The Politics of the Camera: Visual Storytelling and Sovereignty in Victor Masayesva's Itam Hakim, Hopiit

In her 1990 article "Videomakers and Basketmakers," Leslie Marmon Silko declares, "In Victor Masayesva's hands, video is made to serve Hopi consciousness and to see with Hopi eyes" (Silko, "Videomakers" 73). This Hopi "consciousness" is reflected in his films' content, which feature traditional basket making, weaving, and the planting, harvesting, and storing of corn, the most sacred essence in the Hopi worldview.¹ Just as significant, however, is Masayesva's style and point of view, which reflect the Hopis' historic suspicion of visual representation. The Hopis have long been exploited through photography and film, and Masayesva's films reflect his nation's profound ambivalence toward filmmaking. Unfortunately, his ambivalence and privileging of Hopi audiences over non-Hopi viewers has led to limited critical interest in Masayesva's films.² However, the very thing that limits critical interest is precisely what makes his films worthy of study; his films openly expose the politics associated with American Indian filmmaking. The fact that Masayesva openly addresses his ambivalence toward film indicates his self-reflexivity and willingness to engage his viewers in an extended inquiry into the strengths and limitations of the art of the camera. By acknowledging his own ambivalence, Masayesva encourages his viewers to engage in a multifaceted dialogue about representation, the role of the viewer, and the possibilities and dangers of storytelling through film. This reflexivity indicates both Masayesva's critique of and complicity in the politics associated with visual representation. I hope to prove that his skepticism toward the camera, while challenging for viewers, ultimately reflects and contributes to Hopi sovereignty.

Cameras in Hopi Land

In his introduction to Hopi Photographers/Hopi Images (1983), Masayesva, who began his career as a still photographer, discusses his own ambivalence toward the camera. He describes how the subject of one of his photographs called him a Kwikwilyaqa, a spiritual katcina that uses "buffoonery, burlesque" to make social commentary ("KWIKWILYAQA" 11). While he initially laughed at the similarity between his head under the camera's focusing cloth and the blanket the katcina wears over his head, "[l]ater came the sober realization that he might have meant Kwikwilyaqa in the perspective of what this being does: he duplicates" (11). Masayesva is all too aware of the danger of "duplicating" mainstream American culture, of using Euroamerican tools and ways of seeing to explore the Hopi worldview, especially since the camera, the ultimate tool for reflecting the mainstream viewpoint, has long been an instrument of imperialism.

The Hopis were one of the earliest tribes to be photographed and filmed by non-Natives. After gaining control of Hopi land at the end of the Mexican-American War, the U.S. government began to survey the land for the building of a transcontinental railroad; the accompanying survey photographer was to record the land, waterways, and the "Indians future travelers might encounter" (Photographers 15). The Hopis were perceived by these mid-nineteenth-century photographers as objects to be recorded for future tourists. They, the land, and even their culture were to be controlled, catalogued, and owned.³ This initial objectification through tourist photography was soon followed by ethnographic photographs taken by John K. Hiller, Edward S. Curtis, Joseph Mora, and others in an attempt to collect information on a people they judged incapable of recording their own histories. Photographers like Heinrich Voth and Adam Clark Vroman soon began intrusively photographing private Hopi ceremonies. When the Hopis began to protest, these men resorted to sneaking cameras into kivas, private ceremonial rooms that only the initiated may enter (Graulich 82). As James Riding In notes, early photographs of American Indians "illustrate the schizophrenia of U.S. society towards Native people," as they depict American Indians as uncouth, backward, and unchanging while simultaneously reflecting a desire to preserve and possess elements of these cultures before they "vanish" (52). Simon Ortiz describes how the stereotype of the "Vanishing Indian" was used to elide the very real way that U.S. policies led to American Indian deaths: "Real and actual Indian peoples and their cultures vanished into an...