Sovereign Screens: Aboriginal Media on the Canadian West Coast

Introduction

1 Introduction Vancouver’s Aboriginal Media World What does Aboriginal sovereignty look like on- and off-screen? This question has guided my decade-long research on Aboriginal media in Canada and is a significant question among Aboriginal filmmakers who define Aboriginal media practice through their work. Many scholars recognize the political dimensions of Aboriginal sovereignty through attention to land claims, treaty rights, tribal governments, and economic development within Aboriginal communities. Visual sovereignty is a concept pioneered by Tuscarora artist and scholar Jolene Rickard (1995) that has proven to be a salient framework expanded upon by other scholars of indigenous media (Ginsburg 2002; Lewis 2006; Raheja 2007; Singer 2001; Wilson and Stewart 2008). I use the concept of Aboriginal visual sovereignty to analyze the ways in which Aboriginal filmmakers stake a claim for Aboriginal stories in the dominant Canadian “mediascape” (Appadurai 1991) while simultaneously reimagining the screen to incorporate Aboriginal cultural protocols, languages, and aesthetics on-screen as well as off-screen.1 Aboriginal sovereignty represents the distinctive political status that derives from Aboriginal peoples’ ties to lands prior 2 Introduction to colonization. Sovereignty references a variety of domains in Aboriginal life from cultural to political to spiritual, and also, I would argue, to the domain of media production. I define visual sovereignty as the articulation of Aboriginal peoples’ distinctive cultural traditions, political status, and collective identities through aesthetic and cinematic means. I locate Aboriginal visual sovereignty in the act of production. As Cleo Reece emphatically proclaimed in the story that opens the preface, “We’re doing it ourselves! We’re producing our own images.” This is Aboriginal visual sovereignty. Like Reece, I contend that an Aboriginal filmmaker’s act of creating a media work is an act of self-determination . Speaking back to the legacy of misrepresentation in dominant media is an act of cultural autonomy that reclaims the screen to tell Aboriginal stories from Aboriginal perspectives. Some scholars have explored whether there is an “indigenous aesthetic” within Aboriginal media (Leuthold 1998), often focusing on certain formal elements in indigenous cinema such as the emphasis on land or a nonlinear storytelling structure. Other scholars have focused on the transnational and intercultural dimensions of “Fourth World cinema” in search of postcolonial poetics within international indigenous films (Columpar 2010). These approaches often focus on the on-screen aesthetics of Aboriginal media and comparisons between dominant and Aboriginal cinematic aesthetics. I agree that the on-screen aesthetics of Aboriginal media are distinctive in that Aboriginal filmmakers draw on aspects of indigeneity in the tone, structure, editing, framing, and content on-screen. However, there is no singular Aboriginal media aesthetic , but rather multiple Aboriginal aesthetics that reflect the individual artistic expression of the filmmaker and the Aboriginal nation in which he or she is a citizen. I argue that the off-screen production process itself is crucial for understanding media production as an act of sovereignty. Filmmaking is an inherently social process that often requires the labor of numerous individuals in order to complete a project. Aboriginal filmmakers often Introduction 3 rely upon friends and family during this production process. The production process creates more than merely a set of film or video footage; it is a process through which Aboriginal social relationships can be created, negotiated, and nurtured. Translating an indigenous story to the screen is an active process, and it is out of these off-screen negotiations that Aboriginal social relations can be shaped and constituted. Given the history of the disruption of Aboriginal families and communities through colonial policies—the creation of reserves, the gender discrimination in the Indian Act, and the residential school system—it is an act of sovereignty to bridge these ruptures and repair Aboriginal social relationships through the process of media production.2 Aboriginal social ties can also be reflected in the role of the intended audience for an Aboriginal film. When an Aboriginal director is behind the camera, his or her tribal community and an Aboriginal audience are often configured as the primary audience , in stark contrast to mainstream media where Aboriginal viewers are rarely constructed as a key audience demographic. This consideration of an Aboriginal audience for Aboriginal media also expresses visual sovereignty. The filmmakers with whom I work make media that circulates nationally and globally. And yet these filmmakers articulate a sense of making films for their Aboriginal communities first and foremost, and secondly for other indigenous audiences in Canada and around...