Kayapó Video (Brasil)

Kayapó video is an important example of how the adoption of new technologies can help Indigenous communities not only to better communicate with other groups, including at the national and international levels, but also to strengthen their identity and culture.

The Kayapó are one of a group of Indigenous Gê-speaking tribes that inhabit the Amazon River Basin of Brasil. Their territory in the State of Pará, made up of tropical rainforest, is mostly contained in six reserves that cover a combined area of some 100,000 square kilometers, which is approximately the size of Portugal. As of 1993, roughly 14 Kayapó villages were left, with a total population of approximately 5,000. The name Kayapó means “resembling apes”; it was not picked by the tribe itself but given to them by the neighboring Indian tribes.

In 1985, photographer Monica Frota and two anthropologists started the Indigenous video initiative Mekaron Opoi D'joi (he who creates images) in the language spoken by the Kayapó tribes in Brasil. Once the Kayapó had the video cameras in their own hands, they used them for the preservation of the cultural memory of the community, recording their rituals.

They soon switched to exchange political speeches and to document their protests against the Brasilian state. The political dimension of the project was a logical development; the Kayapó showed a high level of understanding of how media interacted with public opinion. Their image of high-tech Indians quickly gained the front pages of important journals, including a cover of Time magazine, when they denounced the construction of a hydroelectric dam in Altamira that would flood their land. They successfully sought political and financial support from non-Indigenous public opinion, nongovernmental organizations, and governments, both in Brasil and abroad, to compel the Brasilian state to recognize legally their territory and their rights to control its resources.

One important source of support was the increasingly positive evaluation of non-Western cultures, which is associated with anthropology and multicultural movements. Another source of support was the growing movement in defense of human rights. Most important of all was environmentalism, according to Terence Turner, the U.S. anthropologist who supported the Kayapó video initiative. Turner said that from the moment they acquired video cameras of their own, the Kayapó made a point of making video records of their major political confrontations with the national society.

Instead of just being subjects of documentary films, the Kayapó quickly understood the advantages of video technology as a communication tool for transforming their social and political reality. Thus, the appropriation of video tools by the Kayapó strengthens the notion that people can master their own history, as long as they can master their own representation in the media. Video has been perceived as a key way for economically deprived communities to gain some measure of [Page 288]democratic control over information and communication sources currently controlled by either the state or multinational corporations.