Embedded Aesthetics: Creating a Discursive Space for Indigenous Media

Indigenous Media From U-Matic to Youtube: Media Sovereignty in the Digital Age

“…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 under- 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 I conclude on a note of cautious optimism.…”

Toward Representational Sovereignty: Rewards and Challenges of Indigenous Media in the A’uwẽ-Xavante Communities of Eténhiritipa-Pimentel Barbosa

“…The burgeoning body of scholarship that emerged over the next decades, including analyses of Indigenous media work following the launch of communication satellites over remote areas in Australia and northern Canada (see for example, Ginsburg 1993Ginsburg , 2002Michaels, 1986), overwhelmingly disproves dismal Frankfurt School predictions and provides copious evidence of Indigenous Peoples adopting and deploying new media in creative ways that assert and conserve unique identities (see Ginsburg 1995aGinsburg , 1995balso Turner, 2002a). Numerous studies of Indigenous use of new media-in communities stretching from Canada, the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand, to Mexico, Brazil, and Bolivia-that follow in the wake of Sol Worth andJohn Adair's (1972/1997) first experiments in subject-produced film, repeatedly demonstrate that audio-visual media are powerful instruments for the creative expression of identity, self-reflection, political empowerment, cultural transmission, and the preservation of traditional knowledge (see, for example, Ginsburg 1991Ginsburg , 1994Ginsburg , 1999Ginsburg , 2002Ginsburg , 2011Michaels, 1986;Turner 1991aTurner , 1992Turner , 2002aPrins, 2002;Wilson & Stewart, 2008). There can be no doubt that new media technologies give Indigenous Peoples powerful means to destabilize hegemonic stereotypes that circulate in the mass media, assert greater control over processes of representation and fortify their cultures.…”

“…1 This pattern has been dramatically changing over the last several decades as Indigenous communities across the globe, including those of Eténhiritipa-Pimentel Barbosa, acquire various means of self documentation and representation, including audio visual technologies (see, for example, Ginsburg 1991Ginsburg , 1994Ginsburg , 2002Ginsburg , 2011Michaels, 1994;Turner, 1991aTurner, , 1992Turner, , 2002aTurner, , 2002bWilson & Stewart, 2008;Wortham, 2013). In the years since I witnessed the padre use his documentary to entice the people of Eténhiritipa-Pimentel Barbosa to watch the story of Jesus and the resurrection, a major shift has taken place in this community's ability to use audio-visual media to document and manage representations of themselves and their culture both to themselves and to broader publics.…”

“…As elsewhere, the adoption of new media technologies has brought significant identifiable rewards, including new, highly valued relationships and partnerships with outsiders (see Ginsburg, 1994) and movement into new physical as well as intellectual geographies (Smith, 2010). New media technologies also have helped to move the community in the direction of greater representational sovereignty.…”

“…Ethnographically informed analyses of Indigenous use of audio-visual media, especially video, during the late 1980s and 1990s shifted attention away from media products, or media texts, to the social processes entailed in their use (for example, Ginsburg, 1994Ginsburg, , 1995Michaels, 1994;Turner 1991aTurner , 1991bDowell, 2013). Scholars emphasized uniquely Indigenous aspects of production, reception and engagement with media technologies.…”