tools are

profoundly useful to them, and how they have been used in the service of strengthening cultural

traditions and in political organizing.

Finally,A Arcas dos Zoe andEu Ja Fui Seu Irmao are indicative of a key historical

moment in a process of ethnogenesis discussed earlier, and the formation of a pan-indigenous

national consciousness that is crucial to the future of these groups,3 as was clear in theinspiration for cultural revival demonstrated by the Gaviao and the Waiapi, and their concern to

protect the newly contacted Zoe from the tragedies they have encountered from contact with the

dominant culture. Such works provide a healthy counterpoint to the stereotypical images in the

press, cinema, and popular writing about Amazonian people, in their clear portrayal of

Amazonian people as self-conscious and active historical agents, able to use a range of

technologies to address not only many different audiences and but their own cultural concerns

and political futures.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Patricia Monte Mor for her encouragement to write this review, and her patienceabout receiving it. Thanks also to the following people for their helpful conversations: Patricia

Aufderheide, Dominique Gallois, Terry Turner, and Virginia Valadao. Finally, I am grateful to

Vincent Carelli for his insights into this work, and the many conversations I have had with him

over the years regarding the broader project he is engaged in, at different film festivals and while

he was in residence at the Center for Media, Culture and History at New York University in

1995.

References Cited

Aufderheide, Patricia with Vincent Carelli

1995 The Video in the Villages Project: Videomaking With and by Brazilian Indians. In VisualAnthropology Review, Fall 1995, 11 (2) : 83 - 93

Carelli, Vincent

1995 Video in the Villages: Bringing the Indians Together with their Own Image. Transated and

introduced by Patricia Aufderheide. Unpublished interview. Archive of the Center for

media, Culture, and History, New York University.

Centro de Trabalho Inidigenista

1994 Video in the Viallages Distribution Catalogue

Feitosa, Monica

1991 The Others Vision: From the Ivory Tower to the Barricade. Visual Anthropology

Review

Volume 7 (2), Fall 1991: 48 - 49


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1993 Taking Aim, 41 min., color. A video by Monica Frota. Rua Vsconde de Ouro Preto

611/201, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Gallois, Dominique and Vincent Carelli

1995 Video in the Villages: The Waiapi Experience. In Advocacy and Indigenous Film-making

Intevention Nordic Papers in Critical Anthropology, No. 1: 23 - 38.

Hill, Jonathon

1996 Introduction: Ethnogenesis in the Americas, 1492 - 1992. In History, Power, and

Identity: Ethnogenesis in the Americas, 1492 - 1992, ed. Jonothan Hill, University of

Iowa Press.

Sahlins, Marshall

1993 Goodbye to Tristes Tropiques: Ethnography in the Context of Modern World History.

In Journal of Modern History 65 (1): 1 - 25

Turner, Terry

1992 Defiant Images. In Anthropology Today 8 (6): 5 - 16

Weiner, James

1996 Televisualist Anthropology. Cultural Anthropology, Spring 1996

Whitten, Norman

1996 Ethnogenesis. In Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology, ed. D. Levinson and M.

Ember. New York: Henry Holt

Endnotes

1. For an excellent overview of the whole project and its relation to the advocacy work of CTI, I

recommend Patricia Aufderheides article, The Video in the Villages Project: Videomaking With

and by Brazilian Indians, In Visual Anthropology Review, Fall 1995, 11 (2) : 83 - 93

2.As Vincent Carelli explains the distinction between the different uses of video:

..we make it clear that the video made by the Indians is almost exclusively for

internal consumption in the villages, and as such us distinct from the video in the

Villages series about the project..But the Indians are taking their first steps, and their

work, like any home video, cannot be judged according to aesthetic standards. It doesnt

matter whether the image shakes and the takes are very long. What is important is the

social and cultural dynamic associated with this image. (1995: 10)


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3. Vincent Carelli explains :

Of particular significance was the growth of a pan-indigenous national consciousness

rooted in the similar historical processes experienced by each group since contact and intheir common problems. (1995: 3)

Documents

Video in Villages 4