By Dr Romaine Moreton
In the cosmologies of Indigenous peoples, we live in a world of constant flux, inhabiting multiverses rather than universes, where meaning and truths are multiple and co-existing, and the concept of property and ownership is foreign. Our stories are dynamic, living, and have agency. Stories in Indigenous cultural contexts are better understood as responsibilities rather than intellectual property and are fundamental principles in how Indigenous peoples articulate and express our experience of having emerged from the land, and how our identities and belonging are specific to place. This place-based understanding of Indigenous peoples use of knowledges, media and technologies have endured for millennia and continue into the present. It is this enduring cultural legacy of emerging from the land and deep belonging that is enshrined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). UNDRIP is an instrument that protects Indigenous peoples globally to be who we are, culturally, philosophically, cosmologically, and to practice our cultures daily. For this purpose, Pathways and Protocols: A Filmmakers Guide to Working with Indigenous People, Cultures and Concepts by Screen Australia and Terri Janke is intended to support filmmakers in navigating the complex, intersecting spaces of Indigenous knowledge systems and western knowledge systems, a space Dr Martin Nakata refers to as the “cultural interface”[1]. Filmmaking, radio and media production are very much an example of the cultural interface as stated by Nakata. Two key considerations to be explored in this essay, are Indigenous Knowledges (IK) and Indigenous Technologies (IT).
Blackfoot scholar Dr Leroy Little Bear discusses important definitions of Indigenous Knowledge and Indigenous Technology. Little Bear quoting Battiste and Henderson, defines Indigenous Knowledges (IK) as “… part of the collective genius of humanity. It represents the accumulated experience, wisdom and know-how unique to nations, societies, and or communities of people, living in specific ecosystems of America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania,” where “Knowledge is relational” and is about relationships[2]. In addition, Little Bear defines technology as the application of what is already known[3]. Given this, Indigenous media production at the cultural interface is the ancient application of what is already known, an accumulation of knowledges gained through throughout millennia for the purpose of producing and reproducing Indigenous values of balance, harmony, and sustainability. It is these principles and understanding that frame an online course designed by Drs Romaine Moreton and Lou Bennett. Based on our extensive practice-based research, myself and Dr Lou Bennett were commissioned by AFTRS in 2018 to design an online course based on Screen Australia and Terri Janke’s Pathways and Protocols document. What we found was a document that directed Indigenous and non-Indigenous media practitioners towards co-creating an ethical space of engagement[4].
An Introduction to Indigenous Media Ethics & Aesthetics is designed to introduce course participants to the historical emergence of Indigenous Cultural Intellectual Property (ICIP) and its impact on Australian screen production. The course will bundle models of ethics and aesthetics for course participants to use as a tool kit when producing media with, for or about Indigenous peoples and communities. The ICIP protocols are widely used in Australia and are claimed to be an industry standard. The protocols have emerged through the global recognition of the rights of Indigenous peoples, and their self-determining rights to their heritage and culture based on Indigenous knowledge systems embedded in relationships specific to lands, culture, and communities. The protocols are offered as a guide to inform production processes, and course participants will explore ICIPs within a philosophical framework and emergent Indigenous screen ethics and aesthetics to learn about the complexity of the materialisation, codification and commodification of Indigenous cultural knowledge in both Indigenous and settler colonial screen productions. In using a philosophical frame to explore the role of the Pathways & Protocols document and Janke’s precise articulation of the ICIPs, it is the intention of the course to use Indigenous inspired innovation to address how media technology has “… altered our relations to one another and to ourselves.”[5] The online curriculum shows the relevance of Indigenous knowledge’s and values that when applied to western media technology can be used to advocate for ecological balance by maintaining relationships with and responsibilities to land and each other.
[1] Nakata, Martin. DISCIPLINING THE SAVAGES, SAVAGING THE DISCIPLINES, Aboriginal Studies Press, 2007, page 195
[2] Little Bear, L., (2009). Naturalizing Indigenous Knowledge, Synthesis Paper. (ISBN: 978-1- 926612-32-4) University of Saskatchewan, Aboriginal Education Research Centre, Saskatoon, Sask. and Indigenous and Adult Higher Education Consortium, Calgary, Alta, page 7
[3] https://news.asu.edu/content/qa-little-bear-offers-different-view-science, accessed 22/8/2021
[4] Ermine, Willie. The Ethical Space of Engagement. Indigenous Law Journal/Volume 6/Issue 1/2007, page 193
[5] McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media, MIT Press Edition, 1994, pages 7-8
Dr Romaine Moreton is Goenpul Yagerabul Minjungbul Bundjalung from Tjerangeri (Stradbroke Island) and what is now northern New South Wales. Romaine is the Director of First Nations & Outreach at AFTRS. She is an internationally recognised writer of poetry, prose and film. While a Research Fellow Filmmaker in Residence at Monash, she completed the powerful transmedia work One Billion Beats, that examined the historical representation of Aboriginal people in Australian cinema. Prior to that, she was a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Newcastle and worked on a project about Indigenous Cultural Intellectual Property in the digital space. With Dr Lou Bennett, Romaine has been working closely with AFTRS over the last two years on a first-of-its-kind Indigenous Curriculum for screen and broadcast, focussed through the lens of ethics and aesthetics.