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143 I am cinema-eye—I am a mechanical eye. I, a machine, show a world such as only I can see. —DzigaVertov, Kino-Pravda In the first scene of Te Rua—Barry Barclay’s seminal 1991 film about Maori rights and responsibilities—a man in a trench coat walks on a beach, away from the camera and toward the water. It is a gray rainy day, and his body is obscured by the inclement weather. He turns and addresses the camera. “Ready?” he asks. He then takes a few more steps toward the water, turns to the camera once again, and says, “Is it okay?” The film cuts to an unmanned camera. Rain and heavy mist blow past it. An umbrella has been set up next to the camera, presumably to protect it from the elements . The film then cuts back to the man. He strides toward the camera, then stops and asks, “Are you rolling?” The film slowly zooms in on the unmanned camera. It stands there alone, with no one to guide it. The vocals from a Maori haka (posture dance) are soon heard, quietly at first, then steadily louder. In the next shot, we see the man in the trench coat standing in front of a group of Maori men. They are dressed in ceremonial costumes and performing a haka. The man stands perfectly still as they move and chant behind him. The film cuts to an extreme close-up of the unmanned camera. It lingers on that image. Even up close its workings are impenetrable. As one of the first Indigenous feature films produced in New Zealand, and by Barclay ’s count,1 one of only five such productions in all, Te Rua has been influential in the development of Maori media and self-perception. At the level of plot, the politics of the film are quite clear: a group of Maori activists are struggling for the repatriation of three ancestral carvings taken from their community in the 1880s and sold to a German collector. Now, more than a hundred years later, the carvings are held in the storeroom of a Berlin museum. Maori activists, both in New Zealand and abroad, work to have these carvings—their de facto ancestors—returned to their community. This repatriation effort drives the film’s narrative.2 8. Barry Barclay’s Te Rua The Unmanned Camera and Maori Political Activism A P R I L S T R I C K L A N D 144 A P R I L S T R I C K L A N D Yet, the film is more than a critique of the appropriation of cultural property, a polarized tale of bad Europeans and good Maori, or a morality play about colonial arrogance and Indigenous righteousness. Instead, it presents a vision of a restored Maori community and testifies to the efficaciousness of certain forms of Indigenous political activism. But it is strangely silent about Maori production of media, let alone its possible roles in this utopian vision. What kind of model and message does Te Rua offer when the Indigenous production process of images is shown to happen, as it were, all by itself?Why are we repeatedly shown images of an unmanned camera with no one behind it? If Maori activists are to be in control of their own “image destiny,” to use Barclay’s words,3 why is no one from the Maori community shown to be in control of the camera? This chapter tracks the notion of the unmanned camera in relation to Indigenous media, and my use of it as a heuristic for understanding the composite vision of Maori activism presented in Te Rua; how Barclay’s representation of the camera and its interlocutors is dependent on his notion of “talking in” and “talking out”; Barclay’s conception of the “marae” and the “invisible marae,” and the ways these serve to consolidate Maori community and suture past wounds; the role of technology and media in Te Rua’s depiction of community; and the proposed idea of “spiritual ownership” as an antidote to the commodification of Maori cultural property. The Unmanned Camera After the opening scene, Taki Ruru (the man in the trench coat) provides the historical context for the story. He stands in front of the unmanned camera and talks directly to theviewer.“OnlyourNannyknows,”hesays,“wherethemanisburied.Hisownbrother threw him out. That was on the day he heard what he and the German had...

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