News
Paulette Moore speaks about decolonizing media
By Rylee Carrillo-Wagner ’19
September 29, 2016
On Tuesday, Sept. 20, students and teachers alike gathered in the Red Pit to hear from PhD candidate, and previous media journalist and filmmaker, Paulette Moore who has spent the last few years working to decolonize media.
Moore began the talk with an indigenous greeting that she explained were “the words that come before all other… what we share before we start anything… words of gratitude.” After greeting the room, Moore went into her past, talking about her background in media. She began her career as a news anchor but soon after went to work for the discovery channel and national geographic as a filmmaker. Her job was to tell the stories of other people’s lives, however, when she looks back, her films make her uncomfortable.
Moore explained what many indigenous perspectives on media are: that “mainstream media operates under a deeply dualistic mindset which separates mind from body, individual from community and humans from nature. By identifying and creating media with relationships, responsibility, time, place, ritual, the body, language and gratitude in mind—we may develop new understanding of how indigenous beliefs, culture and practice can shift the way we make and see media.”
To exemplify the opposite, “indigenizing media,” Moore showed a video made at Standing Rock just earlier that day. To her, indigenizing media involves “relationship, responsibility, reciprocity, collaboration, feedback, perspective, language, place, body, gratitude and vulnerability.” She then asked the room where people saw these indigenizing themes in the Standing Rock video. Soon the room began to see that each of these qualities were connected to one another and could spot each of them in the film.
In comparison, Moore talked about how “in academia we place the mind above the body: Descartes, I think therefore I am, not I got all this going on [indicating body] therefore I am.” Thus academia struggles with the same lack of connection that the media does and, in her opinion, needs to strive for a more connected outlook.
Going back to media, Moore summarizes that media “cartoonizes and pities” indigenous people. In contrast to the Standing Rock video, Moore showed an old video of herself as a journalist in the ’90s. The clip was from the first day of the Iraq war and there was cheering in the background. “I chose that clip,” says Moore. She then asks the room to compare it to her list of qualities and the room could easily tell that it lacked most of the key pieces essential in indigenizing media.
She then presented Ngugi Wa Thiong’o and Tuhiwai Smith’s definition of colonizing: “ military conquests and political dictatorship followed by domination of the economic, mental, cultural, and physical universe of the colonized,” followed by Smith’s definition of decolonizing: “Generally a euphemism that describes a formal handing over of the instruments of government. In reality it must be a long-term process involving the cultural, linguistic and psychological divesting of cultural parameters.” She then presented the word “indigenizing” and asked what its definition should be.
Mainstream, nonfiction TV is an industry focused on making movies for white males ages 18-39 about military and cops, says Moore, and “it never looked like me.” Moore expressed that she felt she was distancing herself from her community each time she made a show: “Bomb into communities, steal the stories,” and then leave.
To illustrate this, she showed the beginning of a film she made film about indigenous people in Brazil. There was a distinct “white savior dynamic,” focusing on the white man who came into their world, rather than focusing on, or even mentioning the indigenous man’s name who was the poster child for movie and article.
In contrast however, Moore then showed an MSNBC reporter, a white man with privilege, talking about Standing Rock as outsider. Though he still talks as outsider, he uses his privilege to connect with a non-indigenous and larger audience. “That’s just the beginning” of change, expressed Moore.
Now Moore is working in Wisconsin. She arrived when she discovered that a mining company wanted to use water from watershed at Lake Superior and made a movie called “To Wisconsin with Love” and a second movie “From Wisconsin with Love,” after she moved there and became a part of the community she had talked to during the first film. To her, the first film was about shenanigans with the mining company. Now it’s about decolonizing and indigenizing.
Her newest films were made in collaboration with her students. The mining company left in 2015 and the second video observes the aftermath. Before beginning the film, she asks us to compare this to her 90s self and her Brazil film. This new film is slow moving — speakers don’t talk fast, and we as a society are not used to this in modern media, making this film radical and different in Moore’s opinion. This was hard for her as well, having worked for so long in modern media. But it was her students who encouraged her to be patient, to sit and listen to elders: “allow the time for something to unfold; hesitation and pause, that allows vulnerability and respect… The powerful thing you can do is let someone tell their story all the way through. That is the most powerful thing you can do as a human being.”