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Audiovisual Archives of Indigenous Voices

Words by Louise Hisayasu

Fire at Museu Nacional, Rio de Janeiro

In early September 2018, a devastating fire engulfed the Museu Nacional in Rio de Janeiro.  The 200-year-old structure, Brazil’s oldest scientific and historical building, held an archive of around 20 million artefacts.  Among these artefacts were invaluable materials documenting the history and culture of Brazil’s indigenous communities.    

Journalist Camila Zarur reported that little to nothing was salvaged from the Centro de Documentação de Línguas Indígenas (CELIN), which has documented indigenous languages for the past two centuries. Indigenous rights advocate José Urutau Guajajara believes the fire was the “death of the memory of the originary peoples, negligence to [their] patrimony. The memory of all Latin American languages was [there]. Sonic and written records of peoples who no longer exist,” concluding  that we are watching indigenous culture being erased. Brazilian philosopher Djamila Ribeiro says that the fire mirrored the country’s “institutional neglect” and disregard for its history, further stating  that the loss of artefacts and research “reflected Brazil’s ignorance of its African and indigenous heritage, and its indifference to an ignoble history of slavery and oppression.”  Writer and political theorist Mirna Wabi-Sabi believes the tragedy of the fire began long before the flames. She reports that the country feels ashamed not to have been able to maintain a European notion of history, and that the loss of rare artefacts must be considered  with an understanding of the value that is attributed to said artefacts, without forgetting the ethno- and Euro-centric processes inherently tied into Brazilian history.

The fire at Museu Nacional has not been the first to affect documents and artefacts pertaining to indigenous communities. In 1967, a fire erupted at the Ministry of Agriculture, which housed the Serviço de Proteção aos Índios (Indian Protection Service).  The SPI held many documents in relation to land rights and indigenous registries. In a pre-digitisation era, the loss was great. Amongst registries was the Figueiredo Report. Released in the same year, the 7,000 page document detailed mass murder, enslavement, bacteriological warfare, land theft, and negligence committed against indigenous peoples in Brazil from 1940 to 1960, often at the hands of the SPI itself. The document was believed to have been lost in the fire, until it was more recently uncovered in the Indian Museum in Rio de Janeiro by human rights lawyer Marcelo Zelic

With Brazil’s new president, Jair Bolsonaro, declaring war on Brazil’s indigenous population, using rhetoric that aggressively discriminates and incites violence, 2019 has already begun with a great mobilisation for the protection of indigenous rights, including  the right to their own memory.

The photographs featured in this article are from Travelling Through the Territory, by photojournalist Gabriel Uchida--a project which positions itself on the other side, as a counter-discursive, collaborative narrative which attempts to shift our perspective on the understanding of otherness. The images are archaeological fragments of a history between us and them. Uchida explores indigenous people’s narratives in reaction to the encounter with settlers.  He writes: “since the end of the 18th century, date of the first naturalistic expeditions to the North and Central West regions of Brazil, the increasing sophistication of image production has been put on the service of exploration and control of territories.” Working with the Uru-eu-wau-wau people in the Brazilian Amazon, he was given access to the community’s collection, which held pages of magazines, academic texts and other visual records accumulated over several years. The Uru-wau-wau had stained the documents and images with “urucum” (red natural ink), scratched and punctured, creating a visual story of the contact between themselves and the world outside. Uchida documents their collection in his work, investigating the Uru-wau-wau’s gaze upon us, making us the other.

Protagonismo Índigena

Protagonismo Indígena, or indigenous protagonism,  is a term which often appears in relation to indigenous empowerment movements in Brazil. More indigenous protagonists are needed to tell their stories. Although the digital divide is still very much present, digital technologies provide increasingly accessible and affordable tools. Cultural Survival, an advocacy organization that partners with indigenous communities,  reports on the different ways that the internet is used by indigenous communities. This article shares some concepts and projects which promote indigenous protagonism, archives, and future archives of first-person narratives.

Rádio Yandê

By Denilson Baniwa. Photo courtesy of Rádio Yandê.

Rádio Yandê is an online radio station founded in November 2013 by Anápuáka Tupinambá, Renata Tupinambá, and Denilson Baniwa. Between them, they hold communication, journalism and fine arts degrees. They are activists and active indigenous voices, seeking the inclusion of their culture in national and global forums . Rádio Yandê takes inspiration from Programa de Índio, the first radio show to be produced entirely by indigenous people, which aired on Rádio USP (University of São Paulo) between 1985 and 1990. A collection of around 200 shows were digitised and made available in 2009. Rádio Yandê is fully online, a conscious decision to be able to run independently from governmental affiliations. The internet as a medium has less boundaries, possibility for more rapid dissemination, and offers reciprocal communication. 

Anápuáka developed the concept of etnomídia, or ethnomedia, as the main bedrock of the station. Etnomídia  is a tool that supports the active decolonisation of media and communication practices and promotes ethnic digital inclusion. According to Anápuáka, their project and outlook is still new, but people are accepting this novelty: “We have been able to appropriate technologies, become protagonists of our own media. We already have the power to show our own image”.  Rádio Yandê provides a virtual meeting point for indigenous and non-indigenous communities. Their diverse programming continuously runs indigenous music from all over the world, news, rituals, education, and cultural features. In decolonising media, the program creates space  for content that would otherwise not be considered fit for radio, such as recorded ceremonies which are sometimes 5 hours long.

Katú Mirim

”Fantasia de índio é apropriação? Escola de samba racista?”

Musician and indigenous blogger Katú Mirim has a Youtube channel for her music and a vlog. She is an índigena urbana, who was born and raised in an urban landscape. In the late 1990’s, indigenous peoples living outside of rural communities were not considered by the government to have  indigenous heritage. Indigenous people were defined by location, rather than their heritage, beliefs, and lineage. 

A recurring theme in Mirim’s Youtube videos is the portrayal of indigenous bodies and images of native people. In 2018, ahead of Carnaval, she released a vlog educating her listeners on why “dressing up” in indigenous costumes only adds to a stereotype about Brazilian indians that dominates the media. Her tattoos accentuate her claim that how you look or dress does not define who you are. She asks listeners to reflect upon and challenge what they learned at school about indigenous populations.  Her hashtag #índionãoéfantasia is often used and compared to the concept of redface.

"Fantasia de índio é apropriação? Escola de samba racista?”

Another notable project, which doesn’t necessarily fit under etnomídia, is Vídeo nas Aldeias, founded in the mid-1980s by Anthropologist Vincent Carelli. It brought film equipment to different villages, promoting workshops for the training of indigenous filmmakers. VNA is an important audiovisual outlet for indigenous communities to portray themselves in whichever frame they choose. Through storytelling, documentaries, and made-up modes of narration, they own the copyright to their own images, and have a cyclical and sustainable model to keep their work alive.

Although digital technologies and the internet have become more affordable and accessible, it is important to note that the digital divide still needs to be addressed. In Canada, The First Nations Technology Council is one of the organisations working towards equitable access. In Brazil, Thydêwá has a similar mission of promoting social transformation, fighting the digital divide as one of its main efforts. When memories and collections pertaining to indigenous populations find a different format online, community-owned documentation, which is more easily accessible and participative may provide a different perspective on archiving in Brazil.

Louise M. Hisayasu is an interdisciplinary researcher, currently based in Berlin. She is engaged in discussions around transcultural memory, decoloniality, archiving and indigenous worldviews. She is currently completing postgraduate studies in the department of Image Science at Danube University Krems, Austria.

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