They say that we are the carriers of history; the storytellers andartists must express their visions for the people to see . . . how willwe create our history together, now, in this time and space?

—Marjorie Beaucage [1]

Cherokee writer Thomas King begins his book The Truth aboutStories: A Native Narrative with these lines:

There is a story I know. It’s about the earth and how it floats inspace on the back of a turtle. I’ve heard this story many times,and each time someone tells the story, it changes. Sometimes thechange is simply in the voice of the storyteller. Sometimes thechange is in the details. . . . But in all the tellings of all the tellers,the world never leaves the turtle’s back. And the turtle neverswims away [2].

While they might not appear so at first, these initial lines ina book about storytelling are calculated and revealing. It is fit-ting that King would begin his book with a creation story—atale of beginning. It is also fitting that he would choose linesthat at once define and expand upon what storytelling is in in-digenous communities. Even the book’s title, The Truth aboutStories, points to one of the pivotal conceptions of oral andwritten literature: that stories—often regarded as fictitiousand aligned with myths and legends—are viewed as “the sim-plest vehicles of truth” by their tellers [3].

In stating this, I am not arguing that the earth was formedon the back of a turtle. That would be too simple. Rather, Iwould like to put forward the notion that truth, like the sto-ries told in indigenous communities, can have a more nuanceddefinition. One of the most succinct statements of this ideathat I have read comes from Penny Petrone. “Myth,” Petronereminds us, has a very specific literary history. It is when thiscategory is applied to the oral tradition of storytelling—whichexists outside of this history—that a disjuncture occurs. Tra-ditional narratives categorized as myth are not regarded as untrue by their native tellers. “All Indian traditions,” Pe-trone writes, “are valid guides to reality” [4]. In other words,as filmmaker Trinh T. Minh-ha states, “Each society has its own politics of truth” [5]. What I propose is simple: that sto-ries, specifically those originating in oral traditions, be un-derstood, and defined, according to the ideologies from whichthey originate.

TRADITION AND CHANGEA re-reading of the first lines ofKing’s book suggests that the veryfoundation of stories is built upona series of contradictions. By theirvery nature, stories that are passeddown orally over the course of in-numerable generations are contin-ually changing (King: “Each timesomeone tells the story, it changes.Sometimes the change is simply inthe voice of the storyteller. Some-times the change is in the details”), yet they remain the same(“But in all the tellings of all the tellers, the world never leavesthe turtle’s back. And the turtle never swims away”). These sto-ries are always already individualized and communal, originaland replicated, authored and authorless:

In this chain and continuum, I am but one link. The story is me,neither me nor mine. It does not really belong to me, and whileI feel greatly responsible for it, I also enjoy the irresponsibility ofthe pleasure obtained through the process of transferring. . . . Norepetition can ever be identical, but my story carries with it theirstories, their history, and our story repeats itself endlessly [6].

Reading across the contradictions in storytelling is genera-tive, as it reveals a worldview: one in which truth is consideredapart from fact, where originality exists within the copy, wherechange is an inherent part of tradition.

This last point—the idea that change is inherent to tra-dition—is contested. Tradition is often misinterpreted as something static or conventional. Cherokee artist and activistJimmie Durham (someone whose own identity as a Native per-son has been challenged) characterizes this well, writing:

There is a nefarious tendency to consider material manifesta-tions as traditions. If we accept such absurd criteria, then horsesamong the Plains Indians and Indian beadwork must be seen asuntraditional. Traditions exist and are guarded by Indian com-munities. One of the most important of these is dynamism. Con-stant change—adaptability, the inclusion of new ways and newmaterials—is a tradition that our artists have particularly cele-brated and have used to move and strengthen our societies [7].

Durham notes that, in the 18th and 19th centuries,

every object, every material brought in from Europe was takenand transformed with great energy. A rifle in the hands of a sol-dier was not the same as a rifle that had undergone Duchampianchanges in the hands of a defender, which often included changesin the form by the employment of feathers, leather, and bead-work [8].

©2006 ISAST LEONARDO, Vol. 39, No. 4, pp. 341–344, 2006 341

Making Things Our Own:The Indigenous Aesthetic in Digital Storytelling

Candice Hopkins

Candice Hopkins (curator), 303 East 8th Avenue, Vancouver BC, Canada V5T 1S1. E-mail: <exhibitions@front.bc.ca>.

Originally published in Horizon Zero <www.horizon.ca>, Issue 7: “tell: aboriginal story in digital media.” Revised and adapted for Leonardo.

A B S T R A C T

This essay makes use of thecharacteristics of oral story-telling to define indigenousperspectives on narrative and to provide a framework in which to interpret video and new media art created by Zacharias Kunuk, Nation toNation’s Cyberpowwow projectand Paula Giese’s Native Ameri-can Indian Resources.

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Stories straddle past and present, aseach enactment is original but also lay-ered with voices of the past. “The story isme, neither me nor mine,” writes Trinh.“It does not really belong to me, andwhile I feel greatly responsible for it, I also enjoy the irresponsibility of thepleasure obtained through the process oftransferring.” In art, since the dawn ofmechanical reproduction, the copy is un-derstood as subversive: Its very presence(particularly if there is potential for infi-nite replication) challenges the authorityof the original. Replication in storytell-ing, by contrast, is positive and necessary.It is through change that stories and, inturn, traditions are kept alive and remainrelevant. In the practice of storytellingthere is no desire for originality, as sto-ries that are told and retold over time arenot individual but communal: they aremade by, and belong to, many.

Storytellers in indigenous communi-ties are continually embracing new ma-terials and technologies, including videoand digital media. I would suggest thatthis shift does not threaten storytellingtraditions in these communities but ismerely a continuation of what aboriginalpeople have been doing from time im-memorial: making things our own.

IN SEARCH OF ANINDIGENOUS AESTHETICIn 1980, in a story that has since be-come almost iconic, Zacharias Kunuk—an Inuit carver, and at the time a pro-ducer for the Inuit Broadcasting Corpo-ration—brought the first Sony Portapakto the Arctic [9]. Kunuk saw somethingdifferent in video: He later stated that hewas initially drawn to the medium be-cause of the similarities that it sharedwith Inuit oral traditions. From the be-ginning, Kunuk, his longtime collabora-tor Norman Cohn and his colleagues atIsuma Productions [10] recognized thepotential of this medium for the tellingof stories—stories that offered an alter-native not only to the non-Inuit televisionprogramming that had begun to infil-trate their communities in the early 1980sbut also to the way in which the Inuit hadbeen portrayed in film and television fornearly half a century [11].

Consider Nanook of the North, for ex-ample. A chronicle of Inuit life in the1920s, the film, directed by Robert Fla-herty, is considered the first feature-length documentary. The film’s maincharacter is Nanook the Bear, and it fol-lows him and his family as they hunt forwalrus, seal and fish; build igloos; and

film and video producers are “knowl-edgeable about and committed to work-ing from within the structures andconventions of traditional expression, including the use of the mother tongue as the narrative voice,” Masayesva writesthat it is the accumulative experience (allthe experiences, traditional or not, thatinform our lives as native people today)that “refines and defines the indigenousaesthetic”—an aesthetic that, I wouldsuggest, influences the work of Kunukand countless other indigenous artists.

In producing work out of his experi-ence as an indigenous person, Kunukcreates videos that defy simple catego-rization. Kunuk’s works do not aim todocument, but instead creatively depictInuit life through a combination of im-provisation, drama, storytelling, ajajas(traditional songs) and reenactments—in much the same way in which Inuit lifehas been represented and experiencedwithin Inuit communities since time im-memorial. This logic, which could beconsidered an “indigenous aesthetic,” up-holds the importance of community, ac-knowledges how much the past continueswithin the present (in Inuit culture thepast and the future can coexist; children,for example, are commonly given namesof the recently deceased and through thisnaming are seen to take on their iden-tity) and recognizes the vital role of oraltradition in defining the work of IsumaProductions.

Kunuk’s videos are made first of all foran Inuit audience, and nearly the entirecommunity is engaged in their making.With this audience in mind, the videosincorporate many long shots, with an em-phasis on action rather than dialogue.The videos are, in a way, a direct reactionto the criticism of non–Inuit-producedtelevision programs put forth by an Inuitelder who pointed out that the Inuit arenever seen to do anything on televisionfrom the South; they only talk. Becauseof the very fact that they are not docu-mentaries, Kunuk’s videos offer a moreauthentic and nuanced representation ofInuit life.

NARRATIVES IN CYBERSPACEWhat Kunuk and his community haveachieved is no simple task. Masayesvarightly states that “the tribal person to-day—who uses new technologies—musthave quantitatively more knowledge thanthe traditionalist and be more facile thanthe colonizers in order to be understoodin the world community.” The success ofexperimental films and videos, he adds,

barter with non-Natives at local tradingposts. Aside from its moments of blatantracism (this was the 1920s), the film hasdrawn criticism for the artistic license Flaherty exercised during its making, including the building of an oversizedigloo, with windows for interior scenes(actual igloos were too small and dark),and the staging of certain events, partic-ularly hunting scenes, that in the end ap-peared more spectacular than real life.The film has also drawn criticism for por-traying Inuit as primitive in the face ofnew technologies. In one instance, Na-nook the Bear is seen encountering arecord player. He bites the record withhis teeth to get a sense of the mate-rial. While this scene further establishesthe divide between primitive and de-veloped cultures, it is interesting to notethat Flaherty turned to the same Inuit to repair his film equipment when itbroke down (which was frequent, ow-ing to the extreme weather conditions).The criticisms of Nanook of the North areunderstandable when documentary isunderstood as based on or re-creating anactual event, although admittedly thegenre was only beginning to be definedwhen Flaherty made this film. It is thevery idea that documentaries authenti-cally portray another culture that is chal-lenged by Kunuk’s videos.

Kunuk was not alone in seeing this po-tential. Since the late 1960s (and largelybecause of the availability of the SonyPortapak), activists, community and cul-tural groups, documentarians, those in-volved in guerrilla television and othershave used video to give voice to the un-derrepresented and to challenge (withvarying degrees of success) the author-ity of broadcast television. Instant play-back and freedom from cumbersomeelectronic editing equipment, as well asthe immediacy, spontaneity and rela-tive affordability of the medium, all con-tributed to video’s allure. Artists werealso seduced: Video opened up a largelyunexplored artistic terrain—one that inits very materiality, its impermanenceand reproducibility, challenged theunique and precious nature of the art ob-ject and, in turn, the authority of the artinstitution [12].

The fact that Kunuk was one of the firstInuit to experiment with portable videois not what makes his story relevant—what he did with it is. In an essay entitled“Indigenous Experimentalism,” Hopifilmmaker and videographer Victor Ma-sayesva discusses the value of what he calls“the indigenous aesthetic” [13]. Carefulto avoid the generalization that all Native

342 Hopkins, Making Things Our Own

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can be ascribed to the “degree to whichthey subvert the colonizer’s indoctrina-tion and champion indigenous expres-sion in the political landscape” [14].

This gauge is not to be limited to filmsand videos but is applicable to all tech-nologies, from the aforementioned “Du-champian” rifles in the hands of thePlains Indians to new media and story-telling in the digital age.

In her 1996 essay “Aboriginal Narra-tives in Cyberspace,” filmmaker LorettaTodd put forward a number of consid-erations regarding the relationship ofnative people to cyberspace. Several ofthem concern the need to subvert whatMasayesva terms “the colonizer’s indoc-trination” [15]. At the time in which shewrote, before aboriginal people had be-gun making serious use of digital tech-nology, the possibilities and dangers ofthis new space were still very much imag-ined. Todd saw a number of problemswith severing the relationship betweenthe body and the physical world. From anaboriginal perspective (if such a com-mon perspective can be argued to exist),Todd asserts that there is no disconnec-tion from the material world: All rela-tionships—mind and body, human andnature, hunter and prey—are intercon-nected and symbiotic. Cyberspace, sheargues, is driven by a much different ide-ology: Born out of the climate of late cap-italism, the need for cyberspace stemsfrom a fear of the body, an aversion to na-ture, and a desire for salvation and tran-scendence of the earthly plane. With thisin mind, Todd’s central question waswhether native worldviews could find aplace in cyberspace [16].

Writing nearly 10 years later, I wouldsay that they have indeed found a place.Cyberspace has been occupied, trans-formed, appropriated and reinvented bynative people in ways similar to how wehave always approached real space. Likevideo, digital technologies have becomea medium for speaking and telling ourstories. The Internet, for example, wasrecognized almost immediately for itsability to bring people together andcommunicate across large geographicaldivides. One of the first practitioners tomake use of these abilities was PaulaGiese, who started creating web sites fornative audiences in 1993. Her most am-bitious project, Native American IndianResources [17], is not merely a resourcebut an extensive map of Native Americanlife. The site contains everything fromtraditional stories and ideologies to in-formation on the plight of Leonard Peltier. From the beginning, Giese saw

many times, and each time someone tellsthe story, it changes. Sometimes thechange is simply in the voice of the sto-ryteller. Sometimes the change is in thedetails. . . . But in all the tellings of all thetellers, the world never leaves the turtle’sback. And the turtle never swims away[20].

APPENDIX: ESSENTIAL LINKSNation to Nation and Paula Giese’s sites are just twoof a host that subvert Western indoctrination andchampion indigenous expression in the politicallandscape. The following storytelling projects provethat the issue is not “what ideology will have agencyin cyberspace,” as Todd wrote, but, How we can sub-vert that ideology from the inside and make it ourown?

Cheryl L’Hirondelle, <http://www.ndnnrkey.net>

Cybertribe, <http://www.fineartforum.org/Gallery/cybertribe/exhibitions.htm>

Edward Poitras, <http://www.neutralground.sk.ca/artistprojects/in-x-isle/index.html>

Jimmie Durham, <http://uinic.de/alex/en/durham/sie-sind-hier.html>

KC Adams, <http://www.kcadams.net>

Lisa Reihana, <http://www.lisareihana.com>

Mike Macdonald, <http://www.snacc.mb.ca/projects/butterfly_garden/>

Omushkegowak Oral History Project, <http://www.ourvoices.ca/>

Ahasiw Maskegon Iskwew, <http://www.snacc.mb.ca/projects/spiderlanguage/>

Melanie Printup Hope, <http://www.albany.net/~printup/>

References and Notes

1. Marjorie Beaucage, Aboriginal Voices: Entitlementthrough Storytelling, in Janine Marchessault (ed.), Mir-ror Machine: Video and Identity, Toronto: YYZ Books,1995, 216.

2. Thomas King, The Truth about Stories: A Native Nar-rative (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2003) p. 1.

3. Trinh T. Minh-ha, Native Woman Other: Writing Post-coloniality and Feminism, Indiana University Press,1989, 120–-122.

4. Penny Petrone, Native Literature in Canada: Fromthe Oral Tradition to the Present, Ontario: Oxford Uni-versity Press, 1990, 12.

5. Trinh T. Minh-ha [3] p. 120.

6. Trinh T. Minh-ha [3] p. 122.

7. Jimmie Durham, A Certain Lack of Coherence: Writ-ings on Art and Cultural Politics, London: Kala Press,1993, 108.

8. Durham [7] p. 108.

9. The Sony Portapak, initially marketed in 1968, wasthe first truly portable half-inch video recording device.

10. Isuma Productions, www.isuma.ca.

11. I write about video not to create a linear his-torical trajectory from oral tradition to the digitalpresent, but because it is one of the first instances in Canada where storytelling was equated with amedium outside of oral and written traditions. SeeBeaucage [1].

12. One of the most comprehensive and engaging

the Internet for what it was—one of the most advanced information storage and retrieval systems available. Although not maintained after Giese’s death in 1997, Native American Art Resources at its peak of activity contained links to over 300 other web sites that, taken to-gether, tell a story of contemporary Na-tive America.

Nearly every site created by nativeartists reflects back to real people—tocommunities, to traditions and to stories.For example, Nation to Nation’s projectCyberpowwow [18] was created as ameans to gather virtually—a place withinwhich participants can take on new iden-tities, view artworks, read critical writingsand meet and speak with people fromaround the world. What makes the proj-ect successful is not the virtual gather-ing, but the physical gathering of peopleat different real-world sites during thetwo days when the “powwow” takes place.Throughout all such gatherings in whichI have participated there have been con-stant reminders of real places, of lived ex-periences. One of the first questions I amalways asked upon logging on—eventhough I am represented by an avatar incyberspace—is where I am located andwhere I am from. In the end, Cyberpow-wow is not an experience of sheddingidentity but an exercise in reaffirming it.

In a history of native Internet use,Masayesva recounted,

the earliest use of computer technologyby indigenous people was by Yupik Eski-mos in the polar north, selling their artsand crafts on the internet.

We take it for granted today that themodern technology has prompted a vir-tual community of the World Wide Web,but the radical position would be to ac-knowledge that northern people, in theirvast landscapes, were among the first toexperiment with these web links, creat-ing virtual communities through com-munication technologies as a means forphysical and cultural survival [19].

Operating through networks andacross great geographical divides is aconcept and an action that has alwaysexisted in aboriginal communities—en-acted through such things as storytell-ing, the moccasin telegraph and ancienttrade routes. It is this unique sensibil-ity performed since time immemorial inthese alternative spaces that informs anunderstanding of tradition, which, in thiscontext, becomes fluid and dynamic.

Which brings us back to where westarted:

There is a story I know. It’s about theearth and how it floats in space on theback of a turtle. I’ve heard this story

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resources on the history of video art is Doug Hall andSally Jo Fifer’s edited volume Illuminating Video: AnEssential Guide to Video Art (New York: Aperture in as-sociation with the Bay Area Video Coalition, 1991).

13. Victor Masayesva, Indigenous Experimentalism, inJenny Lion (ed.), Magnetic North, Minneapolis: Uni-versity of Minnesota Press, Walker Art Center, andVideo Pool, 2000, 226–239.

14. Masayesva [13] p. 231.

15. Loretta Todd, Aboriginal Narratives in Cyberspace,

Candice Hopkins, of Tlingit descent, is the director/curator of the exhibitions program atthe Western Front in Vancouver, British Co-lumbia. She has an MA from the Center forCuratorial Studies at Bard College in NewYork and has organized exhibitions featuringsuch artists as Jimmie Durham, Elaine Rei-chek, Minerva Cuevas, Brian Jungen andDavid Hammons.

in Mary Ann Moser and Douglas Macleod, eds., Im-mersed in Technology: Art and Virtual Environments, NewYork: MIT Press, 1996, 179-194.

16. Todd [15] pp. 179–181.

17. Native American Indian Resources, www.kstrom.net/isk/.

18. Cyberpowwwow, www.cyberpowwow.net.

19. Masayesva [13] p. 233.

20. See King [2].

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CALL FOR PAPERS

Live Art and Science on the Internet

The Internet has become a venue and medium for art as a means to broadcast ideas to a worldwide audi-ence. Leonardo and Guest Editor Martha Wilson seek texts on the subject “Live Art and Science on the Internet” for a series of special sections in the international journal Leonardo, both in print and online.

As artists and others produce live art on the Internet, liveness, presence, mediatization, on-line activism,surveillance and identity/gender, among other issues, are being explored. We seek texts documenting suchwork, as well as texts on the history of this field of practice and on the vocabulary being used to describe it.We also seek texts from scientists who have used the Internet to conduct science investigations live on-line.

Wilson and her peer review committee seek statements (500 words plus one image describing one work),notes (2,500 words plus six images describing a body of work), galleries (750-word curator’s introductionplus up to 10 images by individual artists, each with a 200-word caption) and articles (5,000 words plus 12 images). Texts describing the work of a living artist or scientist must be written by the artist or scientisthim/herself, with a co-author if necessary.

This call for papers is open through 2006.

Please send an initial statement of interest with a brief explanation of your project to Martha Wilson:<Leonardo@franklinfurnace.org>. For author guidelines, follow the link “Info for Authors” on LeonardoOn-Line <www.leonardo.info>.