From ethnographic film to indigenous media : communications and the evolution of the ethnographic subject

An important connection exists between ethnographic film and indigenous media though they are rarely linked in film theory. The link is not just hypothetical. Cast in the form of historiography, ethnographic film and indigenous media practices may be read as a continuist discourse with a number of critical turns. One such turn is the transformation of the ethnographic subject into a critical public. What is described as indigenous media allows us to categorize this transformation as a significant difference for the practice of ethnography, but the question remains as to whether this difference is retreivable in the terms set by ethnography. The emergence of the indigenous ethnographer has consequences for understanding the problems in the relations between Western and non-Western cultural formations. As a means through which a culture or nation may represent its own historical evolution, indigenous media is also, however, a discourse in formation--characterized by heterogenous claims and practices