Decolonizing Engagement? Creating a Sense of Community through Collaborative Filmmaking
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26522/ssj.v9i2.1141Keywords:
Indigenous peoples, community engaged scholarship, collaborative filmmaking, intercultural dialogue, environmental justiceAbstract
The visual medium has the potential to be a creative avenue for enhancing awareness, critical thought and social justice. Through the prism of collaborative filmmaking, academic-activists can enrich textual analyses while creating what Jacques Rancière calls a “sense of community” among participants. This article reflects on the process of co-producing an Indigenous youth-driven documentary film, Indian Givers, which is publicly available on YouTube. It discusses the applied practice of engaging in a collaborative process with the aim of countering Western models of knowledge. The film and this article each draw into focus the experiences and stories of Indigenous youth who live in a highly polluted place commonly referred to as Canada’s “Chemical Valley.” Informed by Chantal Mouffe’s notion of agonism, I contend that collaborative filmmaking contributes to anti-oppressive and community engaged scholarship by facilitating intercultural dialogue, offering a reflexive and relational approach to research, co-creating knowledge and contributing to social action. This paper reflects on some of the challenges of collaborative filmmaking in order to contribute to academic-activist research. As an anti-oppressive research tool, collaborative filmmaking provides a forum for resistance to dominant colonial discourses while creating space for radical difference in pursuit of decolonization.
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Wiebe, S. (forthcoming). Everyday exposure: Indigenous mobilization and environmental justice in Canada’s chemical valley. Vancouver: UBC Press.
Yanow, D. (2003). Assessing local knowledge. In H.M.A. Wagenar (Ed.), Deliberative policy analysis: Understanding governance in the network society (pp. 228-246). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bloustein, G. (2012). Play, affect, and participatory video as a reflexive research strategy. In E-J. Milne, C. Mitchell & N. de Lange (Eds.), The handbook of participatory video (pp. 115-130). Lanham: Altamira Press.
Bouchard, G, & C. Taylor. (2008). Building the future: A time for reconciliation. (Report of the Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Diversity). Quebec: Government of Quebec. Retrieved from https://www.mce.gouv.qc.ca/publications/CCPARDC/rapport-final-integral-en.pdf
Cahill, C. (2007). The personal is political: Developing new subjectivities in a participatory action research process. Gender, Place, and Culture, 14(3), 267-292.
Campbell, D. (2007). Geopolitics and visuality: Sighting the Darfur conflict. Political Geography, 26(1), 357-382.
Clover, D. (2011). Successes and challenges of feminist arts-based participatory methodologies with homeless/street-involved women in Victoria. Action Research, 9(12), 12-26.
Clover, D. (2014). Facilitating and teaching feminist visual arts-based research. In C. Etmanski, B. Hall & T. Dawson (Eds.), Learning and teaching community-based research (pp. 135-149). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
De Guerre, M. (Writer & Director), & Mendelsohn, A. (Director). (2008). The Disappearing male. Canada: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Red Apple Entertainment.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Schizophrenia and capitalism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Ecojustice. (2007). Exposing Canada's Chemical Valley. Toronto: Ecojustice.
Flicker, S., Savan, B., Kolenda, B., & Mildenberger, M. (2008). A snapshot of community-based research in Canada: Who? What? Why? How? Health Education Research, 23(1), 106-114.
Gabrielson T., & Parady, K. (2010). Corporeal citizenship: Rethinking green citizenship through the body. Environmental Politics, 19(3), 374-391.
Hankivsky, O. (Ed.). (2012). An intersectionality-based policy analysis framework. Vancouver: BC Institute for Intersectionality Research and Policy, Simon Fraser University.
Haraway, D. (1988). Situated knowledges: The science question and the privilege of partial perspective. Feminist Studies, 14(3), 575-599.
Haraway, D. (1991). Simians, cyborgs, and women: The reinvention of nature. New York: Rutledge.
Hoover, E., Cook, K., Plain, R., Sanchez, K., Waghiyi, V., Miller, P., . . . Carpenter, D. (2012). Indigenous peoples of North America: Environmental exposures and reproductive justice. Environmental Health Perspectives, 120(12), 1645-1649.
Kindon, S. (2003). Participatory video in geographic research: A feminist practice of looking? Area, 35(2), 142-153.
Kovach, M. (2009). Indigenous methodologies: Characteristics, conversations, and contexts. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Lynes, K. (2013). Prismatic media, transnational circuits: Feminism in a globalized present. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Mackenzie, C., Keith, M., & Lockridge, A. (2005). Declining sex ratio in a First Nations community. Environmental Health Perspectives, 113(10), 1295-1298.
Miller, E., & Smith, M. (2012). Dissemination and ownership of knowledge. In E-J. Milne, C. Mitchell & N. de Lange (Eds.), The handbook of participatory video (pp. 331-348). Lanham: Altamira Press.
Mouffe, C. (2005). The democratic paradox. London: Verso.
Mullin, A. (2003). Feminist art and the political imagination. Hypatia, 18(4), 190-213.
National Energy Board (NEB) (2014). .Hearing Order OH-001-2014. Trans mountain pipeline ULC: Trans mountain expansion project. Volume 23: November 28th 2014. Victoria, BC.
Nyers, P. (2010). No one is illegal between city and nation. Studies in Social Justice, 4(2), 127-143.
Ochocka, J., & Janzen, R. (2014). Breathing life into theory: Illustrations of community-based research, hallmarks, functions and phases. Gateways: International Journal of Community Research and Engagement, 7, 18-33.
Pain, R. (2004). Social geography: Participatory research. Progress in Human Geography, 25(8), 652-663.
Rancière, J. (2004). The politics of aesthetics. London: Bloomsbury.
Rancière, J. (2009). The emancipated spectator. London: Verso.
Scott, D., & Smith, A. (2012). The green teens of Aamjiwnaang make the connection. Canadian Dimension, 6(1), 20.
Shaw, J. (2012). Interrogating the gap between the ideals and practice reality of participatory video. In E-J. Milne, C. Mitchell & N. de Lange (Eds.), The handbook of participatory video (pp. 225-241). Lanham: Altamira Press.
Shaw, K. (2008). Indigeneity and political theory: Sovereignty and the limits of the political. London: Rutledge.
Sontag, S. (1997). On photography. New York: Picador.
Sucharov, M. (2015, June 25). The ‘Sixties Scoop’ still ripples through Canadian families. The Globe and Mail. Retrieved from: http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/index.php?p=4
Thomas, V., & Britton, K. (2012). The art of participatory video: Relational aesthetics in artistic collaborations. In E-J. Milne, C. Mitchell & N. de Lange (Eds.), The handbook of participatory video (pp. 208-222). Lanham: Altamira Press.
Tremblay, C., &. Jayme, B. (2015). Community knowledge co-creation through participatory video. Action Research, 13(3), 298-314.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2015). TRC Final Report. Retrieved from: http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/index.php?p=890
Tuhiwai Smith, L. (1999). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. London: Zed Books.
Wiebe, S., & Konsmo, E. (2014). Indigenous body as contaminated site? Examining reproductive justice in Aamjiwnaang. In F. Scala, S. Paterson & M. Sokolon (Eds.), Fertile ground: Exploring reproduction in Canada (pp. 325-358). Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University.
Wiebe, S., & Taylor, M. (2014). Pursuing excellence in collaborative community-campus research: 2014 CCCR national summit backgrounder. (Background paper prepared for the 2014 CCCR National Summit, November 3-4, 2014.) Community-Based Research Canada. Retrieved from: http://www.communitybasedresearch.ca/resources/677%20National%20Summit/Participant%20Backgrounder%20Oct%2029.compressed.pdf
Wiebe, S. (forthcoming). Everyday exposure: Indigenous mobilization and environmental justice in Canada’s chemical valley. Vancouver: UBC Press.
Yanow, D. (2003). Assessing local knowledge. In H.M.A. Wagenar (Ed.), Deliberative policy analysis: Understanding governance in the network society (pp. 228-246). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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