"Reel Navajo": The Linguistic Creation of Indigenous Screen Memories

Reclaiming Diné Film: Visual Sovereignty and the Return of Navajo Film Themselves

“…Today, the Navajo Film Project offers us a unique point of contrast between anthropological practice and Navajo involvement in a range of media, and the 2011 screenings began another shift in the meaning of the entire project and the films . While the screenings were billed in publicity materials as works by “the first Navajo film producers,” echoing one of the project's primary presumptions, there are now a significant number of Navajo filmmakers operating in a variety of media worlds (Lewis , ; Peterson 2011b; Singer ). Furthermore, the films and the project are one of the fields through which contemporary Navajo and other indigenous media makers operate and are analyzed, often used to mark progress and a turning point in the indigenization of media technologies (Ginsburg ; Pack ; Sédillot ) .…”

“…Margaret Mead poignantly noted from her own experiences that Navajo filmmakers “when working with whites, are on stage, presenting either themselves, their culture, or both to the outside world … in neither case were we dealing with ‘primitive people’ living in isolation, but with a group acutely aware of the white audience” (Mead :123). As with contemporary Navajo producers explored in Peterson (2011b), the filmmakers were also acutely aware of their local Navajo audience and the sociocultural expectations of production, exhibited by the detailed observations and interviews presented in the book, surrounding, for example, negotiations of kinship relations and appropriate filmic topics and visual elements.…”

“…However, the reactions and interactions are important to note and understand, as they are inherently tied to an emergent visual sovereignty. These moments of intimacy—between filmmaker and subject, audience and film, filmmaker and audience—are integral to the creation and circulation of Navajo screen memories, to shared sociality and the process of resignification (Peterson 2011b).…”

“…As with the use of language in the creation of screen memories, the use of iconic Navajoness and locally recognized visual elements creates a social intimacy with Navajo audiences. That is, “they foster intimacy with audiences, revealing gulfs and chasms between those with shared sociality and those without” (Peterson 2011b:117).…”

“…In 2007, due to the diligence of Penn archivist Kate Pourshariati, they were given to the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, for repair, preservation, and digitization, and a full DVD set of the repaired films, including new interviews with filmmakers and community members, and previously unseen footage, was released in late 2012 . As visual representations made by Navajo cultural producers, the films are part of both the broader circulation of images contributing to the [post]colonial imaginary about Navajo peoples (Bsumek ; Faris ) and the self‐representational “indigenous screen memories” crucial to the resignification of Navajo concerns in film (Ginsburg ; Peterson 2011b).…”