ABSTRACT
There’s a famous story from half a century ago that Sol Worth and Jon Adair tell about their negotiations with a Navajo elder, Sam Yazzie, to enable them to make films with Navaho people in the US:
Adair explained that we wanted to teach some Navaho to make movies … When Adair finished Sam thought for a while, and then turned to Worth and asked a lengthy question which was interpreted as, “Will making movies do the sheep any harm?” Worth was happy to explain that as far as he knew, there was no chance that making movies would harm the sheep. Sam thought this over and then asked, “Will making movies do the sheep good?” Worth was forced to reply that as far as he knew making movies wouldn’t do the sheep any good. Sam thought this over for a moment, then, looking round at us, he said, “Then why make movies?”
(Worth and Adair, 1972: 5) Yazzie’s question “Why make movies?” is intriguing because it makes us ask: are there real benefits that media use brings to indigenous communities? And perhaps, by implication, does this work bring more benefits to its champions in the over-developed world – people like myself and maybe some readers of this book – than it does to indigenous populations? These questions preoccupied me during a research trip to Alice Springs in Central Australia that I made in October–November 2011. My aim had been to follow up a Channel 4 programme – Satellite Dreaming (CAAMA Productions, 1991) – which I was involved in making 20 years earlier as a co-production with the indigenous media organisation CAAMA (the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association). I was interested to find out what developments and changes had happened in the intervening years, and to see what lessons those changes might hold for those of us interested in alternative and indigenous people’s media now.