ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the use of narrative form, of authoritarian voice-over, of presenting the part for the whole, obscures authentic representation in the service of ethnographic explanation. The work done for and then by the Kayapo successfully negotiates not only between first and fourth world concerns but also between often antagonistic factions within the Ge language community. Colonial encroachment, a history of fighting other indigenous neighbors for lack of territorial limits, are causes that had traditionally explained 'village fission' when Joan Bamberger looked instead to internal causes for such fission amongst the Kayapo in 1979. The case for redemption through the film image is made by Siegfried Kracauer in his Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality. Indigenous Video is one answer to the troubles that plague ethnographic authority. The power that indigenous Video can help regain for the dispossessed, as well as the creative potential this extends to alter film and video form is beyond question.
