INDIGENOUS MEDIA FROM U-MATIC TO YOUTUBE: MEDIA SOVEREIGNTY IN THE DIGITAL AGE1

My article builds on more than 25 years of research and engagement with indigenous media makers, encompassed in a book in progress entitled Mediating culture: indigenous media in a digital age. In this work, I cover a wide range of projects from the earliest epistemological challenges posed by video experiments in remote Central Australia in the 1980s (Ginsburg, 1991) (Michaels, 1986) to the emergence of indigenous filmmaking as an intervention into both the Australian national imaginary and the idea of world cinema (Ginsburg, 2010) (Collins & Davis, 2005). I also address the political activism that led to the creation of four national indigenous television stations in the early 21st century: Aboriginal People’s Television Network in Canada; National Indigenous Television in Australia; Maori TV in New Zealand; and Taiwan Indigenous Television in Taiwan) (Ginsburg, 2011); and consider the questions of what the digital age might mean for indigenous people worldwide employing great technological as well as political creativity (Ginsburg, 2008). I draw on this knowledge to provide a broad context for discussing contemporary indigenous media in multiple locations, and to consider what connects and distinguishes these projects both concretely and theoretically. What kinds of opportunities and obstacles emerge from the shift to the digital for indigenous media makers in many different locations and across generations? The uptake of media technologies by indigenous producers – from the old analog format of U-Matic widely used in the 1980s,2 to contemporary digital

My article builds on more than 25 years of research and engagement with indigenous media makers, encompassed in a book in progress entitled Mediating culture: indigenous media in a digital age. In this work, I cover a wide range of projects from the earliest epistemological challenges posed by video experiments in remote Central Australia in the 1980s (Ginsburg, 1991) (Michaels, 1986) to the emergence of indigenous filmmaking as an intervention into both the Australian national imaginary and the idea of world cinema (Ginsburg, 2010) (Collins & Davis, 2005). I also address the political activism that led to the creation of four national indigenous television stations in the early 21 st century: Aboriginal People's Television Network in Canada; National Indigenous Television in Australia; Maori TV in New Zealand; and Taiwan Indigenous Television in Taiwan) (Ginsburg, 2011); and consider the questions of what the digital age might mean for indigenous people worldwide employing great technological as well as political creativity (Ginsburg, 2008).
I draw on this knowledge to provide a broad context for discussing contemporary indigenous media in multiple locations, and to consider what connects and distinguishes these projects both concretely and theoretically.
What kinds of opportunities and obstacles emerge from the shift to the digital for indigenous media makers in many different locations and across generations? The uptake of media technologies by indigenous producers -from the old analog format of U-Matic widely used in the 1980s, 2 to contemporary digital sociol. antropol. | rio de janeiro, v.06.03: 581 -599, december, 2016 http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/2238-38752016v632 582 indigenous media from u-matic to youtube: media sovereignty in the digital age sociol. antropol. | rio de janeiro, v.06.03: 581 -599, december, 2016 social media platforms such as YouTube and mobile phones -has often been motivated, at least initially, by a desire to "talk back" to structures of power that have erased or distorted indigenous interests and realities, and denied them access to dominant media outlets. Many of the works and projects that have been produced might best be understood as forms of "cultural activism," a term that underscores the intertwined sense of both political agency and cultural intervention that people bring to these efforts to sustain and transform cultural practices in aboriginal communities. These are activities linked to indigenous efforts to assert their rights to self-representation, governance, and cultural autonomy after centuries of assimilationist policies by surrounding states, part of a spectrum of practices of self-conscious mediation and cultural mobilization more generally that began to take on particular shape and velocity in the late 20 th century. Even as indigenous media have evolved in sophistication and reach in many parts of the world, these central motivations continue to drive much of the work, whether created by people living in remote communities or those in urban centers. While cultural, linguistic and historical circumstances certainly differ, similar circumstances wrought by colonial histories are faced by indigenous communities everywhere and these frequently motivate their uptake of media. Additionally, it is important to keep in mind the possibilities and constraints of the political economy and material conditions that shape contemporary digital media, especially given the lack of digital infrastructure in many remote areas.
In this article, I want to focus on some of the key issues facing indigenous media makers, including the expense and sustainability of media and the constant search for funding; the lack of digital infrastructure and its constant obsolescence; and issues of archiving and access according to the demands of both preservation and cultural protocols.
From the vantage point of the second decade of the 21 st century, it is hard to imagine that, just a little over two decades ago, some scholars were assuming that the uptake of media in indigenous communities would be the death knell for "authentic cultural practices," despite considerable evidence to the contrary (Weiner, 1997). The broader question this raised -what in 1991 I called the Faustian contract -as to whether indigenous peoples (or indeed, minority or dominated subjects anywhere) can assimilate dominant media into their own cultural and political concerns or are inevitably compromised by their presence, haunted much of the research and debate on indigenous media at that time (Ginsburg, 1991). Happily, the uptake of media in indigenous communities has gone well.
Before exploring particular cases, I would like to provide a brief overview of the current state of things and introduce some key concepts. Indigenous media work has become a particularly robust form of contemporary cultural production, expressive of longstanding concerns shared by indigenous 583 article | faye ginsburg people across the planet to gain control over their representations. I think of this as media sovereignty, a term I introduce to describe practices through which people exercise the right and develop the capacity to control their own images and words, including how these circulate. Here, I draw on a classic legal definition of sovereignty as the possession of authority over an area, extending this more typical idea of political authority over a land and populace to the possession of technical, cultural, political and creative control over media produced by indigenous peoples and about their lives. This approach dialogues with the discourses of native North American intellectuals emergent since the mid-20 th century. I build on the idea of 'visual sovereignty,' initially deployed in 1995 by Tuscarora scholar, artist and curator Jolene Rickard (Rickard, 2011), to characterize the interventions of indigenous artists in the North American context that amplify in another register the legal-political assertion of sovereignty as a complex, expressive indigenous visual imaginary. More recently, Seneca scholar Michelle Raheja expanded on the term and its genealogy, elaborating on its connotations and furthering its recognition in her important 2011 book, Reservation reelism: redfacing, visual sovereignty, and representations of native Americans in film (Raheja, 2013). In this work she shows how "video-makers and cultural artists are […] interrogating the powers of the state, providing nuanced and complex forms of self-representation, imagining a futurity that militates against the figure of the vanishing Indian, and engaging in visual sovereignty on virtual reservations of their own creation" (2013: 240).
Raheja acknowledges a genealogy that includes the influence of Tewa/Dine (Santa Clara Pueblo) writer and filmmaker Beverly Singer's notion of 'cultural sovereignty,' which she uses to describe Native American filmmakers' strategies that rely on trust "in the older ways and adapting them to our lives in the present," an idea developed in her 2001 book, Wiping the warpaint off the lens (Singer, 2001: 5).
From small-scale video and local radio to digital projects, archival websites, and mobile phone films, to national indigenous television stations and feature films, indigenous media makers have found opportunities for all kinds of cultural creativity, increasingly on their own terms. Some are directly engaged with political actions; more frequently, the projects are forms of cultural activism. They often support the maintenance or even revival of ritual practices and local languages, as well as historical knowledge, while building forms of cultural expression that frequently serve to repair fraying inter-generational relationships, bringing much needed sources of productive activity and at times income into communities that habitually suffer from poverty, anomie and political disenfranchisement. I wish to give you a sense of the remarkable range of work, using a wide variety of technologies and involving many different community or institutional bases, that is encompassed by the term 'indigenous media.' 584 indigenous media from u-matic to youtube: media sovereignty in the digital age sociol. antropol. | rio de janeiro, v.06.03: 581 -599, december, 2016 -small-format local productions, originally produced in analog video, beginning in the 1980s, and now on digital formats; -the creation of local and regional television over the last two decades, as they together imagine and invent new ways to build in cultural protocols, such as restrictions on viewing images of people who have died. Non-alphabetic language uses are also being imagined, as in the groundbreaking work of the Ara Irititja project in Australia. 5 In the next section, I focus on the question of archives, and the sense of crisis and creativity shaping some contemporary projects that have been addressing the need to sustain and preserve this work for the communities that made them, a crucial aspect of media sovereignty that, in my view, has been insufficiently addressed.

For many 'legacy' indigenous media organizations, such as the Kayapo Video
Project catalyzed by Terry Turner (2006), questions of sustainability loom large, given the difficulties posed by scarce labor and resources, along with the ravages of tropical, desert or Arctic environments. This situation is made even more complex by the shift to digital platforms as the hyper-capitalist imperatives of planned obsolescence that shape contemporary computer technologies render certain kinds of formats and software outdated over shorter and shorter periods of time, meaning that the costs of purchasing newer versions are constantly looming. This is something we have all experienced when attempting (or being required to install) so-called upgrades to operating systems, only to discover, to our frustration, that the programs we have been using for years can no longer function, an experience that the industry calls "lack of backward compatibility." 6 While this poses some awkward problems for those of us in first-world academic settings with ready access to technological support and funding, the consequences of the shift to digital infrastructures in remote areas of the indigenous world can be far more troubling, although such challenges are often met with considerable creativity. forward with them on a plan to care for this collection through the support of a Mellon Foundation grant, and are currently writing to acquire this material in trust with the museum. While this circumstance arose from a crisis precipitated by national austerity measures, it also offers us the opportunity, in the age of YouTube, to upgrade materials to contemporary formats that were first recorded on older ones such as 16mm, VHS or the even older U-Matic, once the state of the art analog electronic format until the 1990s.
Such a relocation of materials to a new site necessitates more than technological transfers. If we are to respect the framework of media sovereignty, we will need to rekindle social relations with the many media makers and their communities represented in the NMAI collection, from Igloolik Isuma in the Arctic to the work of Mapuche filmmakers such as Jeanette Paillan from southern Chile, in order to renew and extend permissions to hold their work in a new location and, if appropriate, make it available as a study collection.
We also are working with faculty to develop creative solutions to the dilemmas faced by digital archives, including possibilities for traditional knowledge licenses and labels as alternatives to copyright controls developed for corporate purposes, in particular the Local Contexts project. 8 These kinds of projects offer opportunities that need to be kept in mind -especially by those of us able to act as allies in mobilizing the resources available in our institutions when our indigenous colleagues outside the academy face challenges. Renewing permissions and relationships, and making a wide range of indigenous article | faye ginsburg media work available for source communities, teaching and research are important outcomes, and also demonstrate how those of us working in universities can use the resources we have available to support indigenous media makers in the digital age, not only by showcasing work but also by providing the financial and infrastructural support that can help preserve indigenous media archives for future generations.
Let me offer another example of creative solutions to indigenous media archiving. Ara Irititja -which translates from the Pitjantjatjara language as "stories from long ago" -was created by indigenous producers from the Ngaanyatjarra, Pitjantjara and Yankunytjatjara peoples of central Australia, known collectively as Anangu, along with their non-indigenous supporters (Srinivasan et al., 2010). Inaugurated in 1994, the project has been dedicated to repatriating 'lost' material -artifacts, photographs, film footage and sound records -shot and recorded by visitors to these lands, including missionaries, school teachers, anthropologists and government workers, and then taken away. Despite being potentially of huge value to Anangu, most of these items had been removed and placed in the archives of public institutions, in family photo albums or old suitcases and boxes, stored in closets and under beds. Now, more than two decades after its founding, Ara Irititja staff members have tracked down hundreds of thousands of films and photos. Due to the harsh environmental conditions of desert life, fragile materials cannot be physically held in remote settlements but are carefully maintained by supporters in the South Australia Museum. However, they are all digitally returned using a purposebuilt knowledge management system. As their website explains: Anangu are passionate about protecting their [recently discovered] archival past, accessing it today and securing it for tomorrow. Anangu have managed complex cultural information systems for thousands of years, restricting access to some knowledge on the basis of seniority and gender, priorities that have been built into their cultural lives for millennia, and that now shape the design of their digital archive. In the past, Anangu were photographed and their knowledge recorded and published without any negotiation. Today, Anangu are careful to determine how their history and culture are presented to the world-wide audience. 9 The interface was designed to be easy to use by people who might not be literate in English as a first language, using large icons familiar to communities, minimizing difficulties for populations with high rates of eye problems and little familiarity with computer tools. The software was adapted to restrict access to sensitive materials, such as images of recently deceased people (since these tend to cause distress to Anangu). Additionally, separate databases were created to protect the privacy concerns surrounding both rigorous. Finally, the new system is delivered using the web but via a private intranet adhering to strict Anangu privacy imperatives. In response to the fundamental question 'How long will Ara Irititja last?' the website has a compelling statement that, I suspect, applies to many indigenous communities, although the optimism about the promise of technologies for preservation must be taken with a grain of salt.
From the late 20 th century, Anangu have become overwhelmed by cultural globalization through national and international media. This has caused widespread concern among the elders about the transmission of culture and language under contemporary conditions. In 2014, this issue is critical. Elders who carry the culture are ageing and many are in failing health. When they are gone, the knowledge dies with them. Ara Irititja's management system provides a means for this knowledge to be passed on through the use of contemporary technology and can provide this forever. 10 Let me turn to a third case in which early analog indigenous media listening," which allows the subject's voice to shape the narrative by providing the time needed during production for this process to occur (Ginsburg, 1991).
The result is an invaluable video archive about indigenous lives lived over the last century in remote Central Australia, strong cultural leaders who often had no contact with 'whitefellas' until they were young adults. NITV's efforts to digitize this early analog work, originally shot in U-Matic, and make it available on new platforms to a national audience gives these remarkable if undervalued works new significance, amplifying the work of CAAMA and its important early enactment of media sovereignty in the late 20 th century. On NITV, the works are further enhanced by the introduction provided by Warwick Thornton, now one of Australia's most recognized filmmakers and artists, whose own work began on the Nganampa series in Alice Springs 20 years ago. 11 It is worth observing that in two of the key locales where indigenous media initially developed -Canada and Australia -it did so in response to the entry of mass media into the lives of First Nation peoples through the state's imposition of satellite-based commercial television over the remote regions where more traditional populations lived, beginning in Canada in the late 1970s and then Australia in the 1980s. Remote indigenous communities vigorously opposed the 'dumping' of mainstream media into their lives, insisting on the opportunity to shape their own media to meet local concerns. At the same time, the increasing availability of inexpensive user-friendly small-format analog video systems and small satellite dishes presented an opportunity for these groups to produce their own work. Some indigenous activists imagined their productions, metaphorically, as a shield of local manufacture capable of fending off the invasion of these other signals from the dominant culture (Ginsburg, 1991). This was the case made famous in a pioneering initiative by activist researcher Eric Michaels, initially hired to study the impact of media on indigenous people living in the Central Desert of Australia. In the 1980s, he 590 indigenous media from u-matic to youtube: media sovereignty in the digital age sociol. antropol. | rio de janeiro, v.06.03: 581 -599, december, 2016 worked with Warlpiri people to help them develop their own analog video practices and low-power television -what he called The Aboriginal Invention of Television in Central Australia (1986) -created as an alternative to the onslaught of commercial television via satellite (Michaels, 1986). Thus these projects provided a kind of natural laboratory for understanding the possibilities of radically different media practices that remain 'off the grid' of most media scholarship or research addressing indigenous lives (contexts in which media practices are still too easily regarded as either epiphenomenal or insufficiently traditional).
The significance of 'embedded aesthetics' in the indigenous media being produced in traditional Aboriginal communities is still insufficiently appreciated. I created this term in 1994 to call attention to a system of evaluation that refuses any separation of textual production and circulation from broader arenas of social relations (Ginsburg, 1994). This is evident, for example, in Kayapo video productions and their valorization of the temporal dimensions of ritual, and qualities enhanced by repetition, amplified from embodied performance to its doubled presence on video. With embedded aesthetics, the quality of a work is assessed according to its capacity to represent, embody, sustain and even revive or create certain social relations both on and off screen, respecting longstanding protocols appropriate to the group making the work. Indigenous media can be seen as a new kind of object, therefore, operating in a number of domains as an extension of collective self-production in ways that enhance indigenous regimes of value. As another instance of this complex sense of embedded aesthetics, anthropologist/artist Jennifer Deger's work with Yolngu media makers from the Gapuwiyak community in Arnhemland, northern Australia, focuses on what we could call an indigenous (Yolngu) theory of 'media effects.' As she explains in her book Shimmering Screens, traditional concepts of the impact of revelation, witnessing and showing are constitutive of identity, a kind of active viewing that empowers and catalyzes ancestral power, rendered evident to knowledgeable viewers, even if it remains invisible to non-Yolngu audiences (Deger, 2006). Cohn's words underscore how indigenous media projects formed over the last decades are now positioned at the conjuncture of a number of crucial historical developments: these include the circuits opened by new media technologies, including digital circuits, satellites, compressed video, cyberspace, and mobile phones, as well as their links to ongoing legacies of indigenous cultural activism worldwide. Now, this work is increasingly being produced by a generation comfortable with media and concerned with making their own distinctive representations as a mode of everyday cultural creativity and social action.
I conclude on a note of cautious optimism. The evidence of the growth and creativity of indigenous media over the last two decades, whatever problems may have accompanied these developments, is nothing short of remarkable, whether working out of grounded remote communities, urban indigenous enclaves or broader regional, national or transnational bases. Indigenous media activism alone certainly cannot unseat the power asymmetries which underwrite the profound inequalities that continue to shape the world, or resolve the issues and images that their media interventions raise about their past legacies, present lives and cultural futures. These are on a continuum with broader issues of self-determination, cultural rights, political sovereignty and environmental degradation, and may help bring some attention to these profoundly troubling and interconnected concerns.
As indigenous media has grown more robust over the last two decades -in part because of the increasing convergence of media forms that blur the boundaries delineating television from film, web-based work or phone made media. The remarkably diverse array of works suggest that this emergence of media sovereignty -the synthesis of command over media technology with new and ongoing forms of collective self-production and the control over circulation -has much to offer indigenous communities as they redefine their lives to themselves, the world and future generations.