Tribesourcing Southwest Film is an innovative and participatory archival reclamation project that works with native people to create new narrations for mid-century films of the region to show the power of polyphonies.
Akimel/O'odham/Pima, Tohono O'Odman/Papago, Pueblan/Tew/Tiwa, Towa, Yokut, Chuilla, Havasupai/Supai, Apache/Ndee, Hopi, Navajo/Dine people create alternative narrations for archival films from anthropologists, corporations, and other outsiders documenting the Southwest. The project is featured in the 2023 FLEFF Polyphonic Communities Exhibition
“You don’t have anything if you don’t have the stories.” --Old Betonie in Leslie Marmon Silko’s CEREMONY
Speakers
Jennifer Jenkins
Principal Investigator
Melissa Dolman
Digital Projects Manager/Archivist
Rhiannon Sorrell
Diné Narrational Coordinator
Dale Hudson
Moderator
Join the Conversation!
Roundtable with Jennifer Jenkins, Melissa Dollman, Rhiannon Sorrel from
Tribesourcing Southwest Film
Friday, April 7
1 p.m. - 2:15 p.m.
On Zoom
Register in advance for this meeting:
https://ithaca.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUvcuyqpjksHN21gX3Unh5j2D6g7gSe1G77
Explore Tribesourcing Southwest Film
Explore the 2023 FLEFF Polyphonic Communities Exhibition which features Tribesourcing
Cosponsored by the Park Center for Independent Media and The Edge
About the Project
Tribesourcing Southwest Film, a groundbreaking NEH-funded project seeks to "tribesource" dozens of educational films about the Native peoples of the Southwestern U.S. and (new!) Southern California.
These works derive from the American Indian Film Gallery, a collection awarded to the University of Arizona in 2011. Most of the films were made in the mid-20th century and reflect mainstream cultural attitudes of the day. Often the narration pronounces meaning that is inaccurate or disrespectful, but the visual narratives are for the most part quite remarkable.
At this historical distance, many of these films have come to be understood by both cultural insiders and outside scholars as documentation of cultural practices and lifeways—and, indeed, languages—that are receding as practitioners and speakers pass on.
This project seeks to rebalance the historical record, intentionally shifting emphasis from external perceptions of Native peoples to the voices, knowledge, and languages of the peoples represented in the films by participatory recording of new narrations for the films.
Each film in this project will be streamed with at least one alternate narration from within the culture. This aspect of the project allows for identification of people, places, practices, vocabulary and stories that might otherwise be lost, as well as providing a significantly richer, community-based narration for each film, thereby taking a small step toward cultural repatriation of content.
