From Ethnographic Film to Community-Based Storytelling
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Conveying traditional Indigenous culture: From ethnographic film to community-based storytelling Gyde Shepherd A Thesis in The Department of Communication Studies Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For a Degree of Master of Arts at Concordia University Montreal, Quebec, Canada November 2013 © Gyde F. Shepherd, 2013 Shepherd ii CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY School of Graduate Studies This is to certify that the thesis prepared By: Entitled: and submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of complies with the regulations of the University and meets the accepted standards with respect to originality and quality. Signed by the final examining committee: ______________________________________ Chair Y. Jiwani ______________________________________ Examiner R. Staseson ______________________________________ Examiner L. Roth ______________________________________ Supervisor M. Allor Approved by ________________________________________________ Chair of Department or Graduate Program Director ________________________________________________ Dean of Faculty ________________________________________________ Date Shepherd iii ABSTRACT Conveying traditional Indigenous culture: From ethnographic film to community-based storytelling In the following chapters, I discuss several works of film, video and photography made since the early twentieth century depicting Inuit and other Indigenous peoples of North America. Their creators have been motivated by a desire to produce a record, through various methods of reconstruction, of past ways of life of their Indigenous subjects. In the context of these efforts, the question of how to structure the material to attract and hold the attention of an audience has been a primary concern. The films discussed in chapters two and three exemplify ethnographic filmmaking as a visual and narrative practice of salvage ethnography. In contrast, the films and videos discussed in chapters four and five are examples of Indigenous media—that is to say, media produced by Indigenous people and communities—that make use of ethnographic, or simply cultural, reconstruction in a way that assumes the continuing vitality of Indigenous cultures and a healthy balance between past and present. Focusing on the example of Canada’s first Inuit-made feature-length fiction film, Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, I argue that the film’s success and significance is grounded in a respect for traditional Inuit storytelling practices and an experiential approach to teaching that uses video as a proxy for directly “showing how,” an effort to make traditional Inuit cultural memory and stories relevant to Inuit and wider audiences in the present and future. Shepherd iv Acknowledgements I would like to thank all those who participated in the creation of Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, the entertaining and thought-provoking Inuit film that inspired this thesis. I would also like to thank my friends and family, and my thesis advisors, Peter van Wyck and Martin Allor, for their guidance and encouragement. This thesis is dedicated to my father, Gyde V. Shepherd, who taught me to value the artist’s invitation to look; to my sister, Pippa Shepherd, who graciously helped me to reach the finish line when it was most unlikely; and to my daughter, Emily Shepherd, for her affection and wisdom all these years. Without each one of you, this thesis would not have found its way. Shepherd v Table of Contents Chapter One: Introduction .................................................................................................. 4 Ethnographic Film and Cultural Reenactment ................................................................ 8 Chapter Two: Ethnographic Salvage Cinema ................................................................... 13 In the Land of the Headhunters (1914) ......................................................................... 14 Nanook of the North (1922) .......................................................................................... 19 The Silent Enemy: An Epic of the American Indian (1930) ........................................ 29 The Wedding of Palo (1934)......................................................................................... 36 Chapter 3 – Visual Anthropology and Cultural Memory ................................................. 39 The Netsilik Series (1967-1970) ................................................................................... 40 Visual Anthropology ..................................................................................................... 51 Peter Pitseolak: Photographer of Inuit Cultural Memory ............................................. 55 Chapter 4: Indigenous Media ............................................................................................ 63 The Development of Indigenous Media in Canada ...................................................... 63 The Inuit Broadcasting Corporation ............................................................................. 66 Isuma Productions and Cultural Reconstruction Video ................................................ 69 Chapter 5: Isuma Productions and Indigenous Feature Filmmaking ................................ 78 From Salvage Ethnography to Cultural Re-creation ..................................................... 80 Oral Tradition and Film ................................................................................................ 86 Storytelling .................................................................................................................... 88 Isuma and Community-based Filmmaking ................................................................... 91 Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2001): Cinema as culturally informative storytelling ... 95 On Location on the Land .............................................................................................. 96 Storytelling Cinema ...................................................................................................... 98 Depicting Shamanism ................................................................................................. 100 The Journals of Knud Rasmussen (2006) ................................................................... 104 Recreating the Legend of The Fast Runner ................................................................ 110 Chapter 6: Conclusion..................................................................................................... 118 Postscript ......................................................................................................................... 123 Works Cited .................................................................................................................... 126 Shepherd 1 Preface: A Point of Departure One evening in the spring of 2002, I walked into a movie theatre in Montreal to see Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, the first feature-length movie written, directed, acted, and produced by Inuit. It has been more than a decade since I first saw The Fast Runner, but I still remember the experience vividly.1 It was to become both the point of departure, and after much exploration, the final destination of this thesis. This is how the story begins: Scene 1. A man stands at a distance in a monochrome landscape of snow, ice, and sky. He is surrounded by his dogs, some resting, some running over the snow; their howling communicates the breadth of the landscape more fully than anything I can see. I feel drawn into the space before me just as surely as if I were standing there with them. Scene 2. A group of adults and children are sitting together in the dim interior of a qarmaq, a dwelling made of sod and stones. Standing in the centre of the group, two men are having a conversation, and I begin to read the subtitles. I get the impression that one of the men is a visitor, perhaps an unwelcome one, but the reason for his presence is unclear. The camera focuses momentarily on a young woman tending a seal oil lamp; as she looks at the men, her face suggests apprehension, but why? Struggling to get my bearings, I find it hard to follow the conversation, and sense that I should know more about the backstory. Scene 3. We are outside again, now in the bright Arctic sun. The scene begins with a close-up of a man’s hand passing a piece of fur along the runner of an overturned 1 I use the abbreviation The Fast Runner throughout the following chapters in order to clearly differentiate between references to the film and to its central character, Atanarjuat. Shepherd 2 qamutik, a traditional Inuit sled made with antlers, driftwood, and bone. The runner is covered with a thick layer of ice. The camera pans up to show the man’s other hand holding a bowl made of what looks like dried skin; he drinks from the bowl and carefully spits the water onto the piece of fur before putting it back on the runner. No one is speaking, so there are no subtitles to read, and there is time to understand the purpose of the action. I feel myself relax a little now that I have a moment to reflect on the events of the previous scene. At this point, I had already begun to view The Fast Runner in the particular way in which I have learned to watch documentary films of the kind often described as ethnographic. Scene 4. We are back in the qarmaq. Two men are involved in some kind of contest. One wears a necklace made of what look like large animal teeth. They sit beside each other, their heads down, their legs extended in opposite directions, while