"reel Navajo": The linguistic creation of indigenous screen memories

American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Volumn 35, Issue 2, 2011, Pages 111-134

  Peterson, Leighton C ^a  

^a MIAMI UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 79959537970     PISSN: 01616463     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.17953/aicr.35.2.x34u521771303h5k     Document Type: Article

References (134)

1. Philip J. Deloria, Indians in Unexpected Places (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004), 53-108.
2. On the "gaze" and western humanism, see James C. Faris, Navajo and Photography: A Critical History of the Representation of an American People (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996).
3. On the colonial implications of visual culture and Native Americans, see, e.g., Faris, Navajo and Photography;
4. Harald E. L. Prins, "Visual Anthropology," in A Companion to the Anthropology of American Indians, ed. Thomas Biolsi (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 506-25.
5. For analyses of children's movies and popular culture, see Pauline Turner Strong, "Animated Indians: Critique and Contradiction in Commodified Children's Culture," Cultural Anthropology 11, no. 3 (1996): 405-24;
6. Pauline Turner Strong, "Playing Indian in the 1990s: Pocahontas and The Indian in the Cupboard," in Hollywood's Indian: The Portrayal of the Native American in Film, ed. Peter C. Rollins and John E. O'Connor (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1998), 187-205.
7. The literature on this topic is quite significant and cannot be fully addressed here. For an overview of Hollywood representations of Native peoples, see Angela Aleiss, Making the White Man's Indian: Native Americans and Hollywood Movies (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005);
8. Rollins and O'Connor, Hollywood's Indian;
9. Ann Fienup-Riordan, Freeze Frame: Alaska Eskimos in the Movies (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995).
10. For insight into the relationship between film and ethnographic representations, see Alison Griffiths, Wondrous Difference: Cinema, Anthropology, and Turn-of-the-Century Visual Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002);
11. Harald E. L. Prins, "Visual Media and the Primitivist Perplex: Colonial Fantasies, Indigenous Imagination, and Advocacy in North America," in Media Worlds, ed. Faye D. Ginsburg, Lila Abu-Lughod, and Brian Larkin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 58-74.
12. See, e.g., Faye D. Ginsburg, "Atanarjuat Off-Screen: From 'Media Reservations' to the World Stage," American Anthropologist 105, no. 4 (2003): 827-31;
13. Kristin Dowell, "Indigenous Media Gone Global: Strengthening Indigenous Identity On- and Offscreen at the First Nations\First Features Film Showcase," American Anthropologist 108, no. 2 (2006): 376-84; (Pubitemid 43811582)
14. Beverly R. Singer, Wiping the War Paint Off the Lens: Native American Film and Video (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001).
15. The Film + Video Center at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian (hereinafter referred to as NMAI) maintains a Web site in Spanish and English that is a wonderful resource for and about indigenous filmmakers and films from the Americas: http://www.nativenetworks.si.edu (accessed February 15, 2011).
16. Faye D. Ginsburg, "Screen Memories: Resignifying the Traditional in Indigenous Media," in Ginsburg, Abu-Lughod, and Larkin, Media Worlds, 40-41.
17. Faye D. Ginsburg, "Screen Memories: Resignifying the Traditional in Indigenous Media," in Ginsburg, Abu-Lughod, and Larkin, Media Worlds, 40-41. Ibid.
18. The literature is quite extensive, but for useful examples of contemporary work about global indigenous media makers, see Jeffrey D. Himpele, Circuits of Culture: Media, Politics, and Indigenous Identity in the Andes (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007);
19. Randolph Lewis, Alanis Obomsawin: The Vision of a Native Filmmaker (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006);
20. Jennifer Deger, Shimmering Screens: Making Media in an Aboriginal Community (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006).
21. Research for this project is based on numerous short-term periods of fieldwork conducted from 2000 to 2010, during my time as a producer for TricksterFilms LLC and Native American Public Telecommunications on the documentary films Weaving Worlds and Columbus Day Legacy (USA: TricksterFilms, 2011) and the narrative films Share the Wealth (USA: TricksterFilms, 2006) and Yada Yada (USA: TricksterFilms, 2002). Research included interviews and conversations with a range of indigenous film professionals and audiences, participant observation during all phases of production and distribution, and participation in diverse film festival venues.
22. Steve Greymorning, "Reflections on the Arapaho Language Project, or When Bambi Spoke Arapaho and Other Tales of Arapaho Language Revitalization Efforts," in The Green Book of Language Revitalization in Practice, ed. Leanne Hinton and Kenneth Hale (San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 2001), 287-97;
23. Jim Dandy, personal communication, 2002.
24. Dandy provided the voices for these wonderful, oft-overlooked films, which have been recently remastered. See http://www.sanjuanschools.org/media (accessed February 15, 2011).
25. See also Wesley Y. Leonard, "When Is an 'Extinct Language' Not Extinct? Miami, a Formerly Sleeping Language," in Sustaining Linguistic Diversity: Endangered and Minority Languages and Language Varieties, ed. Kendall A. King, Natalie Schilling-Estes, Lyn Fogle, Jia Jackie Lou, and Barbara Soukup (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2008), 23-34;
26. Anthony K. Webster, Explorations in Navajo Poetry and Poetics (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009).
27. Erin Debenport, "'As the Rez Turns': Anomalies within and beyond the Boundaries of a Pueblo Community," American Indian Culture and Research Journal 35, no. 1 (2011): 87-109.
28. For examples of Navajo language use in mediated contexts, see Leighton C. Peterson, "Tuning in to Navajo: The Role of Radio in Native Language Maintenance," in Teaching Indigenous Languages, ed. Jon Reyhnor (Flagstaff: Northern Arizona University, 1997), 214-21;
29. Bennie Klain and Leighton C. Peterson, "Native Media, Commercial Radio, and Language Maintenance: Defining Speech and Style for Navajo Broadcasters and Broadcast Navajo," Texas Linguistic Forum 43 (2000): 117-27;
30. Leighton C. Peterson, "Technology, Ideology, and Emergent Communicative Practices among the Navajo" (PhD diss., University of Texas at Austin, 2006).
31. Intimacy as it is used here derives from Hill and Zepeda's definition of intimacy as "social closeness, the mutual involvement of interlocutors." Jane H. Hill and Ofelia Zepeda, "Language, Gender, and Biology: Pumonic Ingressive Airstreams in Women's Speech in Tohono O'odham," Southwest Journal of Linguistics 18, no. 1 (1999): 36.
32. For a discussion on "renewal" in relation to Native language ideologies and practices, see Margaret C. Field and Paul V. Kroskrity, "Introduction: Revealing Native American Language Ideologies," in Native American Language Ideologies: Beliefs, Practices, and Struggles in Indian Country, ed. Paul V. Kroskrity and Margaret C. Field (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2009), 3-28.
33. Paul V. Kroskrity, "Embodying the Reversal of Language Shift: Agency, Incorporation, and Language Ideological Change in the Western Mono Community of Central California," in Kroskrity and Field, Native American Language Ideologies, 207;
34. Deloria, Unexpected Places, 225.
35. Deloria, Unexpected Places, 52-108.
36. Ginsburg, "Screen Memories," 39-40.
37. Barbra A. Meek, "And the Injun Goes 'How!': Representations of American Indian English in White Public Space," Language in Society 35, no. 1 (2006): 93-128; (Pubitemid 43388779)
38. Joanna Hearne, "John Wayne's Teeth: Speech, Sound and Representation in Smoke Signals and Imagining Indians," Western Folklore 64, nos. 3-4 (2005): 189-208.
39. The alien inscription contained, among other things, the entire human genome as well as the philosophical foundation for the earth's major religions. The series, which ran from 1993 to 2002, contained numerous story lines related to the Navajo language with recurrent appearances by character Albert Hosteen, a former Navajo code talker and medicine man, played by Dakota actor/ musician Floyd Red Crow Westerman. See Chris Carter, The X-Files: The Complete Collector's Edition (Century City, CA: Twentieth Century Fox, 2007).
40. For a brief history of these early films, see Randolph Lewis, "The New Navajo Cinema: Cinema and Nation in the Indigenous Southwest," Velvet Light Trap 66 (2010): 50-61.
41. On the Navajo Film Project, see Sol Worth and John Adair, Through Navajo Eyes: An Exploration in Film Communication and Anthropology (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997).
42. The project has been analyzed thoroughly, with a range of supporters, for its foresight and innovation, and with detractors, for its colonial tinge. See, e.g., Sam Pack, "Indigenous Media Then and Now: Situating the Navajo Film Project," Quarterly Review of Film and Video 17, no. 3 (2000): 273-86;
43. Margaret D. Dubin, "From Artful Ethnography to Ethnographic Art: The Enduring Significance of the Navajo Film Project," Visual Anthropology Review 14, no. 1 (1998): 73-80.
44. Regarding the lack of synch sound recordings, Richard Chaflen, the graduate assistant on the film project at the time, later explained, "they didn't want to do it-we asked-they elected not to add sound," despite Adair openly suggesting to filmmaker Al Claw (in violation of the project's protocol) that he add sound. See Worth and Adair, Through Navajo Eyes, 346.
45. I am dubious of claims that these are the first films made by Navajos, due to the historical erasure that Ginsburg and others have pointed out about indigenous media makers and due to the historical exclusion of nonreservation Navajos in the academic literature. However, I have scant evidence to prove otherwise at this time. For analyses of the films emerging from the project, see Worth and Adair, Through Navajo Eyes;
46. see also Sol Worth and John Adair, "Navajo Filmmakers," American Anthropologist 72, no. 1 (1970): 9-34.
47. Arlene Bowman, Navajo Talking Picture (USA: Women Make Movies, 1986).
48. This film has generated much controversy over the years, perhaps misplaced, regarding the ethics of filming unwilling subjects. Randy Lewis has suggested the possibility that Bowman's intent, and perhaps the participants' roles in the production, has been misinterpreted; see Randolph Lewis, "Navajo Talking Picture: Cinema on Native Ground" (n.d.).
49. For further discussion, see Singer, Wiping the War Paint, 73-77.
50. Lewis, "Navajo Cinema," 50.
51. Lewis, "Navajo Cinema,", Ibid.
52. Some of these markers-apart from language-can include iconic reservation landscapes such as Monument Valley or Shiprock; they also very often involve traditional elements such as sheep, sheepherding, or sheep butchering.
53. For a thorough list of Navajo filmmakers, see Lewis "New Navajo Cinema."
54. See also the NMAI Film + Video Center Web site, http://www. nativenetworks.si.edu (accessed February 15, 2011).
55. Despite continued marginalization or deliberate local orientation, some indigenous productions have received international acclaim in recent years; see, e.g., Dowell, "Indigenous Media";
56. Ginsburg, "Atanarjuat Off-Screen."
57. This is by no means to say that all films by Navajo producers engage Navajo topics; e.g., Bennie Klain's award-winning short films Share the Wealth and Yada Yada index no particular tribal affiliations. Likewise, some directors, such as Arlene Bowman, whose recent films veer from Navajo content, and Larry Blackhorse Lowe, have stated their desire to move away from Navajo and Native American topics. See Lewis, "Navajo Cinema."
58. Although House has called such public performances "ostentatious Navajo-ness" that masks dire linguistic realities, Webster has analyzed such phenomena in the context of poetry performances in terms of processes of traditionalization and iconization; I prefer the latter interpretations. See Deborah House, Language Shift among the Navajos: Identity Politics and Cultural Continuity (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2002), 83;
59. Webster, Explorations in Navajo Poetry.
60. See, e.g., House, Language Shift;
61. Bernard Spolsky, "Prospects for the Survival of the Navajo Language: A Reconsideration," Anthropology and Education Quarterly 33, no. 2 (2002): 139-62;
62. Tiffany Lee and Daniel McLaughlin, "Reversing Navajo Language Shift, Revisited," in Can Threatened Languages Be Saved? ed. Joshua A. Fishman (Tonawanda, NY: Multilingual Matters, 2001), 23-43.
63. On language valorization, see House, Language Shift.
64. For studies of pedagogy and younger speakers, see Paul Platero, "Navajo Head Start Language Study," in Hinton and Hale, The Green Book of Language Revitalization, 87-97;
65. AnCita Benally and Dennis Viri, "Dine Bizaad ('Navajo Language') at a Crossroads: Extinction or Renewal," Journal of Bilingual Research 29, no. 1 (2007): 85-108.
66. See, e.g., Margaret C. Field, "Changing Navajo Language Ideologies," in Kroskrity and Field, Native American Language Ideologies, 31-47;
67. House, Language Shift;
68. Evangeline Parsons-Yazzie, "Perceptions of Selected Elders on Navajo Language Attrition," Journal of Navajo Education 8, no. 2 (1996): 51-57.
69. Tiffany S. Lee, "'If They Want Navajo to Be Learned, Then They Should Require It in All Schools': Navajo Teenagers' Experiences, Choices, and Demands Regarding Navajo Language," Wicazo Sa Review 22, no. 1 (2007): 7-33.
70. Tiffany S. Lee, "'If They Want Navajo to Be Learned, Then They Should Require It in All Schools': Navajo Teenagers' Experiences, Choices, and Demands Regarding Navajo Language," Wicazo Sa Review 22, no. 1 (2007): 7-33, Ibid.
71. Such misrecognitions are aptly illustrated in this issue by Webster's analysis of Navajo English; see also Anthony K. Webster, "On Intimate Grammars with Examples from Navajo English, Navlish, and Navajo," Journal of Anthropological Research 66 (2010): 187-208.
72. For discussions of the ideological implications of code switching and code mixing, as well as numerous examples, see also Charlotte C. Schaengold, "Bilingual Navajo: Mixed Codes, Bilingualism, and Language Maintenance" (PhD diss., Ohio State University, 2004);
73. Klain and Peterson, "Broadcast Navajo."
74. See Field, "Changing Navajo";
75. Margaret C. Field, "Triadic Directives in Navajo Language Socialization," Language in Society 30 (2001): 249-63.
76. See Field, "Changing Navajo."
77. Webster, Explorations in Navajo Poetry.
78. For a discussion of traditionalization as it is used here, see Richard Bauman, "Contextualization, Tradition, and the Dialogue of Genres: Icelandic Legends of the Kraftaskáld," in Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon, ed. Alessandro Duranti and Charles Goodwin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 125-46.
79. Anthony K. Webster, "Imagining Navajo in the Boarding School: Laura Tohe's No Parole Today and the Intimacy of Language Ideologies," Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 20, no. 1 (2010): 39-62.
80. Anthony K. Webster, "Imagining Navajo in the Boarding School: Laura Tohe's No Parole Today and the Intimacy of Language Ideologies," Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 20, no. 1 (2010): 39-62, Ibid., 40.
81. Asif Agha, "The Social Life of Cultural Value," Language and Communication 23, nos. 3-4 (2003): 255.
82. Sam Pack, "Watching Navajos Watch Themselves," Wicazo Sa Review 22, no. 2 (2007): 127n20.
83. Sam Pack, "Watching Navajos Watch Themselves," Wicazo Sa Review 22, no. 2 (2007), Ibid., 123.
84. See, e.g., "Sunshine," http://www.worldwidesunshine.com/ emerchantpro/pc/Adam-Beach-c327.htm (accessed November 10, 2009).
85. See also Pack, "Watching Navajos," 124.
86. Pack, "Watching Navajos,", Ibid., 123.
87. Jeff Spitz, The Return of Navajo Boy (USA: Berkeley Media, 2000).
88. For further analysis of the significance of The Return of Navajo Boy, Weaving Worlds, and other recent Navajo films, see Lewis, "Navajo Cinema."
89. Bennie Klain and Leighton C. Peterson, "Collaboration, Representation, and the Return of Navajo Boy." Paper presented at 98th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, San Francisco, 2000.
90. Author interview with Jeff Spitz, 2000.
91. Bennie Klain and Leighton C. Peterson, "Collaboration, Representation, and the Return of Navajo Boy." Paper presented at 98th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, San Francisco, 2000. Ibid.
92. Pack, "Watching Navajos," 122.
93. After the comment, Klain wondered aloud if she had misrecognized him as not being Navajo, which may have influenced her rather stern rebuke. For this I have no answer.
94. Bennie Klain, Weaving Worlds (USA: VisionMaker, 2008).
95. See Beverly Singer, "Film Review: Weaving Worlds," American Indian Quarterly 34, no. 2 (2010): 280-82;
96. Heather A. Howard, "Review of Weaving Worlds," Visual Anthropology Review 26, no. 1 (2010): 48-50.
97. Author interview with Bennie Klain, 2010.
98. As Klain recounts about his first meeting with Blair, "I was surprised. I didn't know he could speak Navajo, but the night before shooting when we were having dinner at the Hopi Cultural Center he started talking to some people in Navajo, and that was surprising to me. I could have interviewed him in Navajo but the questions I had for him were more pointed so I chose to use English. I think he uses Navajo to forge kinship, and he's smart." Ibid. On one level, Blair's sexual joking with elderly Navajo women is appropriate behavior for his kinship role and exhibits communicative competence. His joking also has been interpreted as representative of his entitled position and unequal gender and power relations; this observation has been made by film participant Nicole Horseherder and numerous audiences. As artists and filmmakers often do, Klain notes simply that the scenes speak for themselves.
99. Billy Luther, Miss Navajo (USA: The Cinema Guild, 2007).
100. The symbolic importance of Miss Navajo to Navajo national identity and gender roles cannot be overstated. See Jennifer Nez Denetdale, "Chairmen, Presidents, and Princesses: The Navajo Nation, Gender, and the Politics of Tradition," Wicazo Sa Review 21, no. 1 (2006): 9-28;
101. Jennifer Nez Denetdale, "Representing Changing Woman: A Review Essay on Navajo Women," American Indian Culture and Research Journal 25, no. 3 (2001): 1-26.
102. Although audience reactions are never predictable, they are often insightful. Klain noted that "I was most surprised when it screened at NMAI in DC, and the woman who was leading the discussion, her first comment when she started the Q&A session was 'I call myself a fifth-generation weaver, but after seeing this film and growing up in Phoenix, I didn't realize people still live like that.'" Author interview with Klain.
103. Jennifer Nez Denetdale, Reclaiming Diné History: The Legacies of Navajo Chief Manuelito and Juanita (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2007).
104. Jennifer Nez Denetdale, Reclaiming Diné History: The Legacies of Navajo Chief Manuelito and Juanita (2007). Ibid.
105. See, e.g., John H. Weakland, "Feature Films as Cultural Documents," in Principles of Visual Anthropology, ed. Paul Hockings (Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1995), 45-67;
106. Paula Rabinowitz, "Wreckage Upon Wreckage: History, Documentary and the Ruins of Memory," History and Theory 32, no. 2 (1993): 119-37.
107. Webster, "Imagining Navajo," 55.
108. Bauman, "Contextualization," 125-45.
109. Nanobah Becker, Conversion (USA: Nanobah Becker, 2006);
110. Larry Blackhorse Lowe, Shimásání (USA: Másání LLC, 2009).
111. Author interview with Larry Blackhorse Lowe, 2009.
112. The origins of indigenous purism among some Navajo speakers and community members is beyond the scope of this article; however, for a compelling discussion of diversity and loanwords among speakers, see Muriel Saville-Troike, "Diversity in Southwestern Athabaskan: A Historical Perspective," Navajo Language Review 1, no. 2 (1974): 67-84.
113. For a classic discussion of language contact in the US Southwest, see Paul V. Kroskrity, "Language Contact and Linguistic Diffusion," in Bilingualism and Language Contact: Spanish, English, and Native American Languages, ed. Florence Barkin, Elizabeth A. Brandt, and Jacob Ornstein-Galicia (New York: Columbia University, 1982), 51-72.
114. Author interview with Nanobah Becker, 2009. Becker makes an important point: film can be expensive. These works were shot on 35 mm celluloid film stock, which is more expensive than digital technologies, and involved relatively large crews, including camera operators, sound technicians, and grips and gaffers to take care of cords and lighting. They involve expensive logistics and equipment rentals, especially when the location is remote, dusty, and windy, as both of these were. As one reviewer pointed out, however, these are social, not just economic, decisions.
115. Author interview with Lowe.
116. Paul V. Kroskrity, "Language Contact and Linguistic Diffusion," in Bilingualism and Language Contact: Spanish, English, and Native American Languages, (1982), 51-72. Ibid.
117. Author interview with Becker.
118. Author interview with Lowe.
119. Becker solicited the help of a University of New Mexico linguistics student to write her script in Navajo. This practice, although beyond the scope of this article, is noteworthy in a sociolinguistic context in which literacy in Navajo is only beginning to gain ground. See Daniel McLaughlin, When Literacy Empowers: Navajo Language in Print (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992);
120. Anthony K. Webster, "Keeping the Word: On Orality and Literacy (with a Sideways Glance at Navajo)," Oral Tradition 21, no. 2 (2006): 295-324.
121. Author interview with Lowe. Reflecting the multifaceted nature of language socialization, Lowe observed that "the nice thing about having my mom in there is she's such a, not Nazi, but she's so set on everything sounding right. She loves the movies and the language much more than I do⋯ . It kind gives me the impetus to push my actors that much harder." It should also be noted that Lowe's story is of his maternal grandmother, making the film a part of his mother's family history.
122. Author interview with Becker. A "boom operator" holds the long pole with a microphone attached above the heads of the actors. Torreon, NM, is considered a "remote" location in the Eastern Agency of the Navajo Nation.
123. Anthony K. Webster, "Keeping the Word: On Orality and Literacy (with a Sideways Glance at Navajo)," Oral Tradition 21, no. 2 (2006): 295-324. Ibid.
124. Author interview with Lowe.
125. Agha, "Cultural Value," 255.
126. Larry Blackhorse Lowe, b. Dreams (Canada: Embargo Collective, 2009).
127. The film b. Dreams was produced as part of the imagineNATIVE Embargo Collective initiative. See http://www.imaginenative.org (accessed February 15, 2011).
128. The film was in postproduction at the time of this writing. See http://www.therainbowboymovie.com (accessed February 15, 2011).
129. Author interview with Norman Patrick Brown, 2010. It should be noted that Brown was well aware of the historical links that scholars-and creation stories-make between the origins of these closely related languages.
130. Kroskrity, "Embodying the Reversal," 192.
131. Ginsburg, "Screen Memories."
132. Lewis, "Navajo Cinema."
133. Kroskrity, "Embodying the Reversal."
134. Author interview with Klain.