The Fourth Eye: M ori Media in Aotearoa New Zealand

6. Theorizing Indigenous Media

101 [Maori] are aware of how negatively we are portrayed in television, in film and in newspapers . . . [and] are becoming increasingly aware that at some stage in this media game, we must take control of our own image . . . only when we do that, only when we have some measure of self-determination about how we appear in the media will the truth be told about us. Only when we have control of our image will we be able to put on the screen the very positive images that are ourselves, that are us. —Merata Mita, “TheValue of the Image,” cited in Leonie Pihama, “Re-Presenting Maori” In Arizona in the mid-1960s, Sol Worth and John Adair carried out a unique project, which later led to their 1972 book Through Navajo Eyes: An Exploration in FilmCommunicationandAnthropology.1 Theprojectwasrevolutionary.First,itveered away from the traditions of Western rationalism and anthropology by acknowledging that the Navajo might see the world differently than Western eyes, signifying a multilensed reality. Second, the researchers “put the means of production and representation into the hands of indigenous people . . . teaching filmmaking to young Navajo students without the conventions of western production and editing, to see if their films would reflect a distinctively Navajo film worldview.”2 Worth and Adair’s vision is outlined in the opening paragraphs of their book: Our object in the summer of 1966 was to determine whether we could teach people with a culture different from ours to make motion pictures depicting their culture and themselves as they saw fit.We assumed that if such people would use motion pictures in their own way, they would use them in a patterned rather than a random fashion, and that the particular patterns they used would reflect their culture and their particular cognitive style.3 While the importance of Through Navajo Eyes is hardly recognized in New Zealand, many of the underpinning ideas and problematics that the project’s unique approach brings to bear can be seen resurfacing as Indigenous people have attempted to define Indigenous media. For instance, central to the above quote is the thesis that if 6. Theorizing Indigenous Media B R E N DA N H O KO W H I T U 102 B R E N D A N H O K O W H I T U Indigenous people control media technology then, in this case, the filmic production will reflect the “patterns” and “cognitive style” of Indigenous epistemic knowledge. The development of Indigenous-controlled media has largely occurred because Indigenous peoples have witnessed their misrepresentation and nonrecognition by others. In defining “the politics of recognition” in relation to what he refers to as “subaltern groups,” Charles Taylor suggests that identity is partly shaped by recognition or its absence, often by the misrecognition of others, and so a person or group of people can suffer real damage, real distortion, if the people or society around them mirror back a confining or demeaning or contemptible picture of themselves. Nonrecognition or misrecognition can inflict harm, can be a form of oppression , imprisoning someone in a false, distorted, and reduced mode of being.4 As the Introduction to this collection points out, in New Zealand, Indigenous claims to distinctive rights have occurred simultaneously with the development of Indigenous media. A significant moment for New Zealand Indigenous media occurred in 2003 when the host of the annual Treaty of Waitangi celebrations, Nga Puhi (a northern North Island iwi), banned mainstream media journalists from attending the annual pre-celebration gatherings because historically public sentiment had been so heavily Figure 6.1. Keith Hawke, Waka Attewell, and Barry Barclay filming Tangata Whenua (Wellington: Pacific Films, 1974) at the Ngati Porou Marae, Tikitiki, East Cape, April 25, 1974. Image courtesy of photographer Rick Spurway. T H E O R I Z I N G I N D I G E N O U S M E D I A 103 influenced by the news media’s misrepresentation of these events. As Sue Abel points out, “Mainstream media had over the years continually overlooked what went on for several days atWaitangi, focusing instead on what was often merely a few moments of conflict.”5 The actions of Nga Puhi at once recognized their historical misrecognition in mainstream media, while also creating the conditions for a space of self-realization. Robert Young suggests the oppressive...