Whose Story is This?

Whose Story is This?

The Complex Matter of Archival Film

 

University Seminar on Indigenous Studies Presentation

 

Professor Fred Myers

Anthropology Department, New York University

 

Respondent: Professor Ana Ochoa, Music Department, Columbia University.

 

On February 1st, Professor Fred Myers presented on his most recent projects among the Pintupi people of Yayayi in the Western Desert region of Australia: the process of “repatriating” a series of lengthy and unedited archival film footage (some 30 years old, originally created by Ian Dunlop), to the community at the center of the material. When he went to repatriate this film footage in 2006, Myers in turn made a film about this process of repatriation. The paper, as a whole, reflected on the layering of two sets of film footage and their relationship to one another. In particular, Myers focused his talk on exploring a set of key questions that arose from the project of repatriation: how are (western) ideas about ownership and collaboration complicated or troubled in the process of making representations and negotiating the complexities of cultural property, when working with Aboriginal people and their archives?

 

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