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Electronic Indians An Indigenous Communication Network

I. Indians and the Globalization of the Media

For the Brazilian media, the 90s was a period marked by major transformations and globalization. Capital cities began receiving news from around the world on cable TV. Direct TV expanded this service throughout the entire country, while satellite dishes grew by the millions in rural areas. However, we must ask ourselves if this expansion will lead to a more comprehensive communications system, which can be used by all of societys sectors to express themselves and contribute to the building of a multiethnic nation. Will biases be reconsidered as a result of this communications acceleration? Will there be more respect for cultural differences, ideally brought closer together through information manipulated by diverse segments of society? The technological revolution, which multiplied the number of television stations, seemed to point to an expansion of the job market, to greater outsourcing and independent productions, and to the use of different formats, languages and voices. Instead, the same cartels monopolized the new media and outsourcing was conducted through a closed circuit. We saw programs being repeated, one after the other, in all sorts of channels. A few channels allowing new ideas and concepts to be expressed were opened. But they fell well below the original expectations of independent producers (11). Militants of the Black Movement recently met with Brazils president to ask that they be given their own television network. And how about the Indians? What place will they occupy in this scenario? For now, they only appear in the media as objects of peoples fantasies. Brazilian Indians form a tiny fraction of the countrys population (0.02%). But in compensation, they have an enormous symbolic importance, perpetuated through their image as good savages and jungle Indians. With no congressional representation of their own and unassisted by a bankrupt and
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1 - In Brazil, commercial cable TV has grown in geometrical progression. The Roberto Marinho Foundation together with other large corporations created Canal Futura, a cable educational TV station. The local stations of Rede Brasil, Brazils national network of educational TV stations that retransmit national programming, were allowed to go on the air two hours a day with their own locally produced programs. This gave them the status of mixed stations. A large number of these stations belong to foundations, universities and other state and municipal organs. It was in this framework that the innovative Programa de Indio (The Indian Program) was created in 1996 by the Centro de Trabalho Indigenista (Indian Work Center). The program, aimed at a nonIndian audience, involved the participation of Indians from the state of Mato Grosso and used the facilities of the TV station of the Federal University of Mato Grosso. We will comment on this experience later on.

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corrupt federal organ, Indians must resort to media events to make their voices heard and their basic rights met, especially those pertaining to territory. Some of these media events include the taking of hostages, the occupation of ranches and public buildings, and declarations of wars that never take place or hurt anyone. Over the past decades, these were the tools used by the Indians to conquer (or regain) their territory. The interest Brazilian Indians have in exchanging experiences among themselves becomes more relevant when we take into consideration the fact that the different Indian nations live isolated from each other. There are close to 210 ethnic groups that speak 180 different languages a cultural diversity that is multiplied by the wide variety of experiences created when there is contact. Indians gain a clear notion of the status society has reserved for them when they learn of the existence of other tribes and when they realize that all of them face the same difficulties in coexisting with the white man. They learn from each other new ways to interact with society. They create their own alternatives, which they first try out among themselves and then share with other tribes experiencing the same situation. These are new forms of representation that involve the rebuilding of their self-image and a process of selecting cultural traits that each tribe conducts in accordance to its own experience and interest in contacting other groups. Large pan-Indian meetings and the media may be the Indians last resource to make society aware of their plight and force the government to assume its responsibility. But they also reproduce and perpetuate societys cliches and biases. Journalists like politicians, bureaucrats and most citizens remain deaf to the voice of the Indians. They not only feel they know all there is to know about Indians, but also what is best for them. Thus, most documentaries and TV reports concerning Indians continue reflecting societys fascination with their traditional wisdom and knowledge, and lament their disappearance. No longer isolated, Brazilian Indians have made demands of our society that are rarely dealt with in the documents that claim to address the so-called Indian problem. Indians are seen as something akin to an endangered species and the impact of cultural globalization is dealt with simplistically as losses suffered by dominated cultures. It is within the context of these immense difficulties to make themselves heard that the challenge to participate in the global communications network assumes its importance. It is an importance that from our point of view is inversely proportional to the Indians condition as a minority, or as a group of more than 100 ethnic groups with rare contact opportunities, from their point of view. Indians need their own space in the media in order achieve greater visibility in Brazilian society and to have their voices heard by a media that prefers to talk about Indians rather than letting them speak for themselves. Once this media space is occupied, Indians would be able correct the distorted vision which most of society has of them.

II. The media and the twilight of Indian Nations

The primitivism or fragility of indigenous people is the bias most widely disseminated by the Brazilian media. It is a bias that justifies paternalistic concerns about their future. This concern, was manifested by sociologist Hlio Jaguaribe, who in a 1995 article said: There wont be any Indians left

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in Brazil by the end of the next century(22). This ethnocentric version of the history of our relationship with indigenous societies is not corroborated by the history experienced by thousands of different ethnic groups around the world. According to Jaguaribe, the future of non-Western societies depends on the incorporation - either on their own or through diffusion of elements of our culture, in detriment of theirs. Jaguaribe shares the commonly-held notion that the Indians use of electronic equipment TV sets, video cameras, etc is the foremost symbol of the destruction of his culture and loss of his identity. Electronic Indians actually form a small minority, since access to this kind of technology is difficult for most indigenous communities. Modern technology placed at the disposal of Indians be it in the form of manufactured goods such as tools, fire arms, etc, or chemical products like pharmaceuticals have never represented in themselves a step towards what Jaguaribe described as the civilized stage. The same can be said about the Indians dependence on industrialized goods, which do not necessarily represent an improvement in their living conditions. Indians do not refuse to be Brazilian citizens. They are aware of the techniques and knowledge that will help them improve their living conditions in accordance to cultural standards and forms of social organization they will never abandon. Yet, it is customary to deny Indians the right to modernity, for that would brand them as acculturated. The fact is that the methods they use to select and absorb external cultural traits do not necessarily result in a loss of identity. Our civilization neither causes theirs to fade away, nor does it represent an exclusive choice. The future Brazil has reserved for its Indians is one of marginality, the result of the plundering of the natural resources of their lands. They are constantly suffering from the growing number interventions by private initiative and government, without being given the necessary information. Most Brazilian Indians are unable to fully understand what drives our society to interfere in their lives. They have no access to the decision-making centers where such interventions are decided. They continue being deprived of the information they need to take a stance vis-a-vis such actions. The twilight, which is presented as an inexorable fatality in the historical process (3 3), is really a well-planned strategy of forced assimilation. This is reflected in the attitudes of Brazils population as a whole - which preserves its biases towards Indians - and of the government, that manipulates these biases to carry out a series of interventions in an authoritarian way. From a non-Indian point of view, to be or not to be an Indian is a matter of appearance. The image of the Indians as disseminated by the media is a simplistic gradient that goes from naked Indians walking in the rain forest to those who wear shorts; and from those who already use flip-flops and wristwatches to those who are completely assimilated and no longer correspond to the idealized image of the Indian
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The sociologists article (The Anthropological Garden of Neoliths - Folha de So Paulo Sept.1994) is one of many divulged by major newspapers that highlight this ethnocentric vision of the Indians future. Also see articles entitled Indians: The Twilight of a Race Manchete, July 8,1989 and Brazilian Indians: The Twilight of a People Estado de So Paulo, Dec.8, 1996.
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According to Jaguaribe, The historical destiny of the Brazilian Indian is to cease being an Indian and become a Brazilian citizen- Folha de So Paulo, Sept.1994.

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in the jungle. Indians do not recognize themselves in these images that are always conjured up by the white man, who continues describing the Indians primitive and authentic traits and insisting on the fragility of their cultures. While our society moves forward and expands itself, Indian society is expected to satisfy our longing for tradition by remaining still and immutable. But the Indians have shown us that their traditions are dynamic intellectual systems capable of change. Unfortunately, however, the media does not normally show us the processes in which Indians reflect on the changes taking place around them. As long as they are forced to keep quiet, their voices overpowered by those of people who consider themselves specialists, the dynamics of their culture will remain unknown. All that is left are images. Whenever appearances form the only means of communication between two different worlds, images and their manipulation will always have an important strategic value. Over the past two decades, local and national movements have been helping indigenous peoples invest in their future, especially through new forms of organization that strengthen their presence in the country. Through increased contacts, Indians have the opportunity to invigorate their differences, not only in relation to non-Indians but among themselves as well. Their transfiguration into the generic Indian category never took place, nor is it underway. Today, we can no longer state that the preservation of ethnic traits depends on isolation. On the contrary, the experience of Indians in Brazil and in the rest of the world shows us that cultural differences and their affirmation are a form of interaction economic, political or cultural that indigenous peoples want to maintain with our society. In this context, the adoption and use of communication instruments by electronic Indians does not always correspond to Helio Jaguaribes prognosis: the disappearance of their cultures.

III. Communication Between Indigenous Peoples and the Affirmation of Their Differences
Studies conducted in several continents show that the use of technology to guarantee communication between cultures strengthens the persistence of cultural differences. Australia and Canada, two countries that culturally and economically massacred their minorities, recently included in their constitutions the right of these minorities to have their own communications networks. Everything indicates that these countries finally realized that their ethnic minorities would not disappear and that their survival was not a threat to national sovereignty. These are concerns that still persist in Brazil. Some local experiences illustrate how interchange, comparison and confrontation have allowed indigenous communities to view their cultural traits in a different light and to value them in a new context. It is precisely the debate on these differences that offers these groups the chance to demand their own space. The structure of their cultures depends on the permanent recreation of differences that they assume as a form of political affirmation. These differences stand a lot to gain by having access to the means of communication. This is the real meaning behind the term electronic Indian: the capacity to use global communications instruments to overturn existing, commonly held biases. In the relationship between

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worlds that only communicate through appearances, images and their manipulation have a strategic value.

The Video in the Villages Project

Over the past 10 years, the Indian Work Centers video project has been helping Indians become aware of their image. It has placed information and technology at the disposal of some indigenous communities to encourage them to reconstruct self-representations and create a self-image. It also encourages them to exchange audio-visual material made available though a network of video libraries, which the project installed in several villages. At the same time, the project trained indigenous documentarists and opened space in the media to disseminate an image of Indians that was more suited to their own interests. These successful experiments have confirmed that the use of audio-visual instruments strengthens cultural identities. A project of this nature creates production dynamics in several levels.

The Impact of Videos in Villages

By installing a video monitor in a village, the Project is trying to bring about a technological revolution. It is a short cut that directly connects traditional forms of oral culture and history to audiovisual systems, bypassing the written word. By circumventing this individualized form of recording and transmitting knowledge, traditional forms of obtaining new information, such as collective debates, are strengthened. By recording and seeing their performances be they rituals or political negotiations in the village compound indigenous communities select, build and strengthen the cultural manifestations they wish to preserve for future generations and which best set them apart from the non-Indians. Leaders of many communities agreed to use video because they saw it as a way to see their stance of cultural resistance materialize in images and sound. The audio-visual, a universally understood language, is the only way these leaders can accomplish this, since most of them do not dominate the written word, a technique normally controlled by the younger generations. The most important function of video in these cases has been to record rituals, dances, songs, paintings and tribal adornments. By using video to come face-to-face with their own experiences in a wide variety of situations, these communities acquire new parameters to understand their status. Video also helps them discover new ways of relating to Brazilian society and government. This dual mechanism used to manipulate their own image and compare themselves to others involves a creative process that leads to a reflection of their reality and to an expansion of their horizons. It culminates in a revision of their self-image.

The Use of Documentaries to Disseminate Experience

The Projects team that over the past 10 years accompanied the Indians image -recording and manipulation processes, produced a series of documentaries in three different categories:

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. video process: case-by-case accounts of the encounters that several tribes have had with their own image and of their reflection on their self-representation; . video denunciation: documentaries that deal with the conflicts that are emblematic of the Brazilian Indians current situation; . institutional videos: these depict alternative development projects proposed by some communities, illustrating the control they have over their current contact situation and the transformations they are experiencing. Eighteen documentaries in five languages compose the series (44). They mirror the impact the Project has had in indigenous communities and, at the same time, serve as an instrument to obtain the funds needed to keep it alive. The Project is funded by international donations and through the sale of the videos. Unlike many conventional Indian theme productions that resort to a record/edit/distribute filming schedule, we avoid focusing on the final product. Instead, we first establish a dialogue with the communities to be documented. Between the films making and distribution, we invest in several intermediary stages that guarantee that these communities will become direct participants in the project. And it is because of this participation that we obtain that something extra the proximity and presence of these individuals that react to the cameras provocation and reflect, with us, on their future. The 1996 production of Segredos da mata (Secrets of the Forest) gave us the chance to conduct a new experience with the Waipi Indians. It is a narration and theatrical representation of encounters with the cannibalistic monsters that inhabit the tribes cosmology and day-to-day life. It was a new experience in dealing with Indian myths, where the Indians participation is limited to narration and where the content is depicted from the researchers perspective. For the Waipi as well as for other communities, video productions of fictional events represent a new approach to traditional themes. Each new work becomes part of a group, which when seen as a whole gains greater significance. The series has an innovative element that sets the productions apart from other documentaries on Brazilian Indians: only the Indian speaks there is no external commentary and he is always present, always creating something new in his relationship with the camera. In this road toward self-representation, unique ethnographic films are being created by the Indians themselves.

Distribution of this series has been growing steadily. Having been exhibited in many international festivals and winning several awards, the films were purchased by foreign TV stations (France, Denmark, Norway, Australia, Canada, the United States, Belgium and China). The publication of academic texts describing the project and frequent participation in seminars has also encouraged universities, educational secretariats, cultural centers and museums to acquire the series. The Indian Work Center distributes copies of this series in Brazil and in the rest of Latin America, where they are widely exhibited. We made a Spanish-language version for distribution to indigenous groups in the rest of the continent. Televiso Ibero Americana (Iberian-American Television) transmitted four programs so that all local educational TV networks could record and retransmit them.

7 A Window to the Outside World

The documentary makers being trained by the Project and who have already been working for some time are now editing their first works documentaries to be made accessible to a larger public. Ethnographic films produced by the Indians themselves are unique products unknown to the Brazilian media despite the fact that they have received international recognition in film festivals. The village-to-village training of indigenous video makers, which the Project began several years ago, has borne positive results for those who managed to finish their documentaries. These were initially conceived as descriptive narratives for internal consumption. This is the case of Kasiripin Waipi (Jane Moraita: Our Feasts) and of Caimi Waiasse from the Xavante village of Pimentel Barbosa (One Must be Curious). Their works demonstrate their dedication to registering themes of importance to their communities. The Project, together with the University of Mato Grosso TV an educational TV station in the city of Cuiab created the Indian Program in 1995/96. It was a unique experience that showed those Indians, taking part in the program, a path to be followed and a right to be demanded. The idea was to have the program serve as a school of journalism and production for Indians of several ethnic groups in Mato Grosso state. Besides portraying characters, the Indians created, produced and presented a TV program about themselves. This team was involved in the entire process from production to exhibition. The four programs were shown in Mato Grosso and on national network by TVE the Rio de Janeiro educational TV station. But the Indians themselves, who feel enormous pride when they recognize their leaders, form the Indian Programs most enthusiastic public. As a result of the discussions with this group, we realized that it felt it was too small and technically unprepared for the project. It also felt that more and better training would give them more confidence when dealing with the stations personnel. Discussions like these helped us trace our work plans for the coming years.

IV. Indian Voices: Perspectives Workshops and Videoletters

To a large degree, the Projects main challenge at the moment is to train a larger number of documentarists who will form a nationwide network of collaborators for a future Indian Program. Individuals must first be trained before occupying positions. We decided to professionalize the oldest group of students in regional improvement and production workshops where they could learn how to explain their culture to people from the same village and from far away cities. The coverage of a ceremonial ritual served as the workshop, and from a methodological point of view this approach has proved to be extremely productive and useful. Challenge and motivation surround this endeavor, for the community has a lot of expectations in terms of results. It also presents a wide variety of situations to be filmed. It is an ideal situation because it

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allows us to work together to improve techniques and develop content so that image and content are closely related, and objectivize each other. So-called videoletters are produced and circulated in these regional workshops to keep collaborators in contact with each other and encourage them to use audio-visual language. The network will meet periodically to collectively develop production projects in order to achieve its objective: the resumption of the Indian program on educational TV. Video and School The Project is also researching and indicating the best ways to use video in schools equipped by the remote education project. The use of video can transform the content of programs that are usually alienating and that normally encourage cultural domination, despite the efforts of many educators. Differentiated curriculums currently a joint effort by the Ministry of Education, universities and NGOs could benefit the mechanisms of reflection, which the use of video encourages. As we have already seen, the dynamics involved in the use of video in villages brings together several dimensions of cultural production and of traditional knowledge. The inclusion of video in school programs adapted to the reality of each group could help prepare local videomakers to record under the supervision of village elders - all that which valorizes the heritage of their communities. But the school should not be used only to produce audiovisuals that valorize a local culture. It should also be a place where TV programs transmitted from outside the communities are discussed and analyzed. In this respect, new educational guidelines should insist on the need to selectively compare and criticize information aired by the media. The introduction of indigenous communities in a universe of new knowledge could improve their interaction with the outside world. But it could also lead to passivity. Unlike books and pamphlets that are read individually, a video that is discussed in a public square or in a school will give the community more information than it actually contains. We must research and divulge experiences in which schools and video are able to interact in order to augment the potentiality of both. As a tradition-disseminating vehicle, video can be of enormous help in motivating children to focus their interest on their own people and heritage. Schools and the opportunities for reflection and analysis that they offer could help indigenous filmmakers go beyond recording the rituals and political meetings of their people. They should be encouraged to conduct a comprehensive research of their culture, and produce more consistent and elaborate documentaries for their schools, communities and the public in general.

Counseling and Public Policies

Over the past few years, the number of satellite dishes and TV sets in Indian villages has been growing progressively. TV Escola (School via TV), the Education Ministrys remote education megaproject is equipping thousands of rural schools with antennas, TV sets and videocassette players and has similar plans for 500 schools in indigenous communities. The challenge this new technological scenario poses is to potentiate the use of this equipment in a positive fashion. Public policies in this area could benefit from proposals based on the Projects accumulated experience.

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We have submitted a proposal to the ministrys Department of Indigenous Schools to research titles that are best suited for an indigenous-oriented curriculum. We have also suggested video libraries in schools and a wider and more systematic distribution of films dealing with Indian themes. Together with the School via TV Department we are preparing the scripts for a series on Indians and basic education. In the event the Project produces this series, the idea is to transform it into an inter-ethnic workshop in which Indians can explain who they are to millions of young Brazilians.