Articles de revues sur le sujet « Cree worldview »

AbstractThe purpose of this exploratory article is to illustrate the worldview, epistemology and relationship with the natural world from a Nēhîthâwâk (Woodlands Cree) perspective. The contents of the article represent a personal narrative of an educator of Woodlands Cree cultural heritage from the Reindeer Lake area of northern Canada. A brief history of the Woodlands Cree is shared in order to provide a context for my perspectives as “an insider” of this way of life. This is followed by an attempt to articulate fundamental key concepts in relation to traditional Woodlands Cree education, worldview, epistemology, language, values and practices as they are informed by relationships with the land, plants and animals. The text is highly subjective and culturally contextualised.

The purpose of this exploratory paper is to introduce key aspects of Bush Cree storytelling methodology. In this essay, I provide a foundation for further articulation using a Cree worldview framework as an umbrella for northern-based storytelling discourse. The underlying current in this paper makes links to Cree stories that teach, heal, and transform. Keywords: Woodlands Cree; storytelling; methodology

In this article, the authors present the teachings of nêhiyaw (Cree) Emerging Elder and Knowledge Keeper Joseph Naytowhow. In a celebrated nêhiyaw (Cree) fashion, storytelling and language are used as examples of a non-linear and sometimes complicated journey back to self, culture, nature and healing. Against the background of being kidnapped, imprisoned in a religious institution, and robbed of all-things nêhiyaw (Cree), this article offers a sense of Joseph Naytowhow’s journey back to intimacy, love, and affection which aids in one’s search for emotional safety. Joseph utilizes nêhiyawîhtwâwin (Cree worldview and culture) knowledge tools such as dreaming to aid in his journey back to nêhiyawîhtwâwin (Cree culture) and nêhiyawêwin (Cree language). From a residential school internee to a leader and emerging Elder, he notes the importance of mentors in a relational approach to healing. This article provides an invitation through “the sunrise song” to “Wake up!” and create a more respectful and reciprocal world of internal wholeness.

What is understood as “healing” is often culturally and socially embedded. One’s culture helps to define what it means to be well or unwell, and what it means to heal or recover. Sometimes, one’s culture sits in contrast to the mainstream, western scientific approach to health, often seen as the freedom from illness. A Métis worldview is holistic in itself, and it incorporates notions and practices of well-being that go beyond just being “illness or problem free”. Wellbeing is often directly linked to our relationship with the food that sustains us, to the various animal and plant worlds, to the elements, and to being in “right relationship” to the world and others. Dr. Catherine Richardson Kinewesquao presents an approach to healing which she refers to as transformative, energetic and spiritual. She draws from Cree teachings related to “mamatowisowin”, the life force inherent in all beings and the act of calling forth this energy into the healing process. This life force is connected to dignity, justice and care. Metaphorically, it can be talked about as being released or made available when an individual opens to discussing/facing fears and sorrows, distressing events and losses, and to finding a way to integrate them into their whole being. It is a form of energy transmutation, of becoming more emotionally fluid and liberated from the negativity of what is “acting upon them”. When energy is unblocked or released, particularly in the presence of a compassionate listener, the person may then have more energy for their chosen life projects. By using a response-based approach in the aftermath of violence and degradation, and by contextualizing events through exploratory conversations, one may transform stress into productive energy to fuel life, growth and action. Kinewesquao articulates the use of cultural processes for stress management and working with the natural world to enhance well-being. Ultimately, she makes a case that “positive social responses” (e.g., love, care, compassionate listening, support and cultural rituals) to one’s suffering can be some of the best healing medicines.

In contemporary ‘post-secular society’, videogames like Assassin’s Creed, BioShock Infinite or World of Warcraft are suffused with religious elements. Departing from a critique on studies perceiving such in-game representations as discriminatory forms of religious Othering, the main research question of this article is: how does role-playing the (non-)religious Other in games affect the worldview of players? The study is based on a qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews held with 20 international players from different (non-)religious backgrounds. Rather than seeing religion in games as representations of ‘Othering’, the analysis demonstrates that players from different (non-)religious beliefs take on different worldviews while role-playing the (non-)religious Other. Atheists relativize their own position, opening up to the logic of religious worldviews; Christians, Hindus and Muslims, in turn, compare traditions and may draw conclusions about the similarities underlying different world religions. Other players ‘slip into a secular mindset’, gradually turning towards the position of a ‘religious none’. It is concluded that playing the religious Other in videogames provides the opportunity to suspend (non-)religious worldviews and empathize with the (non-)religious Other. The relevance of these findings is related to broader sociological debates about ‘post-secular society’ and the alleged increase of religious fundamentalism, conflict and mutual Othering.

The last few decades have witnessed a tremendous increase in nutrient levels (phosphorus and nitrogen) in coastal water leading to excessive algal growth (Eutrophication). The presence of large amounts of algae turns the water’s color into green or red, in the case of algal blooms. Chlorophyll-a is often used as an indicator of algal biomass. Due to increased human activities surrounding Dubai creek, there have been eutrophication concerns given the levels of nutrients in that creek. This study aims to map chlorophyll-a in Dubai Creek from WorldView-2 imagery and explore the relationship between chlorophyll-a and other eutrophication indicators. A geometrically- and atmospherically-corrected WorldView-2 image and in-situ data have been utilized to map chlorophyll-a in the creek. A spectral model, developed from the WorldView-2 multispectral image to monitor Chlorophyll-a concentration, yielded 0.82 R2 with interpolated in-situ chlorophyll-a data. To address the time lag between the in-situ data and the image, Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) images were used to demonstrate the accuracy of the WorldView-2 model. The images, acquired on 20 May and 23 July 2012, were processed to extract chlorophyll-a band ratios (Band 4/Band 3) following the standard approach. Based on the availability, the 20 May image acquisition date is the closest to the middle of Quarter 2 (Q2) of the in-situ data (15 May). The 23 July 2012 image acquisition date is the closest to the WorldView-2 image date (24 July). Another model developed to highlight the relationship between spectral chlorophyll-a levels, and total nitrogen and orthophosphate levels, yielded 0.97 R2, which indicates high agreement. Furthermore, the generated models were found to be useful in mapping chlorophyll-a, total nitrogen, and orthophosphate, without the need for costly in-situ data acquisition efforts.

This study deals with the notion that Indigenous peoples are concerned with preserving their communities, nations, cultural values, and educational traditions. Indigenous peoples have a land-based education system that emerges out of their own worldviews and perspectives, which need to be applied to research concerning Indigenous cultures. This work explores Indigenous land-based education through the perspectives of Cree Elders of Northern, Manitoba. Six Cree Elders were interviewed to explore the ideas and practices of land-based education. The article engages discussion of Indigenous land-based education stemming from Elders’ teachings of Indigenous knowledge, cultural values, identity, and vision. Informed by Cree Elders, this qualitative study articulates an Indigenous interpretation of land-based education. Research findings demonstrate that Indigenous land-based education can be used to promote well-being among Indigenous peoples in Canada. While the study is based on the Cree experience in Northern Manitoba, its message is significant to many other Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. Drawing on the Elders’ teachings, policy recommendations are generated for advancing Indigenous land-based education

The article examines S.N. Vankov’s worldview and life creed based on his memoirs, revealing the motivation of his professional and social activities, his attitude to work, his concepts of homeland, power and society. Throughout the lifetime of memoirs’ author, the consistency of his life principles and beliefs is traced, regardless of the change of political power in Russia. The paper focuses on the worldview of the engineering and technical intelligentsia of the late 19th and first third of the 20th century, the brightest representatives of which include Semyon Nikolaevich Vankov. The issue acquires particular relevance in the context of cooperation between the so called old bourgeois specialists and Soviet authorities, and their participation in the industrialization of the country and the tutoring of a new generation of engineers and technical specialists.

Islam’s main document, the Qur’ān, is perceived as the foundation for thereligion’s creedal ideas. Throughout the ages, however, Qur’ānic exegesis(tafsīr), like its counterpart endeavors in other established religions, hasbecome subject to circularity. This means basically that while faith-basedscholars may declare that their exegeses are based upon reading scripturequa scripture, their interpretations are often conditioned by creedal constructsimposed upon the text. One such issue in Islam revolves around‘iṣmah, the concept of prophetic inerrancy.A prophet, in the Islamic worldview, is not simply someone who deliversGod’s message, but one who is also tasked with being an exemplar.Since the holder of such an office must have impeccable conduct,as well as proficiency in teaching and explaining what God wants for thefaith community, it might be assumed that a doctrine of prophetic inerrancywas a logical inevitability. There is a general agreement betweenSunnis and Shīʻahs—primarily by rational analysis—on the issue of theProphet (ṢAAS) being inerrant from major and minor sins. The conceptis not clearly spelled out in the Qur’ān, and based on their differences increedal perception, the two groups, while agreeing on a core idea, differ oncertain details ...

I struggle mamereTo bringYour wordsInto nokum'sCabinBut the wordsAre in battleCompetingfor my mindI am a mixed-blood woman raised in Canada where my two ancestries have competing worldviews, from social, political, and religious ideology to ancient philosophies. These mixed ancestries also come with different social expectations. In the social-political world of Native Studies where I walk daily, my French grandmother, mamere, is argued as coming from a world of privilege because she was white-skinned, and my Cree grandmother, nokum is thought to come from a world of oppression because she was dark-skinned. Yet both my grandmothers experienced abuse and prejudice. How and where the abuses originated may be different, but they did occur. I have a lot to learn from my grandmothers, but it has taken me many years of inner conflict, self-righteousness, and pain to get to this understanding. To acknowledge both grandmothers having been oppressed means I cannot continue to think of the world in simplistic, binary terms of colonizer/colonized. I must legitimize the equality of suffering in both cultures. Indeed, my worldviews had been turned upside down as I began to identify with the feminist movement, nonetheless it is nokum's world that was shattered, demeaned, and distorted, so it is her world I bring to you today with this story. Another day I may talk about my mamere's patriarchal world, but today is for nokum.

AbstractAgriculture in prehispanic Mesoamerica necessitated not only a wide range of knowledge regarding soil types, fertility, and the growing cycles of different plants, but also the attendant rituals that firmly situated agrarian production into a shared Mesoamerican worldview. Due primarily to archaeological visibility, those attendant rituals have traditionally been investigated within the context of large centers. Recent investigations at the site of Quincunx, a hinterland architectural complex in northwestern Belize of the Maya Lowlands, provide evidence that some rural communities may also have had access to and control over esoteric knowledge involved in agricultural practice in the Late Classic period. Our findings are discussed in the context of ethnographic accounts and archaeological data that reveal the deep significance of quincuncial designs in Maya society and Mesoamerican ritual practices.

The idea of Islamic Science has been around for at least three decades,and it has generated a lot of controversy. Some people deny that thisidea makes any sense. They argue that science is an objective and universalenterprise, and it does not depend on any creed or ideology. Webelieve that this is a nave interpretation of scientific activity and that‘Islamic Science,’ or for that matter, ‘religious science,’ has relevance attwo levels: the theoretical level and the practical level. At the theoreticallevel, the philosophical and ideological presuppositions of the scientistare very effective in his or her theory-making or choice of theories.As for the practical orientation of science, the cultural traditions ofthe scientist make a difference. Thus, ‘Islamic science’ ascertains therelevance of scientific activities to Islamic worldview, which has implicationsfor both the theoretical and the practical aspects of science.’

Research on religion and the environment primarily focuses how religion shapes environmental attitudes, but this leaves aside how this connection links to observable levels of pollution. This article outlines three elements by which religion and environmental inequality are related: the cumulative effect of religious worldviews, free market outlooks held by some religious adherents, and the bridging or bonding character of social ties of religious adherents. These three elements are analyzed by examining the relationship between industrial air pollution and the proportion of population in metropolitan areas that are conservative Protestant, Mainline Protestant, Catholic, and a composite measure. Results show that the composite measure is associated with more industrial pollution. But important distinctions between religious groups show that a greater proportion of conservative Protestant Evangelical adherents are associated with greater pollution, but that Catholic and Mainline Protestant adherents are not. These findings suggest the importance of renewing research between religion and environmental degradation.

Purpose Primary sector firms by and large operate on indigenous territories across the world. In Canada, partnerships, land rights settlements, decolonization and reconciliation efforts provide indigenous communities with the financial means and the political power to stop projects they consider contrary to their traditions. How can companies acquire legitimacy among indigenous communities? This paper aims to answer this question by examining what the economic issues are among indigenous communities, how theories and practices of sustainable and legitimacy management articulated and how some basic notions of traditional indigenous teachings could inform non-indigenous managers are and help them interact better with indigenous leaders and their communities. Design/methodology/approach This paper was informed about indigenous knowledge by secondary and primary indigenous and business sources from North America and from other areas such as Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Information about business relations with indigenous communities and stakeholders mostly came from non-indigenous sources, including scholarly results obtained within indigenous communities. Findings Sources of incompatibility between indigenous and European/Western worldviews are described. A selection of indigenous traditional beliefs and decision-making processes are presented, based on indigenous traditions around the Great Lakes region of North America. A discussion of desirable options for both indigenous and non-indigenous decision-makers to establish business legitimacy by overcoming their misperceptions is included. Practical implications A better understanding of economic issues in indigenous communities, indigenous perspectives and current developments, as well as lessons from the recent decades on successes and failures at establishing business legitimacy among indigenous communities, will help government and business decision-makers, as well as students and academic scholars. Originality/value Mainly based on management legitimacy theory and Anishnaabe knowledge, this paper makes an original contribution to the understanding of Indigenous strategic thinking in North America in its interaction with business legitimacy building issues.

The present paper reads David Malouf’s 1996 novel The Conversations at Curlow Creek as portraying a vivid and realistic picture of events relating to crime and punishment in colonial Australia in the early nineteenth century. The depiction of death penalty accorded to the bushranger Daniel Carney under the supervision of the Irish sheriff Michael Adair in New South Wales thus resonates with numerous historical accounts of incidents that actually happened. The novel, however, does more than only provide accurate historical representation as it also presents Adair as having undergone a rather dramatic transformation in the process of conversing with Carney before the latter’s execution. The paper, drawing on the views of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, argues that a realization of inevitable mortality, of facing certain death characterizes this change in Adair’s nature and worldview. It concludes by suggesting that Adair’s acceptance of his finitude intimates of a way of being in the world that not only subverts procedures of administering punishment to convicts in colonial Australia but also indicates the limits of polarized identity politics that shapes the country in the present times.

The research is devoted to the analysis of the word formation peculiarities of the vocabulary expressing the idea of Christianity and the creed in the Russian language and its dialects, with priority attention to the dialect group of South Russian Tambov dialects. The aim of the study is to analyze the creative word-formation potential of the investigated lexicon, which defines a new approach: identifying the original derivational base in the historical projection, a variety of methods of derivation, description of motivational semantic relations. The word-formation potential and the structure of Christian vocabulary units are traced with priority attention to the dialect group of South Russian Tambov dialects. In the course of scientific development of the data the originality of dialect word-making is revealed, typical word-formation models in lexical and semantic groups are analyzed, the dominant influence of the historical old Slavic and Russian traditions and the interdependence of language and national mentality are evidently determined. Lexical realizations, the situational use of which sometimes presents unexpected contexts, demonstrates the self-value of studying the “religious” macro-field of vocabulary in the dialect “version”, and the dominant position of language in the formation of the national worldview. The facts prove the extreme importance of explication of the tradition of the creed in the main system and subsystems of the national Russian language. The basic empirical base is the “Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language” by V.I. Dal. The analyzed array of lexical units is formed from this source and compared with the data of other dialect dictionaries reflected in the bibliography. The reference point for the detection of units of Christian vocabulary by V.I. Dal was the dictionary litter “folk-church”.

Most of the books of Islamic Creed found in Islamic heritage are characterized by their presentation of theology from the perspective of a particular sect out of the major Islamic sects. This methodology has given rise to serious and detrimental problems that affect the ummah (Muslim nation) up until this day, and from it stems the issues that divide the ummah. It is thus apparent that it is incapable of presenting the issues of theology from the perspective of that unites the Muslims. It is true that this methodology had been sound at one point during which it had to be applied; it had been the means of expression in dialogues and the way to answer questions related to pertinent matters of the time, as well as to address urgent new issues at that particular time. However, the goal of teaching Islamic Creed in this time of ours academically in specific is not based upon the instabilities and issues that it had once driven it. Hence, it is necessary to change the approach, methodology, and discourse to suit the change in impetus to and the goal of authoring such books, as well as the change in the general way of living of the people and their way of thinking. It is also worth noting that the universal moral principles associated with such changes do not necessarily contradict religion. This review undertakes a new book attempting to respond to a challenge resulted out of the classical discourses and arguments in presenting Islamic worldviews, and hence the reality of so-called Ahl Sunnah Wal Jama’ah

Africa is mired in problems and has been so for a very long time. In their attempts to rescue the situation, our forefathers took upon themselves the task of decolonization. Although this process began in earnest in the early 1960s, it has since stalled. Today there are few Africans, either in the secular realm or in religious orders, who dare to speak about decolonization. It is as if the continent is in a coma, its attendants paralyzed. We all seem to have reached the conclusion that the current worldview, provided by the neo-conservatives in Washington and London, is an unassailable universal, a definitive and final creed. This paper is an attempt to break the deadlock of the world’s current commitment to a monoculture. Focusing on the religious domain, in particular prayer, and using historical and critical methods, I argue that African Christians are alienated from their cultural beliefs, and as such their quest for meaning in life is eschewed. I maintain that the spirituality of individualism characterising Christianity is detrimental to Africa and as such it has to be replaced by the ‘spirituality of community’, which is grounded in African traditions and cultures. I conclude by suggesting that if African people want to find meaning in their life and existence here on earth, then they must do so by looking very carefully into their own cultures and traditions, and not disappear into alien cultures, or into some mono-cultural hybrid we witness today.

This paper describes a unique collaborative action research project that brings together members of the q̓íc̓əy̓ (Katzie) First Nation, post-secondary and K-12 communities, as well as foresters and environmentalists, to restore creeks that have been compromised by land use impacts, forest removal, and global warming. Identifying creek restoration as a site for multi-system change and wholistic re/conciliation, we explored the following questions: How can we bring together members of our diverse communities to learn about the dire condition of our watershed and take action to help Salmon? How might this collaborative work strengthen community relationships? What contextual factors enable and impede the enactment of our vison? Through iterative cycles of action and reflection, intentional trial and error, conversational inquiry, and storytelling, we identified ‘guideposts’ that will inform our work moving forward. Our research has illuminated structural changes that could enhance environmental justice for Salmon, such as empowering the caretakers of creeks and rivers since time immemorial as sovereign leaders of restorative projects, affirming the rights of the Land and other sentient beings to receive care, developing leadership structures that serve to unite (rather than polarize) citizens in addressing environmental problems, and forming diverse relational webs that exceed partnerships. Action research, informed by Indigenous worldviews, can play a pivotal role in supporting communities in assuming relational responsibility in caring for the Land and one another. As Donna Haraway (2016) contends, it is time to ‘make kin’ outside of our genetic and ancestral ties to ‘change the story’.

Abstract: this article aims to present an analysis of the partial results of the research carried out on the historical and cultural bases of atheism and its relation to the conceptions of the sacred, worldviews and social hierarchy in the context of modern Western society. It was hypothesized that culture and technological and scientific advances contributed significantly to modern secularism, namely by defining itself as atheism. However, traditional theodicy still remains the basis of people's beliefs. We take as empirical research study carried out with eighty scholars and academics from three courses of PUC Goiás in 2015. Among those surveyed, a significant number of individuals claim to believe in God and to base their lives on religious values and teachings, pointing to the confirmation of the hypothesis that there is still a certain relevance of theodicy as answers to the daily needs of such a portion of the population. Culturas e Ateísmos Contemporâneos Resumo: este artigo tem como objetivo apresentar uma análise dos resultados parciais da pesquisa realizada sobre as bases históricas e culturais do ateísmo e suas relações com as concepções de sagrado, com as visões de mundo e com a hierarquização social no contexto da sociedade ocidental moderna. Partiu-se da hipótese de que a cultura e os avanços tecnológicos e científicos contribuíram de forma significativa com o secularismo moderno, nomeadamente, definindo-se como ateísmo. No entanto, as teodiceias tradicionais ainda continuam como base das crenças das pessoas. Tomamos como material de análise a pesquisa empírica realizada com oitenta acadêmicos e acadêmicas de três cursos da PUC Goiás, em 2015. Entre os pesquisados percebe-se um número significativo de indivíduos que afirmam crer em Deus e pautar suas vidas por valores e ensinamentos religiosos, apontando para a confirmação da hipótese de que há ainda certa pertinência das teodiceias enquanto respostas às necessidades cotidianas de tal parcela da população.

The Hermeneutics of Participation of Transgender Athletes in Sports - Intensifying Third ForceThe present paper is an attempt to move structurally towards the understanding of the basic constitution of the core concept of this paper. It's basically looking at the empirical and inner ideological conception of issue of participation of transgender athletes in sports. The creed of the Olympics states: "The important thing in the game is not winning but taking part. The essential this is not conquering, but fighting well". As noble a goal as this is, it has little to do with the reality of the modern sports world. Athletes are rewarded for winning at virtually every level of competition. Second place is viewed as the "first loser". Modern sports' and the media's misplaced fixation on fame, fortune and winning at all costs have unintentionally created a growing market for unhealthy practices. This review manifests an attempt towards the conceptual study of the participation of transgender athletes in competitive sports, which is one of the latest equality challenges for sport-governing organizations worldwide. The paper investigates the motif of interrelated dynamics between gender terminology and legal and medical issues related to transgender athlete participation in sport. On 28 October 2003, an ad-hoc committee convened by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Medical Commission met in Stockholm to discuss, then issue recommendations on, the topic of the participation of individuals who have undergone sex reassignment (male to female and vice versa) in sport. This has resulted in a heated debate that there is a competitive advantage for a male who has undergone sex reassignment surgery because of his physical training and development. Men have significantly higher levels of testosterone, a greater muscle-to-fat ratio, and greater heart and lung capacity than women. The other side of the debate argues that a physiological advantage does not necessarily exist. Transgenders must continually take massive doses of oestrogen, which decreases their strength, and their bodies no longer produce testosterone. The issue under consideration has multi-faceted dimensions of interpretations that center on a desire to ‘deconstruct’ the present structuration of acceptance of sex and gender terminology. The resultant aim is to create a worldview of equality, respect for the ‘other’, and competitive fairness. The latent attempt of the paper is to deconstruct the binary of inequality in the field of sports with a view to give vibrational impetus for attaining the ideals of equality in sports.

Background. The article is devoted to the study of the personality of the outstanding Chinese composer Zhu Jian’er (1922–2017) – the leading figure of the national musical art of the twentieth century. It is proved that the presented problematic makes it possible to most deeply and accurately explore the musical heritage of the artist. In order to better understand the meaning of the composer’s creations, it is necessary to consider his environment, the stages of creative formation, the characteristics of character and personal qualities, his civic position and the characteristics of his worldview. Most of Zhu Jian’er’s life was in times of great turmoil associated with the Sino-Japanese liberation war, with the rigid ideological line of the Communist Party, with the excesses of the Cultural Revolution, etc. Consideration of the work of an outstanding composer through the prism of his personality became possible only in the twenty-first century, when Chinese society was completely freed from the pressure of ideology, which had long been felt after the policy of the Cultural Revolution in the country. Objectives. The purpose of this article is to systematize the historiographic information about the life-making of Zhu Jian’er in the context of the general trends in the development of Chinese musical culture of the twentieth and early twenty-first century. Methods. The methodology of the research is based on the scientific approaches necessary for the disclosure of the topic. The integrated research way is used that combines the principle of musical-theoretical, musical-historical and performing analysis. Results. The composer’s youth passed in Shanghai, occupied by the Japanese invaders. Great importance to the young man had a twenty-four-hour musical radio program, through which he became acquainted with European classical music. In 1945, the composer became the leader of the musical group of the Corps of Cultural Art of the Suzhou military district, and then the director and conductor of the orchestra. As soon as the country was liberated, the composer returned to Shanghai with many musicians from the military orchestra. He was appointed to the position of the head of the musical ensemble of the state film studio. In the summer of 1955, at the age of 33, Zhu Jian’er enrolled in the graduate school of the Moscow Conservatory. Returning to China in the summer of 1960, Zhu Jian’er was full of ambition and a desire to serve his homeland and people. However, the subsequent years of the Cultural Revolution for a decade deprived him of the possibility of full-fledged creativity. Own feelings receded into the background, the collective ousted the personal. In his music the composer presented the Cultural Revolution – with its false goals, ugly human relations, distorted values, unjustified sufferings. This idea formed the basis of the First Symphony. Many outstanding masterpieces of the composer have won major awards at home and abroad, bringing glory to Chinese music on the international music scene. People close to Zhu Jian’er noted that the composer was rarely seen among friends or acquaintances, he was silent and did not like to talk. He was very thin, and it was not clear how a fiery passion and great creative energy lived in such a weak body. The composer had a mild temperament, he never became angry with people and was careful in his statements. However, even such a kind and conflict-free person, faced with unhealthy trends in the music industry, was embroiled in legal proceedings related to “violation of rights” and was forced to fight for his reputation. But he was not afraid of reprisals, his energy and strong enthusiasm gave him strength. Despite the fact that Zhu Jian’er was always an ordinary person, immersed in his own affairs, he was not indifferent to the events in his country and the fate of the national culture. In addition, he was also worried about the international situation and the influence of China outside. The composer has always been interested in politics and collected information about musical culture abroad. He had his own understanding of the world, and he tried to hold an independent opinion, although, as a real creator, he was often visited by the spirit of doubt. Despite his painful body, Zhu Jian’er was a very tough and courageous man. In the years when China was shook by events that he considered as the national catastrophe, the composer retained loyalty to the power. It was not conformism, the musician sincerely loved his homeland and was ready to die for it, his position was that the mistakes would be corrected and the country would gain strength. These inner experiences deeply touched the composer’s mind and feelings, and were subsequently reflected in his music, being formed the unique musical style of his works. In recent years, as an elderly and painful man, Zhu Jian’er continued, in his words, “to pay off debts” – writing articles for various Shanghai music publishers, editing symphonic, orchestral and piano music, and writing a monograph. In most cases, this was underpaid or completely unpaid work. However, the composer was doing such work, considering it his duty. Conclusions. We can observe important milestones in the life-making of Zhu Jian’er, which radically influenced his multifaceted musical creativity. The outlook and civil position of the musician was formed during the years of the Sino-Japanese war of liberation. This enforced his ardent love for his native land and his people. Since he himself was physically unable to be in the ranks of the army, the desire to defend their homeland was expressed in the military songs by Zhu Jian’er. The critical attitude of the musician to the policy of the Cultural Revolution did not change his positive attitude towards life, but only made him think about the meaning of the artist’s life and purpose in society. The activities of the composer in the team of the military ensemble led him to realize the need for further professional development. The passionate desire to gain the highest stages of composer skills prompted Zhu Jian’er insistently to possess by this knowledge at the Moscow Conservatory and then at the Shanghai Conservatory. The composer honed his skills in the field of vocal, instrumental, chamber and choral music, however, the genre of the symphony in which the musician expressed his civic creed and view of the world became the pinnacle of his work.

This paper interrogates human relationships with the natural environment using the saskatoon berry as a “habitat guide,” a concept borrowed from the Indigenous perspectives of the Blackfoot, Papachase Cree and the Métis. As a settler on Treaty Six and Métis territory no. 4 – the traditional lands of various Indigenous Peoples including the Papaschase Cree, Blackfoot, Nakota Sioux, Ojibwe, Métis and others – my research engages with personal experience and specific Indigenous knowledge systems and worldview(s). This paper is divided into three sections: the first examines engagement with the natural environment and makes a case for stewardship and kinship as eco-conscious ethics. The second section, based on an oral interview with Papaschase Cree educator and scholar Dwayne Donald, builds on traditional ecological knowledge to provoke thoughts on multispecies relationality. In the final section, I offer a close reading of poems by two Métis poets to emphasize kinship and ethical relationality through the saskatoon berry.

The purpose of this discussion is to describe the worldview and sacred relationship of the Cree people in Alberta, as well as how colonial policy has created despair (pomewin) in Aboriginal communities and a state of disconnectedness from the water. It concludes with the presentation of a framework for the development of policies that seek to repair the relationship between Aboriginal people and mainstream society – with the potential to create the good life, broadly defined (pimatisiwin) for all Albertans (Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal). This discussion is based upon the findings of a three-year research project entitled “The Sacred Relationship”. The goals of the project were three-fold: to describe the Aboriginal People of Alberta’s sacred relationship with water, to articulate the Indigenous science practices of Aboriginal people, and to find common ground between Western and Indigenous science.

The aim of this paper is to propose a new way of understanding data contemplation for Indigenous methodologies. There is a need for Indigenous methods that allow us to explore and organize findings that are steeped in the contextualized story and grounded in the research relationship. A study that asked Cree Kehte-ayak (Old Ones) about the relevance in harmonizing Indigenous and Western ways of knowing in healing from addiction shows that Reflexive Reflection (RR) offers a respectful way for discovery. RR offers epistemological underpinnings for data consideration when engaging Indigenous methodologies. Culturally rooted addictions research can contribute to Indigenous wellness and cultural renewal by bringing awareness to the link between colonialism and addiction and by actively re-centring an Indigenous worldview and governance in the research process (Hall et al., 2015). While challenging colonialism is vital, the strength of Indigenous culture must be central to the overall project, with relational accountability that implies all parts of the research process are related, and that the researcher is responsible for nurturing and maintaining this relationship with the research process and with “all relations.” Indigenous research inquiry involves moments of contemplation that explore dreams, intuition, teachings, and connection to land. It also involves spending intimate hours listening to stories of the “old ones” that are rooted in a sense of kinshipresponsibility that relay culture, identity, and a sense of belonging that are essential to the life of the researcher. Reframing the language around aftercare services for Indigenous Peoples can take place through reflexive investigation and knowledge creation.

Many Indigenous communities living on traditional lands have not contributed significantly to harmful climate change. Yet, they are the most likely to be impacted by climate change. This article discusses environmental stewardship in relation to Indigenous experiences and worldviews. Indigenous knowledge teaches us about environmental stewardship. It speaks of reducing the severity of climate change and of continued sustainable development. The methodology that directs this research is premised on the notion that the wisdom of the Elders holds much significance for addressing the harmful impacts of climate change in the present day. This article's fundamental assumption is that Indigenous knowledge offers practical and theoretical recommendations to current approaches to human activity and environmental issues. We share findings from interviews with Cree Elders who discussed their worldviews and knowledge systems. Findings revealed that Indigenous knowledge offers a philosophy and practice that serve to reduce the severity of climate change.

Gnosticism (derived from the Greek word “gnosis; knowledge”) is the well-known phenomenon or movement which dates from the first centuries of church history. The teaching of Gnosticism questioned and/or contradicted the teaching of the church on some of the fundamental truths of Scripture. Apart from Gnosticism, the Early Church also had to deal with the heresy of Arianism. In the Nicene Creed, formulated by the councils of Nicea (325 AD) and Constantinople (381 AD) the universal or catholic church responded officially to the heresies of both Gnosticism and Arianism. In the final edition of the Nicene Creed we also find an article on the unity, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity of the church. Both Gnosticism and Arianism posed a serious threat to the unity of the church. In our times we experience a revival of ancient Gnosticism, both pagan and “Christian”. This revival is also called the New Age or the Age of Aquarius. Within the framework of this new worldview, we are witnessing a rediscovery of gnosis. The discovery and publication of certain ancient gnostic texts like the Nag Hammadi Codices, play a significant role in this revival. Consequently the canon of Scripture is questioned or openly rejected and also the creeds based on that Scripture. The Nicene Creed played a major and decisive role in preserving and maintaining the unity of the church on the basis of the truth of Scripture. This age-old creed is today just as relevant and important in proclaiming and confessing the true faith and preserving the true unity of the church.

We are looking for a tongue that speaks with reverence for life, searching for an ecology of mind. Without it, we have no home, have no place of our own within the creation. It is not only the vocabulary of science that we desire. We also want a language of that different yield. A yield rich as the harvests of the earth, a yield that returns us to our own sacredness, to a self-love and respect that will carry out to others (Hogan 122). Through storytelling the world is created and recreated: in the values and worldviews stories offer, in the patterns of thinking and knowing that listening and reading place in our spirits and minds, in the stories we tell and live. We walk in the ripples our old people left behind and we follow them up, just as our children and the generations after us will walk in shapes and patterns we make with our lives. Our delicate world is poised on a precipice with increasing species extinction and loss of habitat, deforestation, displacement of animal and human communities, changing weather patterns, and polluted waterways. How do we manage the environmental and cultural issues of our complex global world? How do we come together to look after each other and the world around us? Often there is a sense that science will save us, that if we keep “progressing” at a fast enough rate we can escape the consequences of our actions. However, science alone, no matter how sophisticated, cannot alter the fundamental truths of action and reaction in Country: that if you take too much, something, somewhere, will go without. As Guungu Yimithirr man Roy McIvor writes: Dad often spoke about being aware of the consequences of our actions. He used different stories as teaching tools, but the idea was the same. Like a boomerang, your bad actions will come back to hurt you (89). In the end, it will not be technological innovation alone that will alter the course we have set out for ourselves. Rather, it will be human beings embracing a different way of relating to the environment than the current dominant paradigm that sees people take too much, too often. With this is mind, we would like to consider the integral role children’s literature plays in sustaining knowledge patterns of Country and ecology for the future. In the context of children’s literature and ecology the idea of sustaining environmental and cultural awareness is shared via the written word—how it is used, presented, and read, particularly with ideas of the child reader in mind. Our children will be the ones who struggle with the ripples we leave in our wake and they will be the ones who count the cost of our decisions as they in turn make decisions for the generations that will follow them. If we teach the right values then the behaviour of our children will reflect those ideas. In the Aboriginal way it’s about getting the story right, so that they can learn the right ways to be in Country, to be a human being, and to look after the world they inherit. As Deborah Bird Rose states, Country is a “nourishing terrain; a place that gives and receives life” (Rose Country 7). This paper will examine two Aboriginal children’s stories that teach about a living, holistic, interrelated world and the responsibilities of human beings to look after it. Specifically, the authors will examine Joshua and the Two Crabs by Joshua Button and Dingo’s Tree by Gladys and Jill Milroy. Both stories are published by Aboriginal publisher Magabala Books and represent a genre of Aboriginal writing about Country and how to take care of it. They form part of the “language of that different yield” (Hogan 122) that Indigenous writer Linda Hogan advocates, a language that emerges from an ecology of the mind that locates human beings as an interconnected part of the patterns of the earth. The first text discussion focuses on the sharing of implicit meaning via textual form—that is, the lay out of the story, its peritext, and illustrations. The second textual discussion centres explicitly on content and meaning. Both textual analyses aim to open up a dialogue between Aboriginal ecology and children’s literature to provide inter-subjective approaches for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal readers/listeners. Aboriginal Story Ecology In Aboriginal philosophy the universe is the creative expression of Dreaming Ancestors who created the world—the land, plants, animals, stars and elements—and then settled into the creation they had made: …white people also call this the Dreaming. The Tjukurpa tells how the landscape, animals, plants, and people were made and what they mean for one another. The Tjukurpa is in everything. It is in the rocks, in the trees, even in the mice, mingkiri (Baker xii). Through their actions they formed the pattern of reality that finds its expression in human beings and in everything around us—the stars, earth, rivers, trees, rocks, and forms of life that make up the world. Aboriginal knowledge systems understand the patterns of life and our relationships to them through the structure of story. Dreaming stories—stories about the creation of the world and how the fundamental Laws were handed down to the people—have special significance. However, the stories we make with our lives and experiences are also important—stories about funny things that happened and our relationships with our families and loved ones. These stories are also a part of Country because there is nothing that does not emerge and return to the land, nothing that is not part of the pattern that the Dreaming Ancestors made: The Story is the Land, and the Land is the Story. The Story holds the people, and the people live inside the Story. The Story lives inside the people also. It goes all ways to hold the land (Turner 45). The imprint of creation, the structure of the relationships that make up the world, is held in story. Thus, in Aboriginal logic the patterns of nature, the patterns of stories, and the patterns of language, society, and culture are reflections and expressions of the pattern of creation woven by the Dreaming Ancestors. As Yunipingu writes: …For us society and nature are not separate. We have Yirritja and Dhuwa, and these categories contain elements which are both natural and social. Also, of course, they have elements which Europeans call supernatural or metaphysical (9). Through stories we come to know not just the world but who we are and the proper ways of relating to the ecology’s around us. As we learn stories the pattern of learning grows inside of us, in our ways of thinking, doing, and being. They provide the framework for our spirit and mind to develop so we come to know and be in the world in a proper or straight way—to enhance the pattern of life, not to destroy it. This is an Aboriginal “Story Ecology” where stories serve as maps that teach us who we are and our role in the world. Yuin Elder Max Harrison (2009) observes the three truths on passing on traditional knowledge: See the land…the beautyHear the land….the storyFeel the land…the spirit (no pg). To sustain Country is to sustain the self. To tell, share, and know story is to know the environment and to sustain the environment. As Kathy Deveraux writes ‘it’s like the spider: a lot of things tie in together, so when you ask one thing, you get a whole big history’ (qtd in Rose, Country 7). Aboriginal story promotes ecological practice by enlivening the reader’s empathy toward the environment and nurturing a sense of union between what is within us and what is outside of us. The imagery and text of Aboriginal story often achieves this umbilical in two defining ways. The first is through the positioning of the age, setting, or backdrop. The second is born from the relationships animated between these vitally active surrounds and the characters contained therein. Makere Stewart-Harrawira states that: All human experiences and all forms of knowledge contributed to the overall understandings and interpretations. The important task was to find the proper pattern of interpretation. Hence it can be said that indigenous peoples have traditionally regarded knowledge as something that must be stood in its entire context. The traditional principles of traditional knowledge [...] remain fixed and provide the framework within which new experiences and situations are understood and given meaning. As such, these principles are the means by which cultural knowledge becomes remade and given meaning in our time. Another principle is that every individual element of the natural world, each individual rock and stone, each individual animal and plant, every body of land and of water, has its own unique life force (155). Examples of these features of Aboriginal story ecology can be seen in our analysis of the following two stories Joshua and the Two Crabs and Dingo’s Tree. Joshua and the Two Crabs In Joshua and the Two Crabs by Joshua Button, published by Magabala Books in 2008, the narrative, illustrations, and peritext all combine to enable alternative eco-cultural understandings and values. Joshua Button is a young Indigenous author from saltwater country, as is the protagonist in the text. Joshua, the character, observes the movements of country and its inhabitants and Joshua, the author and illustrator, expresses these meanings via words, colours, and illustrations. In particular, the text represents relationships with, and within, Crab Creek. The peritext offers information about Crab Creek—a tidal creek in the mangroves of Roebuck Bay in north-west Western Australia. “The area abounds with wildlife, including migratory birds, fruit bats, crabs and shellfish. It is a place for local people to spend the day fishing off the beach for a ‘pan-sized’ feed of salmon, queenfish, silver bream or trevally. Catching and cooking mud crabs is one of Joshua’s favourite things to do” (no pg). Story, place, and child are now formally positioned as the centre of the narrative and their relationship strengthened by the colours used to represent country and movement. The narrative focuses on Joshua’s family trip to Crab Creek and his interactions with the land, the water, and the animals. His story reveals a meeting of land and sea, a reading of land and sea, and a listening to land and sea. Country and its inhabitants are revealed as having multiple relationships. From the moment his mob arrives, the narrative emphasizes listening to and reading country: Joshua’s Mum moves faster when she reads the movement of the tides and when Joshua ventures into the mangroves he listens to the “Plop! Plop! Plop! Of the air rising up through the mud” (Button, no pg.). With his bucket and spear Joshua’s movements through country are observed and considered by the creatures around him; wader birds carefully watch him and Joshua engages in a dialogue with two big mud crabs that remind the boy that he has also been perceived by Country, which is itself sentient. Animals and country speak and observe—the tide moves, the sand is hot, mudskippers skip, and crabs escape and hide. Joshua’s relationship with the mud crabs is dependent on the boy and the crabs seeing each other and communicating: “‘I can see you two!’ ‘Well, we can see you too,’ said the crabs” (Button, no pg). The narrative provides a beautifully simplistic example of different perspectives and positions for the intended child reader. Both Joshua and the crabs’ perspectives are given space to be acknowledged and understood: one character is searching, another character is escaping. When Joshua finally catches the crabs he carefully brings them back to camp and the entire family have a good feed of them and the golden trevally Joshua’s Mum caught. “Afterwards they sat watching the tide empty out of the bay. Long-legged wader birds picked their way across the silvery mudflats. It had been a good day” (Button, no pg). The story offers a colourful, fun, and cyclical way of seeing country from a perspective that centres the relationship between family, food, and land. It presents this relationship and the implicit meaning of observing and living in country via traditional textual elements such as the written word, colour illustrations, and movement from left to right, but in doing so, the text becomes a form of sustaining relationship with country as well, not just for Joshua but also for the intended child reader. Dingo’s Tree Dingo’s Tree by Jill and Gladys Milroy is a much longer story than Joshua and the Two Crabs and also deals with more serious themes. The story is about Dingo who drew his own rain tree on a rock because the other animals didn’t share their shade with him. The tree then becomes real and grows beyond the limit of the sky and keeps Dingo’s waterhole full through the drought season. The others come to rely on Dingo’s waterhole and feel bad for not sharing with him and teasing him about his tree. As the water dries up, one single special raindrop is found on a little tree and Dingo decides to spare the drop even when all the waterholes become dry. Dingo feels that something is wrong when he sees that the raindrop is slowly growing larger. To survive, Dingo and his friend Wombat teach Little Tree to walk to water. He becomes known as Walking Tree and they are soon joined by all of the others in the land. On their way to the mountain to find water they see the river and half the mountain replaced by mining, and Walking Tree soon becomes overburdened with the weight of the others. The birds decide to carry him—his branches full of friends—and they succeed for a short time only to grow tired. Soon they are all falling toward their impending death until Dingo chooses to use the last raindrop, now much larger, and their fall is broken and a new waterhole is made. However, it is only enough for Walking Tree to live forever and because he is the last tree, the others (but one baby crow) go to the Heavens awaiting their return at the end of humankinds reign on the land. In the story of the Dingo’s Tree the adventure begins in “unspoiled country” with its inventory of cast members who, in real life, naturally inhabit the area. All are shown to be adjusting recurrently within the known cycles of drought and abundance, suggested by the authors in the line “the drought came”, then a subtle reference to patterns of migration as the season is introduced and the cast move to more reliable waterholes. Establishing the story in this space encourages the young reader to identify the natural landscape as “normal”, and part of that normality are the cycles that create and degenerate growth. It is the antagonist that is responsible for the creation of unnatural change. Mining becomes the assassin of country with men as poachers "carting away great loads of rock and earth in huge machines" (Milroy and Milroy 39). This scene is of great importance, although it is only allocated a single page, because it shows where the artery of country has been severed. Its effects have been cleverly woven into the storyline beforehand in several ways. The line “the drought stayed” illustrates a seasonal defiance. In turn, Dingo becomes aware of this imbalance: "for a while Dingo lived happily in his cave but lately he’d begun to worry about the country, something wasn’t right" (Milroy and Milroy 1). Dingo reads the signs of the country. His attention to the life cycles of the land are brought to the attention of the reader teaching children about the important role of observation in caring for country. In addition to this, a warning is given to Crow by the Rain Tree through a vision of a future landscape devastated and dying: "It is what your country will become…The mining is cutting too deep for the scars to heal. Once destroyed the mountains can’t grow again and give birth to the rivers that they send to the sea…"(Milroy and Milroy 20). Contained in this passage is a direct environmental truth, but the beauty of the passage lies in the language chosen by the authors. The phrase “cutting too deep for the scars to heal” links a human experience to an environmental one, as does the phrase “give birth to the rivers”. A child is able to recognise the physical pain of a cut and a child is also able to recognise that birth belongs to the Mother. The use of this language forges a powerful connection in the mind of the reader between the self and the Earth - the child and the Mother. Country feels pain, the mountains and rivers activate their own membership in life’s cycles, and even the far off Moon participates in thought and conversation, all of which awaken a consciousness within the reader toward the animate spirit of the natural world, parenting a considerate relationship to land. It is this animate relationship with the land that it is at the heart of the story. It is the mountain that sends the rivers to the sea, rather than the abstract force of gravity. If the authors were to omit this living relationship between the mountains, the rivers, and the sea, the readers understanding would be contained to simple geophysical processes with their life force reduced to an impersonal science, if thought of at all. Instead, the mountain chooses to send the rivers to the sea because it is the right way, so natural processes become exposed as conscious participants in story rather than being portrayed as passive or inanimate objects and this not only deepens the impact of their destruction later in the plot, it also deepens the connection between the reader and the land. Writing the Future Joshua and the Two Crabs and Dingo’s Tree offer two different Aboriginal stories with underlying commonalities: they both position relationships, Country, and people into an integrated web and provide a moral framework for sustaining the relationships around us. Children’s picture books and narratives are foundational initiations for many Australian child readers in their ecological education—whether overtly or covertly. How a society, a character, a narrative, represents, treats, and perceives the land influences how the reader encounters the landscape. We argue that Indigenous Australian children’s literature, written, illustrated, produced, and disseminated largely by Indigenous knowledges, offers counter-point views and stories about the land and accompanying interrelated relationships that provide the reader with a space to re-consider, re-inhabit, or transform their own ecological positioning. References Baker, Lynn. Mingkirri: A Natural History of Ulu-ru by the Mu-titjulu Community. Canberra: IAD Press, 1996. Button, Joshua. Joshua and the Two Crabs. Broome: Magabala Books, 2008. Harrison, Max. My Peoples Dreaming. Sydney: Finch Publishing, 2009. Hogan, Linda. “A Different Yield.” Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision. Ed. Marie Battise. Toronto: UBC Press, 2000. 115 – 23. McIvor, Roy. Cockatoo: My Life in Cape York. Broome: Magabala Books, 2010. Milroy, Gladys and Jill Milroy. Dingo’s Tree. Broome: Magabala Books, 2012. Rose, Deborah Bird. Country of the Heart: An Indigenous Australian Homeland. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2002. ——-. “Pattern, Connection, Desire: In Honour of Gregory Bateson”. Australian Humanities Review, 35 (2005). 14th June 2012, ‹http://wwwlib.latrobe.cdu.au/A1IR/archive!lssue-June 2005/rose.html›. Stewart-Harawira, Makere. “Cultural Studies, Indigenous Knowledge and Pedagogies of Hope.” Policy Futures in Education 3.2 (2005):153-63. Turner, Margaret. Iwenhe Tyerrtye: What It Means to Be an Aboriginal Person. Alice Springs: IAD Press, 2010. Yunupingu, Mandawuy. Voices from the Land. Canberra: Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 1994.

Introduction Many anthropologists and other academics have attempted to argue that the spread of technology is a global homogenising force, socialising the remaining indigenous groups across the planet into an indistinct Western "monoculture" focussed on consumption, where they are rapidly losing their cultural distinctiveness. In many cases, these intellectuals -– people such as Jerry Mander -- often blame the diffusion of television (particularly through new innovations that are allowing it to penetrate further into rural areas, such as satellite and cable) as a key force in the effort to "assimilate" indigenous groups and eradicate their unique identities. Such writers suggest that indigenous groups can do nothing to resist the onslaught of the technologically, economically, and aesthetically superior power of Western television. Ironically, while often protesting the plight of indigenous groups and heralding their need for cultural survival, these authors often fail to recognise these groups’ abilities to fend for themselves and preserve their cultural integrity. On the other side of the debate are visual anthropologists and others who are arguing that indigenous groups are quickly becoming savvy to Western technologies, and that they are now using them for cultural revitalisation, linguistic revival, and the creation of outlets for the indigenous voice. In this school of thought, technology is seen not so much as a threat to indigenous groups, but instead as a remarkable opportunity to reverse the misfortunes of these groups at the hands of colonisation and national programmes of attempted assimilation. From this perspective, the rush of indigenous groups to adopt new technologies comes hand-in-hand with recent efforts to assert their tribal sovereignty and their independence. Technology has become a "weapon" in their struggle for technological autonomy. As a result, many are starting their own television stations and networks, and thus transforming the way television operates in their societies -– away from global monocultures and toward local interests. I hypothesise that in fact there is no correlation between television viewing and acculturation, and that, in fact, the more familiar people are with the technology of television and the current way the technology is utilised, the more likely they are to be interested in using it to revive and promote their own culture. Whatever slight negative effect exists depends on the degree to which local people can understand and redirect how that technology is used within their own cultural context. However, it should be stated that for terms of this investigation, I consider the technologies of "video" and "television" to be identical. One is the recording aspect, and the other the distribution aspect, of the same technology. Once people become aware that they can control what is on the television screen through the instrumentality of video, they immediately begin attempting to assert cultural values through it. And this is precisely what is going on on the Cheyenne River Reservation. This project is significant because the phenomenon of globalisation is real and Western technologies such as video, radio, and PCs are spreading throughout the world, including the "Fourth World" of the planet’s indigenous peoples. However, in order to deal with the phenomenon of globalisation, anthropologists and others may need to deal more realistically with the phenomenon of technological diffusion, which operates far less simply than they might assume. Well-meaning anthropologists seeking to "protect" indigenous groups from the "invasion" of technologies which will change their way of life may be doing these groups a disservice. If they turned some of their effort away from fending off these technologies and toward teaching indigenous groups how to use them, perhaps they might have a better result in creating a better future for them. I hope this study will show a more productive model for dealing with technological diffusion and what effects it has on cultural change in indigenous societies. There have been very few authors that have dealt with this topic head-on. One of the first to do so was Pace (1993), who suggested that some Brazilian Indians were acculturating more quickly as a result of television finally coming to their remote villages in the 1960s. Molohon (1984) looked at two Cree communities, and found that the one which had more heavy television viewing was culturally closer to its neighboring white towns. Zimmerman (1996) fingered television as one of the key elements in causing Indian teenagers to lose their sense of identity, thus putting them at higher risk for suicide. Gillespie (1995) argued that television is actually a ‘weapon’ of national states everywhere in their efforts to assimilate and socialise indigenous and other ethnic minority groups. In contrast, authors like Weiner (1997), Straubhaar (1991), and Graburn (1982) have all critiqued these approaches, suggesting that they deny subjectivity and critical thinking to indigenous TV audiences. Each of these researchers suggest, based on their field work, that indigenous people are no more likely than anybody else to believe that the things they see on television are true, and no more likely to adopt the values or worldviews promoted by Western TV programmers and advertisers. In fact, Graburn has observed that the Inuit became so disgusted with what they saw on Canadian national television, that they went out and started their own TV network in an effort to provide their people with meaningful alternatives on their screens. Bell (1995) sounds a cautionary note against studies like Graburn’s, noting that the efforts of indigenous New Zealanders to create their own TV programming for local markets failed, largely because they were crowded out by the "media imperialism" of outside international television. Although the indigenous groups there tried to put their own faces on the screen, many local viewers preferred to see the faces of J.R. Ewing and company, and lowered the ratings share of these efforts. Salween (1991) thinks that global media "cultural imperialism" is real -– that it is an objective pursued by international television marketers -– and suggests a media effects approach might be the best way to see whether it works. Woll (1987) notes that historically many ethnic groups have formed their self-images based on the way they have been portrayed onscreen, and that so far these portrayals have been far from sympathetic. In fact, even once these groups started their own cinemas or TV programmes, they unconsciously perpetuated stereotypes first foisted on them by other people. This study tends to side with those who have observed that indigenous people do not tend to "roll over" in the wake of the onslaught of Western television. Although cautionary studies need to be examined carefully, this research will posit that although the dominant forces controlling TV are antithetical to indigenous groups and their goals, the efforts of indigenous people to take control of their TV screens and their own "media literacy" are also increasing. Thus, this study should contribute to the viewpoint that perhaps the best way to save indigenous groups from cultural eradication is to give them access to television and show them how to set up their own stations and distribute their own video programming. In fact, it appears to be the case that TV, the Internet, and electronic 'new media' are helping to foster a process of cultural renewal, not just among the Lakota, but also among the Inuit, the Australian aborigines, and other indigenous groups. These new technologies are helping them renew their native languages, cultural values, and ceremonial traditions, sometimes by giving them new vehicles and forms. Methods The research for this project was conducted on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation headquartered in Eagle Butte, South Dakota. Participants chosen for this project were Lakota Sioux who were of the age of consent (18 or older) and who were tribal members living on the reservation. They were given a survey which consisted of five components: a demographic question section identifying their age, gender, and individual data; a technology question section identifying what technologies they had in their home; a TV question section measuring the amount of television they watched; an acculturation question section determining their comparative level of acculturation; and a cultural knowledge question section determining their knowledge of Lakota history. This questionnaire was often followed up by unstructured ethnographic interviews. Thirty-three people of mixed age and gender were given this questionnaire, and for the purposes of this research paper, I focussed primarily on their responses dealing with television and acculturation. These people were chosen through strictly random sampling based on picking addresses at random from the phone book and visiting their houses. The television section asked specifically how many hours of TV they watched per day and per week, what shows they watched, what kinds of shows they preferred, and what rooms in their home had TVs. The acculturation section asked them questions such as how much they used the Lakota language, how close their values were to Lakota values, and how much participation they had in traditional indigenous rituals and customs. To assure open and honest responses, each participant filled out a consent form, and was promised anonymity of their answers. To avoid data contamination, I remained with each person until they completed the questionnaire. For my data analysis, I attempted to determine if there was any correlation (Pearson’s coefficient r of correlation) between such things as hours of TV viewed per week or years of TV ownership with such things as the number of traditional ceremonies they attended in the past year, the number of non-traditional Lakota values they had, their fluency in the Lakota language, their level of cultural knowledge, or the number of traditional practices and customs they had engaged in in their lives. Through simple statistical tests, I determined whether television viewing had any impact on these variables which were reasonable proxies for level of acculturation. Findings Having chosen two independent variables, hours of TV watched per week, and years of TV ownership, I tested if there was any significant correlation between them and the dependent variables of Lakota peoples’ level of cultural knowledge, participation in traditional practices, conformity of values to non-Lakota or non-traditional values, fluency in Lakota, and participation in traditional ceremonies (Table 1). These variables all seemed like reasonable proxies for acculturation since acculturated Lakota would know less of their own culture, go to fewer ceremonies, and so on. The cultural knowledge score was based on how many complete answers the respondents knew to ‘fill in the blank’ questions regarding Lakota history, historical figures, and important events. Participation in traditional practices was based on how many items they marked in a survey of whether or not they had ever raised a tipi, used traditional medicine, etc. The score for conformity to non-Lakota values was based on how many items they marked with a contrary answer to the emic Lakota value system ("the seven Ws".) Lakota fluency was based on how well they could speak, write, or use the Lakota language. And ceremonial attendance was based on the number of traditional ceremonies they had attended in the past year. There were no significant correlations between either of these TV-related variables and these indexes of acculturation. Table 1. R-Scores (Pearson’s Coefficient of Correlation) between Variables Representing Television and Acculturation R-SCORES Cultural Knowledge Traditional Practices Modern Values Lakota Fluency Ceremonial Attendance Years Owning TV 0.1399 -0.0445 -0.4646 -0.0660 0.1465 Hours of TV/Week -0.3414 -0.2640 -0.2798 -0.3349 0.2048 The strongest correlation was between the number of years the Lakota person owned a television, and the number of non-Lakota (or ‘modern Western’) values they held in their value system. But even that correlation was pretty weak, and nowhere near the r-score of other linear correlations, such as between their age and the number of children they had. How much television Lakota people watched did not seem to have any influence on how much cultural knowledge they knew, how many traditional practices they had participated in, how many non-Lakota values they held, how well they spoke or used the Lakota language, or how many ceremonies they attended. Even though there does not appear to be anything unusual about their television preferences, and in general they are watching the same shows as other non-Lakota people on the reservation, they are not becoming more acculturated as a result of their exposure to television. Although the Lakota people may be losing aspects of their culture, language, and traditions, other causes seem to be at the forefront than television. I also found that people who were very interested in television production as well as consumption saw this as a tool for putting more Lakota-oriented programs on the air. The more they knew about how television worked, the more they were interested in using it as a tool in their own community. And where I was working at the Cultural Center, there was an effort to videotape many community and cultural events. The Center had a massive archive of videotaped material, but unfortunately while they had faithfully recorded all kinds of cultural events, many of them were not quite "broadcast ready". There was more focus on showing these video programmes, especially oral history interviews with elders, on VCRs in the school system, and in integrating them into various kinds of multimedia and hypermedia. While the Cultural Center had begun broadcasting (remotely through a radio modem) a weekly radio show, ‘Wakpa Waste’ (Good Morning CRST), on the radio station to the north, KLND-Standing Rock, there had never been any forays into TV broadcasting. The Cultural Center director had looked into the feasibility of putting up a television signal transmission tower, and had applied for a grant to erect one, but that grant was denied. The local cable system in Eagle Butte unfortunately lacked the technology to carry true "local access" programming; although the Channel 8 of the system carried CRST News and text announcements, there was no open channel available to carry locally produced public access programming. The way the cable system was set up, it was purely a "relay" or feed from news and channels from elsewhere. Also, people were investing heavily in satellite systems, especially the new DBS (direct broadcast satellite) receivers, and would not be able to pick up local access programmes anyway. The main problem hindering the Lakotas’ efforts to preserve their culture through TV and video was lack of access to broadcast distribution technology. They had the interest, the means, and the stock of programming to put on the air. They had the production and editing equipment, although not the studios to do a "live" show. Were they able to have more local access to and control over TV distribution technology, they would have a potent "arsenal" for resisting the drastic acculturation their community is undergoing. TV has the potential to be a tool for great cultural revitalisation, but because the technology and know-how for producing it was located elsewhere, the Lakotas could not benefit from it. Discussion I hypothesised that the effects if TV viewing on levels of indigenous acculturation would be negligible. The data support my hypothesis that TV does not seem to have a major correlation with other indices of acculturation. Previous studies by anthropologists such as Pace and Molohon suggested that TV was a key determinant in the acculturation of indigenous people in Brazil and the U.S. -– this being the theory of cultural imperialism. However, this research suggests that TV’s effect on the decline of indigenous culture is weak and inconclusive. In fact, the qualitative data suggest that the Lakota most familiar with TV are also the most interested in using it as a tool for cultural preservation. Although the CRST Lakota currently lack the means for mass broadcast of cultural programming, there is great interest in it, and new technologies such as the Internet and micro-broadcast may give them the means. There are other examples of this phenomenon worldwide, which suggest that the Lakota experience is not unique. In recent years, Australian Aborigines, Canadian Inuit, and Brazilian Kayapo have each begun ambitious efforts in creating satellite-based television networks that allow them to reach their far-flung populations with programming in their own indigenous language. In Australia, Aboriginal activists have created music television programming which has helped them assert their position in land claims disputes with the Australian government (Michaels 1994), and also to educate the Europeans of Australia about the aboriginal way of life. In Canada, the Inuit have also created satellite TV networks which are indigenous-owned and operated and carry traditional cultural programming (Valaskakis 1992). Like the Aborigines and the Inuit, the Lakota through their HVJ Lakota Cultural Center are beginning to create their own radio and video programming on a smaller scale, but are beginning to examine using the reservation's cable network to carry some of this material. Since my quantitative survey included only 33 respondents, the data are not as robust as would be determined from a larger sample. However, ethnographic interviews focussing on how people approach TV, as well as other qualitative data, support the inferences of the quantitative research. It is not clear that my work with the Lakota is necessarily generalisable to other populations. Practically, it does suggest that anthropologists interested in cultural and linguistic preservation should strive to increase indigenous access to, and control of, TV production technology. ‘Protecting’ indigenous groups from new technologies may cause more harm than good. Future applied anthropologists should work with the ‘natives’ and help teach them how to adopt and adapt this technology for their own purposes. Although this is a matter that I deal with more intensively in my dissertation, it also appears to me to be the case that, contrary to the warnings of Mander, many indigenous cultures are not being culturally assimilated by media technology, but instead are assimilating the technology into their own particular cultural contexts. The technology is part of a process of revitalisation or renewal -- although there is a definite process of change and adaptation underway, this actually represents an 'updating' of old cultural practices for new situations in an attempt to make them viable for the modern situation. Indeed, I think that the Internet, globally, is allowing indigenous people to reassert themselves as a Fourth World "power bloc" on the world stage, as linkages are being formed between Saami, Maya, Lakota, Kayapo, Inuit, and Aborigines. Further research should focus on: why TV seems to have a greater acculturative influence on certain indigenous groups rather than others; whether indigenous people can truly compete equally in the broadcast "marketplace" with Western cultural programming; and whether attempts to quantify the success of TV/video technology in cultural preservation and revival can truly demonstrate that this technology plays a positive role. In conclusion, social scientists may need to take a sidelong look at why precisely they have been such strong critics of introducing new technologies into indigenous societies. There is a better role that they can play –- that of technology ‘broker’. They can cooperate with indigenous groups, serving to facilitate the exchange of knowledge, expertise, and technology between them and the majority society. References Bell, Avril. "'An Endangered Species’: Local Programming in the New Zealand Television Market." Media, Culture & Society 17.1 (1995): 182-202. Gillespie, Marie. Television, Ethnicity, and Cultural Change. New York: Routledge, 1995. Graburn, Nelson. "Television and the Canadian Inuit". Inuit Etudes 6.2 (1982): 7-24. Michaels, Eric. Bad Aboriginal Art: Tradition, Media, and Technological Horizons. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1994. Molohon, K.T. "Responses to Television in Two Swampy Cree Communities on the West James Bay." Kroeber Anthropology Society Papers 63/64 (1982): 95-103. Pace, Richard. "First-Time Televiewing in Amazonia: Television Acculturation in Gurupa, Brazil." Ethnology 32.1 (1993): 187-206. Salween, Michael. "Cultural Imperialism: A Media Effects Approach." Critical Studies in Mass Communication 8.2 (1991): 29-39. Straubhaar, J. "Beyond Media Imperialism: Asymmetrical Interdependence and Cultural Proximity". Critical Studies in Mass Communication 8.1 (1991): 39-70. Valaskakis, Gail. "Communication, Culture, and Technology: Satellites and Northern Native Broadcasting in Canada". Ethnic Minority Media: An International Perspective. Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 1992. Weiner, J. "Televisualist Anthropology: Representation, Aesthetics, Politics." Current Anthropology 38.3 (1997): 197-236. Woll, Allen. Ethnic and Racial Images in American Film and Television: Historical Essays and Bibliography. New York: Garland Press, 1987. Zimmerman, M. "The Development of a Measure of Enculturation for Native American Youth." American Journal of Community Psychology 24.1 (1996): 295-311. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Steven Mizrach. "Natives on the Electronic Frontier: Television and Cultural Change on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.6 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0012/natives.php>. Chicago style: Steven Mizrach, "Natives on the Electronic Frontier: Television and Cultural Change on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 6 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0012/natives.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Steven Mizrach. (2000) Natives on the electronic frontier: television and cultural change on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(6). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0012/natives.php> ([your date of access]).

Through Andy Warhol, much important thinking about the meanings of celebrity for a capitalist, schizoid world takes place — by Andy, by his significant others (Pat Hackett, Bob Colacello, Brigid Berlin), and by the consumers and contemplators of his works. Both a source of his own observations and a screen on which philosophies are projected, Warhol presents an unparalleled critique of celebrity. Other horizontalities, such as Madonna’s, do not generate half the heat as Warhol’s own tendril-like intrusion into so many aspects of the media machine (music, publishing, modeling, painting, film-making, writing). Exchanging competence for breadth, Warhol follows Michel de Certeau’s critique of Freud in Heterologies: Discourse on the Other perfectly: he, too, makes a “conquista” of disciplines and practices outside his sphere of competence. Warhol’s comments with respect to actress Janet Gaynor’s paintings after her May 1976 opening at Manhattan’s Wally Findlay Gallery refer both to Gaynor and himself: “‘The paintings are so bad…but I bet they go up. Look how big she signs her name. It’s like buying an autograph and then you get the flowers thrown in, right?’” (Colacello 289). Comprehending the power of branding, Warhol grants autograph primacy over “autographed.” Factoring the art market into his aesthetics, Warhol founds his definition about what counts as art upon what counts as economics. Through him, business art truly comes into its own. Contemplating art suddenly means comprehending art’s social and financial contexts as well — as when, for example, Warhol ponders the absence of a black audience for his work: “Some blacks recognized me a few times this weekend, and I’m trying to figure out what they recognize so I can somehow sell it to them, whatever it is” (Diaries, Sunday 3 July 1977). Setting his own life up as a philosophical object, Warhol exemplifies astrophysics’ great question of how nothing can produce something. Fashion philosophe himself, he also answers fellow thinker Quentin Crisp’s important question about how “zero” becomes “one.” For both Warhol and Crisp, celebrity is founded upon the algebraic exchange of a positive quantity (fame) for a placeholding nonquantity (nonentity). In How to Have a Life-Style, Crisp traces his interest in the proliferative zero to the educative childhood lunchtime acquisition which first taught him the importance of spontaneous generation: One day, when I was lying as naked as the Greater London Council would allow on a few planks in the “life” room of Walthamstowe College of Art, a student came and sat beside me. It did not befit my station in life to begin a conversation with her. My supposition was that she wished less to be with me than in front of the only electric heater in the place. I was amazed when she asked me if I would like some of the chocolate that formed the “afters” of her instant lunch. I sat up at once. My limbs were galvanized, as though insulin had been pumped into my muscles, by the thought of getting something for nothing. The girl broke her slab of chocolate in two and handed me half. (3) For Crisp, the production of celebrity from nonentity echoes other unbalanced nonexchanges; concerned with similar economic aberrances, Warhol takes a related pleasure in the freak appearance of fame. Like Crisp, he also finds himself “galvanized” by the prospect of converting the null set into the productive series. Setting himself up as a “stargazer” (Stephen Koch’s epithet), Warhol makes it his project to reflect the fame of others, while using those reflections to garner fame for himself. Becoming a surface, Warhol makes fame a question of optics. Throughout the Diaries, we witness Warhol’s constant attention to his own appearance: “Got my live-in contacts but I can’t read or draw in them. Do they have bifocals you can wear with contacts? It’s so scary to wake up in the middle of the night and be able to see” (Tuesday 11 Aug. 1981). Normality is consistently painted in the fauve colors of the bizarre — in this quote, vision becomes a source of disorientation. Sight and unsight cross wires. Rather than facilitate the production of his art, ocular prostheses impede it — implying that he is a better artist when blind or half-sighted. Even odder is the fact that Warhol’s new contacts boost his performance as a model. That someone with so “off” an appearance should ever qualify as model material seems almost like a cruel insider joke (as in John Waters’ 1972 film Female Trouble, the repulsive is given new life as the gorgeous). Warhol had always been interested in modeling, though, as a 1968 photo shoot, “The Status Shirt Put On,” demonstrates. The caption reads: “Andy Warhol, right, garnishes velvet pants ($40, from Stone the Crows) with chains, belts and a lace-trimmed dinner shirt from Turnbull & Asser ($40, Bonwit Teller).” Situated at the confluence of status, fashion and chicanery, Warhol as putter-on emerges from his chrysalis as a model — someone meant to be looked at and emulated, a body meant to be run through the media machine and copied. As the Diaries draw to a close, Warhol’s modeling career provides him with his final cultural act: “In the morning I was preparing myself for my appearance in the fashion show Benjamin coordinated at the Tunnel. They’d sent the clothes over and I look like Liberace in them. Should I just go all the way and be the new Liberace? Snakeskin and rabbit fur. Julian Schnabel (laughs) would be so impressed he would start wearing them” (Tuesday 17 Feb. 1987). Bob Colacello is less than kind in his analysis of Warhol as model: Zoli did get him a couple of runway jobs and Daniela Morela put him in a L’Uomo Vogue spread jumping up and down with some other cute guys, but it was obvious that he was being used for his joke value. That October, Halston asked him to model in a Martha Graham charity fashion show as Bloomingdale’s. He didn’t appear until the end of the show, accompanied by Victor Hugo. His face was caked with makeup and he wore a voluminous royal blue taffeta smock with a big red bow around his neck. He looked like a cross between a clown and a Christmas present. Victor wore the same outfit in emerald green. As Andy minced down the runway, I could hear the ladies around me buzz. The words they used were weirdo, creep, and sissy. (442-3) Bursting Warhol’s balloon, and probably paying him back for countless episodes of personal humiliation, Colacello points out the strangeness of Warhol’s new career choice. Like so many other classes of people (old bags, debs), models pique Andy’s curiosity by virtue of their ontological freshness. In his Diaries, Warhol expresses a keen interest in model anthropology: how this new breed of human beings and these new workers comport themselves commands attention. Their language bemuses him: “Jerry Hall came by with a Halston model named Carol, and models just all talk that baby talk, the girls and the boys — you always know you’re talking to a model” (Wednesday 8 July 1981). Like all other industry-bound jargons, model talk emerges from a concrete set of practices and concerns. All creatures from the modeling industry seem to partake of its linguistic possibilities: “Went into the kitchen for coffee in the main house. Pat Cleveland was reading her Latin books and her mind-control books…She was after Jon, showing him how to walk like you have a dime up your ass and they did that well. She talks model talk. And she plays the flute. And she does yoga. All those things” (Saturday 11 July 1981). Generically distinct from other public creatures, models have their own enunciative staples and rules for structuring an utterance. Like Martians, they have their own unique mode of communicating. Ever interested in specificity, Warhol cannot help but be intrigued by the novelty of their speech; in its simplicity and in its constant juvenilization, their language mirrors his own. Saturated with Hollywoodisms, like “up-there” or “the kids,” Warhol’s vocabulary and syntax point to the existence of other linguistic subsystems and idioms. What matters most is the existence of what de Certeau refers to as a “way of operating,” a mode of getting around. Warhol’s fascination with celebrity species informs his own attention to his development over time. Reflecting important fashion debates of the decades he inhabits, Warhol makes his body a living record of all that transpires around it. As in Richard Avedon’s famous photograph of Warhol’s torso (Andy Warhol, Artist, New York City, 8/20/69), his body tells a story — in this instance, about Valerie Solanas’ rage and its traces. Warhol gets to know Warhol, recording his own oscillations in image: “Everyone tells me they like my hair this new way. I cut it every day. It’s almost a crewcut. Fred said I dress like the kids I hang around with now, he likes it. I guess the preppie look really is big because of the Preppie Handbook. I’m wearing all of Jed’s leftover clothes, the ones he left behind. I’m so skinny they fit me now” (Wednesday 8 July 1981). Warhol monitors his appearance with precision, never failing to provide his readers with the details of his transformation from one type to another. With almost an evolutionary sensibility, Warhol traces the development of new styles while also showing the effect they have on his own aesthetic of dressing. Inextricably immersed in time, Warhol gives in to its flows, which wash over him, carrying his body along with their currents. Similarly, he keeps meticulous track of styles of locomotion, as when, after a Twyla Tharp show, he comments: “The dancing, it’s a funny new kind of dancing, falling and tripping, and it looks like disco dancing. It looks like if you had a creative person on the disco floor, that they would do this (intermission drinks $10)” (Thursday, February 15, 1979). Using his early films, like Vinyl, to document dance styles, such as the frug, Warhol records different ways of posturing. He also documents the emergence of new social diseases: “The Donahue Show was on the flasher problem. This is a big important new problem, right? Men who flash. A wife and her husband who flashed were on, they were in the dark, and businessmen and lawyers who flashed” (Monday 28 July 1980). Within the hypermediated universe of capitalism, everything has its fifteen moments of fame, including problems. Ever the voyeur, Warhol makes note of new trends in exhibitionism, well aware that the job of the talk show is to fabricate and disseminate new fears (What do I do if my neighbor flashes me?, etc.). Fears, too, are commodities, as discussed by Barry Glossner in his The Culture of Fear. Alongside locomotionary styles and fashion creature Feynmann sums, anxieties wax and wane in popularity, produced, dissolved and eventually recycled by the media as products-of-the-week. Recognizing the new status of the media in everyday life, Warhol dedicates himself to recording its fluctuations for the purposes of fashion documentary, biography and contemplation. Positing glamour as a breakdown in the fashion system, Warhol offers a worldview in which the faux pas, the leftover and the mismatched forge an aesthetics of desperation. Warhol is the vehicle for fame. Through him, this abstract entity comes to know itself as such, realizing its possibilities through sensual and material objectification. References Books Colacello, Bob. Holy Terror: Andy Warhol Close Up. New York: Cooper Square Press, 1990. Crisp, Quentin. How to Have a Life-Style. Los Angeles: Alyson Books, 1998. De Certeau, Michel. Heterologies: Discourse on the Other. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986. Glossner, Barry. The Culture of Fear. New York: Basic Books, 1999. Warhol, Andy. The Warhol Diaries. New York: Warner Books, 1989. ——— and Hackett, Pat. POPism: The Warhol Sixties. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980. Articles “The Status Shirt Put On.” Look. 12 Nov. 1968. Time Capsule –12. Films Warhol, Andy. Vinyl, 1965. Waters, John. Female Trouble. New Line Cinema, 1972. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Tata, Michael Angelo. "Beyond the Stars: Warholian Meta-Celebrity." M/C Journal 7.5 (2004). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/11-tata.php>. APA Style Tata, M. (Nov. 2004) "Beyond the Stars: Warholian Meta-Celebrity," M/C Journal, 7(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/11-tata.php>.

'He did what the cipher could not, he rescued himself.' -- Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination (23) On many levels, the new Nine Inch Nails album The Fragile is a gritty meditation about different types of End: the eternal relationship cycle of 'fragility, tension, ordeal, fragmentation' (adapted, with apologies to Wilhelm Reich); fin-de-siècle anxiety; post-millennium foreboding; a spectre of the alien discontinuity that heralds an on-rushing future vastly different from the one envisaged by Enlightenment Project architects. In retrospect, it's easy for this perspective to be dismissed as jargon-filled cyber-crit hyperbole. Cyber-crit has always been at its best too when it invents pre-histories and finds hidden connections between different phenomena (like the work of Greil Marcus and early Mark Dery), and not when it is closer to Chinese Water Torture, name-checking the canon's icons (the 'Deleuze/Guattari' tag-team), texts and key terms. "The organization of sound is interpreted historically, politically, socially ... . It subdues music's ambition, reins it in, restores it to its proper place, reconciles it to its naturally belated fate", comments imagineer Kodwo Eshun (4) on how cyber-crit destroys albums and the innocence of the listening experience. This is how official histories are constructed a priori and freeze-dried according to personal tastes and prior memes: sometimes the most interesting experiments are Darwinian dead-ends that fail to make the canon, or don't register on the radar. Anyone approaching The Fragile must also contend with the music industry's harsh realities. For every 10 000 Goth fans who moshed to the primal 'kill-fuck-dance' rhythms of the hit single "Closer" (heeding its siren-call to fulfil basic physiological needs and build niche-space), maybe 20 noted that the same riff returned with a darker edge in the title track to The Downward Spiral, undermining the glorification of Indulgent hedonism. "The problem with such alternative audiences," notes Disinformation Creative Director Richard Metzger, "is that they are trying to be different -- just like everyone else." According to author Don Webb, "some mature Chaos and Black Magicians reject their earlier Nine Inch Nails-inspired Goth beginnings and are extremely critical towards new adopters because they are uncomfortable with the subculture's growing popularity, which threatens to taint their meticulously constructed 'mysterious' worlds. But by doing so, they are also rejecting their symbolic imprinting and some powerful Keys to unlocking their personal history." It is also difficult to separate Nine Inch Nails from the commercialisation and colossal money-making machine that inevitably ensued on the MTV tour circuit: do we blame Michael Trent Reznor because most of his audience are unlikely to be familiar with 'first-wave' industrial bands including Cabaret Voltaire and the experiments of Genesis P. Orridge in Throbbing Gristle? Do we accuse Reznor of being a plagiarist just because he wears some of his influences -- Dr. Dre, Daft Punk, Atari Teenage Riot, Pink Floyd's The Wall (1979), Tom Waits's Bone Machine (1992), David Bowie's Low (1977) -- on his sleeve? And do we accept no-brain rock critic album reviews who quote lines like 'All the pieces didn't fit/Though I really didn't give a shit' ("Where Is Everybody?") or 'And when I suck you off/Not a drop will go to waste' ("Starfuckers Inc") as representative of his true personality? Reznor evidently has his own thoughts on this subject, but we should let the music speak for itself. The album's epic production and technical complexity turned into a post-modern studio Vision Quest, assisted by producer Alan Moulder, eleventh-hour saviour Bob Ezrin (brought in by Reznor to 'block-out' conceptual and sonic continuity), and a group of assault-technicians. The fruit of these collaborations is an album where Reznor is playing with our organism's time-binding sense, modulating strange emotions through deeply embedded tonal angularities. During his five-year absence, Trent Reznor fought diverse forms of repetitious trauma, from endogenous depression caused by endless touring to the death of his beloved grandmother (who raised him throughout childhood). An end signals a new beginning, a spiral is an open-ended and ever-shifting structure, and so Reznor sought to re-discover the Elder Gods within, a shamanic approach to renewal and secular salvation utilised most effectively by music PR luminary and scientist Howard Bloom. Concerned with healing the human animal through Ordeals that hard-wire the physiological baselines of Love, Hate and Fear, Reznor also focusses on what happens when 'meaning-making' collapses and hope for the future cannot easily be found. He accurately captures the confusion that such dissolution of meaning and decline of social institutions brings to the world -- Francis Fukuyama calls this bifurcation 'The Great Disruption'. For a generation who experienced their late childhood and early adolescence in Reagan's America, Reznor and his influences (Marilyn Manson and Filter) capture the Dark Side of recent history, unleashed at Altamont and mutating into the Apocalyptic style of American politics (evident in the 'Star Wars'/SDI fascination). The personal 'psychotic core' that was crystallised by the collapse of the nuclear family unit and supportive social institutions has returned to haunt us with dystopian fantasies that are played out across Internet streaming media and visceral MTV film-clips. That such cathartic releases are useful -- and even necessary (to those whose lives have been formed by socio-economic 'life conditions') is a point that escapes critics like Roger Scruton, some Christian Evangelists and the New Right. The 'escapist' quality of early 1980s 'Rapture' and 'Cosmocide' (Hal Lindsey) prophecies has yielded strange fruit for the Children of Ezekiel, whom Reznor and Marilyn Manson are unofficial spokes-persons for. From a macro perspective, Reznor's post-human evolutionary nexus lies, like J.G. Ballard's tales, in a mythical near-future built upon past memory-shards. It is the kind of worldview that fuses organic and morphogenetic structures with industrial machines run amok, thus The Fragile is an artefact that captures the subjective contents of the different mind produced by different times. Sonic events are in-synch but out of phase. Samples subtly trigger and then scramble kinaesthetic-visceral and kinaesthetic-tactile memories, suggestive of dissociated affective states or body memories that are incapable of being retrieved (van der Kolk 294). Perhaps this is why after a Century of Identity Confusion some fans find it impossible to listen to a 102-minute album in one sitting. No wonder then that the double album is divided into 'left' and 'right' discs (a reference to split-brain research?). The real-time track-by-track interpretation below is necessarily subjective, and is intended to serve as a provisional listener's guide to the aural ur-text of 1999. The Fragile is full of encrypted tones and garbled frequencies that capture a world where the future is always bleeding into a non-recoverable past. Turbulent wave-forms fight for the listener's attention with prolonged static lulls. This does not make for comfortable or even 'nice' listening. The music's mind is a snapshot, a critical indicator, of the deep structures brewing within the Weltanschauung that could erupt at any moment. "Somewhat Damaged" opens the album's 'Left' disc with an oscillating acoustic strum that anchor's the listener's attention. Offset by pulsing beats and mallet percussion, Reznor builds up sound layers that contrast with lyrical epitaphs like 'Everything that swore it wouldn't change is different now'. Icarus iconography is invoked, but perhaps a more fitting mythopoeic symbol of the journey that lies ahead would be Nietzsche's pursuit of his Ariadne through the labyrinth of life, during which the hero is steadily consumed by his numbing psychosis. Reznor fittingly comments: 'Didn't quite/Fell Apart/Where were you?' If we consider that Reznor has been repeating the same cycle with different variations throughout all of his music to date, retro-fitting each new album into a seamless tapestry, then this track signals that he has begun to finally climb out of self-imposed exile in the Underworld. "The Day the World Went Away" has a tremendously eerie opening, with plucked mandolin effects entering at 0:40. The main slashing guitar riff was interpreted by some critics as Reznor's attempt to parody himself. For some reason, the eerie backdrop and fragmented acoustic guitar strums recalls to my mind civil defence nuclear war films. Reznor, like William S. Burroughs, has some powerful obsessions. The track builds up in intensity, with a 'Chorus of the Damned' singing 'na na nah' over apocalyptic end-times imagery. At 4:22 the track ends with an echo that loops and repeats. "The Frail" signals a shift to mournful introspectiveness with piano: a soundtrack to faded 8 mm films and dying memories. The piano builds up slowly with background echo, holds and segues into ... "The Wretched", beginning with a savage downbeat that recalls earlier material from Pretty Hate Machine. 'The Far Aways/Forget It' intones Reznor -- it's becoming clear that despite some claims to the contrary, there is redemption in this album, but it is one borne out of a relentless move forward, a strive-drive. 'You're finally free/You could be' suggest Reznor studied Existentialism during his psychotherapy visits. This song contains perhaps the ultimate post-relationship line: 'It didn't turn out the way you wanted it to, did it?' It's over, just not the way you wanted; you can always leave the partner you're with, but the ones you have already left will always stain your memories. The lines 'Back at the beginning/Sinking/Spinning' recall the claustrophobic trapped world and 'eternal Now' dislocation of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder victims. At 3:44 a plucked cello riff, filtered, segues into a sludge buzz-saw guitar solo. At 5:18 the cello riff loops and repeats. "We're in This Together Now" uses static as percussion, highlighting the influence of electricity flows instead of traditional rock instrument configurations. At 0:34 vocals enter, at 1:15 Reznor wails 'I'm impossible', showing he is the heir to Roger Waters's self-reflective rock-star angst. 'Until the very end of me, until the very end of you' reverts the traditional marriage vow, whilst 'You're the Queen and I'm the King' quotes David Bowie's "Heroes". Unlike earlier tracks like "Reptile", this track is far more positive about relationships, which have previously resembled toxic-dyads. Reznor signals a delta surge (breaking through barriers at any cost), despite a time-line morphing between present-past-future. At 5:30 synths and piano signal a shift, at 5:49 the outgoing piano riff begins. The film-clip is filled with redemptive water imagery. The soundtrack gradually gets more murky and at 7:05 a subterranean note signals closure. "The Fragile" is even more hopeful and life-affirming (some may even interpret it as devotional), but this love -- representative of the End-Times, alludes to the 'Glamour of Evil' (Nico) in the line 'Fragile/She doesn't see her beauty'. The fusion of synths and atonal guitars beginning at 2:13 summons forth film-clip imagery -- mazes, pageants, bald eagles, found sounds, cloaked figures, ruined statues, enveloping darkness. "Just like You Imagined" opens with Soundscapes worthy of Robert Fripp, doubled by piano and guitar at 0:39. Drums and muffled voices enter at 0:54 -- are we seeing a pattern to Reznor's writing here? Sonic debris guitar enters at 1:08, bringing forth intensities from white noise. This track is full of subtle joys like the 1:23-1:36 solo by David Bowie pianist Mike Garson and guitarist Adrian Belew's outgoing guitar solo at 2:43, shifting back to the underlying soundscapes at 3:07. The sounds are always on the dissipative edge of chaos. "Just like You Imagined" opens with Soundscapes worthy of Robert Fripp, doubled by piano and guitar at 0:39. Drums and muffled voices enter at 0:54 -- are we seeing a pattern to Reznor's writing here? Sonic debris guitar enters at 1:08, bringing forth intensities from white noise. This track is full of subtle joys like the 1:23-1:36 solo by David Bowie pianist Mike Garson and guitarist Adrian Belew's outgoing guitar solo at 2:43, shifting back to the underlying soundscapes at 3:07. The sounds are always on the dissipative edge of chaos. "Pilgrimage" utilises a persistent ostinato and beat, with a driving guitar overlay at 0:18. This is perhaps the most familiar track, using Reznor motifs like the doubling of the riff with acoustic guitars between 1:12-1:20, march cries, and pitch-shift effects on a 3:18 drumbeat/cymbal. Or at least I could claim it was familiar, if it were not that legendary hip-hop producer and 'edge-of-panic' tactilist Dr. Dre helped assemble the final track mix. "No, You Don't" has been interpreted as an attack on Marilyn Manson and Hole's Courntey Love, particularly the 0:47 line 'Got to keep it all on the outside/Because everything is dead on the inside' and the 2:33 final verse 'Just so you know, I did not believe you could sink so low'. The song's structure is familiar: a basic beat at 0:16, guitars building from 0:31 to sneering vocals, a 2:03 counter-riff that merges at 2:19 with vocals and ascending to the final verse and 3:26 final distortion... "La Mer" is the first major surprise, a beautiful and sweeping fusion of piano, keyboard and cello, reminiscent of Symbolist composer Debussy. At 1:07 Denise Milfort whispers, setting the stage for sometime Ministry drummer Bill Reiflin's jazz drumming at 1:22, and a funky 1:32 guitar/bass line. The pulsing synth guitar at 2:04 serves as anchoring percussion for a cinematic electronica mindscape, filtered through new layers of sonic chiaroscuro at 2:51. 3:06 phase shifting, 3:22 layer doubling, 3:37 outgoing solo, 3:50-3:54 more swirling vocal fragments, seguing into a fading cello quartet as shadows creep. David Carson's moody film-clip captures the end more ominously, depicting the beauty of drowning. This track contains the line 'Nothing can stop me now', which appears to be Reznor's personal mantra. This track rivals 'Hurt' and 'A Warm Place' from The Downward Spiral and 'Something I Can Never Have' from Pretty Hate Machine as perhaps the most emotionally revealing and delicate material that Reznor has written. "The Great Below" ends the first disc with more multi-layered textures fusing nostalgia and reverie: a twelve-second cello riff is counter-pointed by a plucked overlay, which builds to a 0:43 washed pulse effect, transformed by six second pulses between 1:04-1:19 and a further effects layer at 1:24. E-bow effects underscore lyrics like 'Currents have their say' (2:33) and 'Washes me away' (2:44), which a 3:33 sitar riff answers. These complexities are further transmuted by seemingly random events -- a 4:06 doubling of the sitar riff which 'glitches' and a 4:32 backbeat echo that drifts for four bars. While Reznor's lyrics suggest that he is unable to control subjective time-states (like The Joker in the Batman: Dark Knight series of Kali-yuga comic-books), the track constructions show that the Key to his hold over the listener is very carefully constructed songs whose spaces resemble Pythagorean mathematical formulas. Misdirecting the audience is the secret of many magicians. "The Way Out Is Through" opens the 'Right' disc with an industrial riff that builds at 0:19 to click-track and rhythm, the equivalent of a weaving spiral. Whispering 'All I've undergone/I will keep on' at 1:24, Reznor is backed at 1:38 by synths and drums coalescing into guitars, which take shape at 1:46 and turn into a torrential electrical current. The models are clearly natural morphogenetic structures. The track twists through inner storms and torments from 2:42 to 2:48, mirrored by vocal shards at 2:59 and soundscapes at 3:45, before piano fades in and out at 4:12. The title references peri-natal theories of development (particularly those of Stanislav Grof), which is the source of much of the album's imagery. "Into the Void" is not the Black Sabbath song of the same name, but a catchy track that uses the same unfolding formula (opening static, cello at 0:18, guitars at 0:31, drums and backbeat at 1:02, trademark industrial vocals and synth at 1:02, verse at 1:23), and would not appear out of place in a Survival Research Laboratories exhibition. At 3:42 Reznor plays with the edge of synth soundscapes, merging vocals at 4:02 and ending the track nicely at 4:44 alone. "Where Is Everybody?" emulates earlier structures, but relies from 2:01 on whirring effects and organic rhythms, including a flurry of eight beat pulses between 2:40-2:46 and a 3:33 spiralling guitar solo. The 4:26 guitar solo is pure Adrian Belew, and is suddenly ended by spluttering static and white noise at 5:13. "The Mark Has Been Made" signals another downshift into introspectiveness with 0:32 ghostly synth shimmers, echoed by cello at 1:04 which is the doubled at 1:55 by guitar. At 2:08 industrial riffs suddenly build up, weaving between 3:28 distorted guitars and the return of the repressed original layer at 4:16. The surprise is a mystery 32 second soundscape at the end with Reznor crooning 'I'm getting closer, all the time' like a zombie devil Elvis. "Please" highlights spacious noise at 0:48, and signals a central album motif at 1:04 with the line 'Time starts slowing down/Sink until I drown'. The psychic mood of the album shifts with the discovery of Imagination as a liberating force against oppression. The synth sound again is remarkably organic for an industrial album. "Starfuckers Inc" is the now infamous sneering attack on rock-stardom, perhaps at Marilyn Manson (at 3:08 Reznor quotes Carly Simon's 'You're So Vain'). Jungle beats and pulsing synths open the track, which features the sound-sculpting talent of Pop Will Eat Itself member Clint Mansell. Beginning at 0:26, Reznor's vocals appear to have been sampled, looped and cut up (apologies to Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs). The lines 'I have arrived and this time you should believe the hype/I listened to everyone now I know everyone was right' is a very savage and funny exposure of Manson's constant references to Friedrich Nietzsche's Herd-mentality: the Herd needs a bogey-man to whip it into submission, and Manson comes dangerous close to fulfilling this potential, thus becoming trapped by a 'Stacked Deck' paradox. The 4:08 lyric line 'Now I belong I'm one of the Chosen Ones/Now I belong I'm one of the Beautiful Ones' highlights the problem of being Elect and becoming intertwined with institutionalised group-think. The album version ditches the closing sample of Gene Simmons screaming "Thankyou and goodnight!" to an enraptured audience on the single from KISS Alive (1975), which was appropriately over-the-top (the alternate quiet version is worth hearing also). "The danger Marilyn Manson faces", notes Don Webb (current High Priest of the Temple of Set), "is that he may end up in twenty years time on the 'Tonight Show' safely singing our favourite songs like a Goth Frank Sinatra, and will have gradually lost his antinomian power. It's much harder to maintain the enigmatic aura of an Evil villain than it is to play the clown with society". Reznor's superior musicianship and sense of irony should keep him from falling into the same trap. "Complication" juggernauts in at 0:57 with screaming vocals and a barrage of white noise at 1:56. It's clear by now that Reznor has read his psychological operations (PSYOP) manuals pertaining to blasting the hell out of his audiences' psyche by any means necessary. Computer blip noise and black light flotation tank memories. Dislocating pauses and time-bends. The aural equivalent of Klein bottles. "Complication" juggernauts in at 0:57 with screaming vocals and a barrage of white noise at 1:56. It's clear by now that Reznor has read his psychological operations (PSYOP) manuals pertaining to blasting the hell out of his audiences' psyche by any means necessary. Computer blip noise and black light flotation tank memories. Dislocating pauses and time-bends. The aural equivalent of Klein bottles. "The Big Come Down" begins with a four-second synth/static intro that is smashed apart by a hard beat at 0:05 and kaleidoscope guitars at 0:16. Critics refer to the song's lyrics in an attempt to project a narcissistic Reznor personality, but don't comment on stylistic tweaks like the AM radio influenced backing vocals at 1:02 and 1:19, or the use of guitars as a percussion layer at 1:51. A further intriguing element is the return of the fly samples at 2:38, an effect heard on previous releases and a possible post-human sub-text. The alien mythos will eventually reign over the banal and empty human. At 3:07 the synths return with static, a further overlay adds more synths at 3:45 as the track spirals to its peak, before dissipating at 3:1 in a mesh of percussion and guitars. "Underneath It All" opens with a riff that signals we have reached the album's climatic turning point, with the recurring theme of fragmenting body-memories returning at 0:23 with the line 'All I can do/I can still feel you', and being echoed by pulsing static at 0:42 as electric percussion. A 'Messiah Complex' appears at 1:34 with the line 'Crucify/After all I've died/After all I've tried/You are still inside', or at least it appears to be that on the surface. This is the kind of line that typical rock critics will quote, but a careful re-reading suggests that Reznor is pointing to the painful nature of remanifesting. Our past shapes us more than we would like to admit particularly our first relationships. "Ripe (With Decay)" is the album's final statement, a complex weaving of passages over a repetitive mesh of guitars, pulsing echoes, back-beats, soundscapes, and a powerful Mike Garson piano solo (2:26). Earlier motifs including fly samples (3:00), mournful funeral violas (3:36) and slowing time effects (4:28) recur throughout the track. Having finally reached the psychotic core, Reznor is not content to let us rest, mixing funk bass riffs (4:46), vocal snatches (5:23) and oscillating guitars (5:39) that drag the listener forever onwards towards the edge of the abyss (5:58). The final sequence begins at 6:22, loses fidelity at 6:28, and ends abruptly at 6:35. At millennium's end there is a common-held perception that the world is in an irreversible state of decay, and that Culture is just a wafer-thin veneer over anarchy. Music like The Fragile suggests that we are still trying to assimilate into popular culture the 'war-on-Self' worldviews unleashed by the nineteenth-century 'Masters of Suspicion' (Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche). This 'assimilation gap' is evident in industrial music, which in the late 1970s was struggling to capture the mood of the Industrial Revolution and Charles Dickens, so the genre is ripe for further exploration of the scarred psyche. What the self-appointed moral guardians of the Herd fail to appreciate is that as the imprint baseline rises (reflective of socio-political realities), the kind of imagery prevalent throughout The Fragile and in films like Strange Days (1995), The Matrix (1999) and eXistenZ (1999) is going to get even darker. The solution is not censorship or repression in the name of pleasing an all-saving surrogate god-figure. No, these things have to be faced and embraced somehow. Such a process can only occur if there is space within for the Sadeian aesthetic that Nine Inch Nails embodies, and not a denial of Dark Eros. "We need a second Renaissance", notes Don Webb, "a rejuvenation of Culture on a significant scale". In other words, a global culture-shift of quantum (aeon or epoch-changing) proportions. The tools required will probably not come just from the over-wordy criticism of Cyber-culture and Cultural Studies or the logical-negative feeding frenzy of most Music Journalism. They will come from a dynamic synthesis of disciplines striving toward a unity of knowledge -- what socio-biologist Edward O. Wilson has described as 'Consilience'. Liberating tools and ideas will be conveyed to a wider public audience unfamiliar with such principles through predominantly science fiction visual imagery and industrial/electronica music. The Fragile serves as an invaluable model for how such artefacts could transmit their dreams and propagate their messages. For the hyper-alert listener, it will be the first step on a new journey. But sadly for the majority, it will be just another hysterical industrial album promoted as selection of the month. References Bester, Alfred. The Stars My Destination. London: Millennium Books, 1999. Eshun, Kodwo. More Brilliant than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction. London: Quartet Books, 1998. Van der Kolk, Bessel A. "Trauma and Memory." Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society. Eds. Bessel A. van der Kolk et al. New York: Guilford Press, 1996. Nine Inch Nails. Downward Spiral. Nothing/Interscope, 1994. ---. The Fragile. Nothing, 1999. ---. Pretty Hate Machine. TVT, 1989. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Alex Burns. "'This Machine Is Obsolete': A Listeners' Guide to Nine Inch Nails' The Fragile." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.8 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/nine.php>. Chicago style: Alex Burns, "'This Machine Is Obsolete': A Listeners' Guide to Nine Inch Nails' The Fragile," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 8 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/nine.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Alex Burns. (1999) 'This machine is obsolete': a listeners' guide to Nine Inch Nails' The fragile. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(8). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/nine.php> ([your date of access]).

What creative techniques of resistance are available to a female filmmaker when she is the victim of a violent event and filmed at her most vulnerable? This article uses an autoethnographic lens to discuss my experience of a serious car crash my family and I were inadvertently involved in due to police negligence and a criminal act. Employing Creative Analytical Practice (CAP) ethnography, a reflexive form of research which recognises that the creative process, producer and product are “deeply intertwined” (Richardson, “Writing: A Method” 930), I investigate how the crash’s violent affects crippled my agency, manifested in my creative praxis and catalysed my identification of latent forms of institutionalised violence in film culture, its discourse and pedagogy that also contributed to my inertia. The article maps my process of writing a feature length screenplay during the aftermath of the crash as I set out to articulate my story of survival and resistance. Using this narrative inquiry, in which we can “investigate how we construct the world, ourselves, and others, and how standard objectifying practices...unnecessarily limit us” (Richardson, “Writing: A Method” 924), I outline how I attempted to disrupt the entrenched power structures that exist in dominant narratives of violence in film and challenge my subjugated positioning as a woman within this canon. I describe my engagement with the deconstructionist practices of writing the body and militant feminist cinema, which suggest subversive opportunities for women’s self-determination by encouraging us to embrace our exiled positioning in dominant discourse through creative experimentation, and identify some of the possibilities and limitations of this for female agency. Drawing on CAP ethnography, existentialism, film feminism, and narrative reframing, I assert that these reconstructive practices are more effective for the creative enfranchisement of women by not relegating us to the periphery of social systems and cultural forms. Instead, they enable us to speak back to violent structures in a language that has greater social access, context and impact.My strong desire to tell screen stories lies in my belief that storytelling is a crucial evolutionary mechanism of resilience. Narratives do not simply represent the social world but also have the ability to change it by enabling us to “try to figure out how to live our lives meaningfully” (Ellis 760). This conviction has been directly influenced by my personal story of trauma and survival when myself, my siblings, and our respective life partners became involved in a major car crash. Two police officers attending to a drunken brawl in an inner city park had, in their haste, left the keys in the ignition of their vehicle. We were travelling across a major intersection when the police car, which had subsequently been stolen by a man involved in the brawl – a man who was wanted on parole, had a blood alcohol level three times over the legal limit, and was driving at speeds exceeding 110kms per hour - ran a red light and crossed our path, causing us to crash into his vehicle. From the impact, the small four-wheel drive we were travelling in was catapulted metres into the air, rolling numerous times before smashing head on into oncoming traffic. My heavily pregnant sister was driving our vehicle.The incident attracted national media attention and our story became a sensationalist spectacle. Each news station reported erroneous and conflicting information, one stating that my sister had lost her unborn daughter, another even going so far as to claim my sister had died in the crash. This tabloidised, ‘if it bleeds, it leads’, culture of journalism, along with new digital technologies, encourages and facilitates the normalisation of violent acts, often inflicted on women. Moreover, in their pursuit of high-rating stories, news bodies motivate dehumanising acts of citizen journalism that see witnesses often inspired to film, rather than assist, victims involved in a violent event. Through a connection with someone working for a major news station, we discovered that leading news broadcasters had bought a tape shot by a group of men who call themselves the ‘Paparazzi of Perth’. These men were some of the first on the scene and began filming us from only a few metres away while we were still trapped upside down and unconscious in our vehicle. In the recording, the men are heard laughing and celebrating our tragedy as they realise the lucrative possibilities of the shocking imagery they are capturing as witnesses pull us out of the back of the car, and my pregnant sister incredibly frees herself from the wreckage by kicking out the window.As a female filmmaker, I saw the bitter irony of this event as the camera was now turned on me and my loved ones at our most vulnerable. In her discussion of the male gaze, a culturally sanctioned form of narrational violence against women that is ubiquitous in most mainstream media, Mulvey proposes that women are generally the passive image, trapped by the physical limits of the frame in a permanent state of powerlessness as our identity is reduced to her “to-be-looked-at-ness” (40). For a long period of time, the experience of performing the role of this commodified woman of a weaponised male gaze, along with the threat of annihilation associated with our near-death experience, immobilised my spirit. I felt I belonged “more to the dead than to the living” (Herman 34). When I eventually returned to my creative praxis, I decided to use scriptwriting as both my “mode of reasoning and a mode of representation” (Richardson, Writing Strategies 21), test whether I could work through my feelings of alienation and violation and reclaim my agency. This was a complex and harrowing task because my memories “lack[ed] verbal narrative and context” (Herman 38) and were deeply rooted in my body. Cixous confirms that for women, “writing and voice...are woven together” and “spring from the deepest layers of her psyche” (Moi 112). For many months, I struggled to write. I attempted to block out this violent ordeal and censor my self. I soon learnt, however, that my body could not be silenced and was slow to forget. As I tried to write around this experience, the trauma worked itself deeper inside of me, and my physical symptoms worsened, as did the quality of my writing.In the early version of the screenplay I found myself writing a female-centred film about violence, identity and death, using the fictional narrative to express the numbness I experienced. I wrote the female protagonist with detachment as though she were an object devoid of agency. Sartre claims that we make objects of others and of ourselves in an attempt to control the uncertainty of life and the ever-changing nature of humanity (242). Making something into an object is to deprive it of life (and death); it is our attempt to keep ourselves ‘safe’. While I recognise that the car crash’s reminder of my mortality was no doubt part of the reason why I rendered myself, and the script’s female protagonist, lifeless as agentic beings, I sensed that there were subtler operations of power and control behind my self-objectification and self-censorship, which deeply concerned me. What had influenced this dea(r)th of female agency in my creative imaginings? Why did I write my female character with such a red pen? Why did I seem so compelled to ‘kill’ her? I wanted to investigate my gender construction, the complex relationship between my scriptwriting praxis, and the context within which it is produced to discover whether I could write a different future for myself, and my female characters. Kiesinger supports “contextualizing our stories within the framework of a larger picture” (108), so as to remain open to the possibility that there might not be anything ‘wrong’ with us, per se, “but rather something very wrong with the dynamics that dominate the communicative system” (109) within which we operate: in the case of my creative praxis, the oppressive structures present in the culture of film and its pedagogy.Pulling FocusWomen are supposed to be the view and when the view talks back, it is uncomfortable.— Jane Campion (Filming Desire)It is a terrible thing to see that no one has ever taught us how to develop our vision as women neither in the history of arts nor in film schools.— Marie Mandy (Filming Desire)The democratisation of today’s media landscape through new technologies, the recent rise in female-run production companies (Zemler) in Hollywood, along with the ground-breaking #MeToo and Time’s Up movements has elevated the global consciousness of gender-based violence, and has seen the screen industry seek to redress its history of gender imbalance. While it is too early to assess the impact these developments may have on women’s standing in film, today the ‘celluloid ceiling’ still operates on multiple levels of indoctrination and control through a systemic pattern of exclusion for women that upholds the “nearly seamless dialogue among men in cinema” (Lauzen, Thumbs Down 2). Female filmmakers occupy a tenuous position of influence in the mainstream industry and things are not any better on the other side of the camera (Lauzen, The Celluloid Ceiling). For the most part, Hollywood’s male gaze and penchant for sexualising and (physically or figuratively) killing female characters, which normalises violence against women and is “almost inversely proportional to the liberation of women in society” (Mandy), continues to limit women to performing as the image rather than the agent on screen.Film funding bodies and censorship boards, mostly comprised of men, remain exceptionally averse to independent female filmmakers who go against the odds to tell their stories, which often violate taboos about femininity and radically redefine female agency through the construction of the female gaze: a narrational technique of resistance that enables reel woman to govern the point of view, imagery and action of the film (Smelik 51-52). This generally sees their films unjustly ghettoised through incongruent classification or censorship, and forced into independent or underground distribution (Sexton-Finck 165-182). Not only does censorship propose the idea that female agency is abject and dangerous and needs to be restrained, it prevents access to this important cinema by women that aims to counter the male gaze and “shield us from this type of violence” (Gillain 210). This form of ideological and institutional gatekeeping is not only enforced in the film industry, it is also insidiously (re)constituted in the epistemological construction of film discourse and pedagogy, which in their design, are still largely intrinsically gendered institutions, encoded with phallocentric signification that rejects a woman’s specificity and approach to knowledge. Drawing on my mutually informative roles as a former film student and experienced screen educator, I assert that most screen curricula in Australia still uphold entrenched androcentric norms that assume the male gaze and advocate popular cinema’s didactic three-act structure, which conditions our value systems to favour masculinity and men’s worldview. This restorative storytelling approach is argued to be fatally limiting to reel women (Smith 136; Dancyger and Rush 25) as it propagates the Enlightenment notion of a universal subjectivity, based on free will and reason, which neutralises the power structures of society (and film) and repudiates the influence of social positioning on our opportunity for agency. Moreover, through its omniscient consciousness, which seeks to efface the presence of a specific narrator, the three-act method disavows this policing of female agency and absolves any specific individual of responsibility for its structural violence (Dyer 98).By pulling focus on some of these problematic mechanisms in the hostile climate of the film industry and its spaces of learning for women, I became acutely aware of the more latent forms of violence that had conditioned my scriptwriting praxis, the ambivalence I felt towards my female identity, and my consequent gagging of the female character in the screenplay.Changing Lenses How do the specific circumstances in which we write affect what we write? How does what we write affect who we become?— Laurel Richardson (Fields of Play 1)In the beginning, there is an end. Don’t be afraid: it’s your death that is dying. Then: all the beginnings.— Helene Cixous (Cixous and Jensen 41)The discoveries I made during my process of CAP ethnography saw a strong feeling of dissidence arrive inside me. I vehemently wanted to write my way out of my subjugated state and release some of the anguish that my traumatised body was carrying around. I was drawn to militant feminist cinema and the French poststructuralist approach of ‘writing the body’ (l’ecriture feminine) given these deconstructive practices “create images and ideas that have the power to inspire to revolt against oppression and exploitation” (Moi 120). Feminist cinema’s visual treatise of writing the body through its departure from androcentric codes - its unformulaic approach to structure, plot, character and narration (De Lauretis 106) - revealed to me ways in which I could use the scriptwriting process to validate my debilitating experience of physical and psychic violence, decensor my self and move towards rejoining the living. Cixous affirms that, “by writing her self, woman will return to the body which has been more than confiscated from her, which has been turned into…the ailing or dead figure” (Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa 880). It became clear to me that the persistent themes of death that manifested in the first draft of the script were not, as I first suspected, me ‘rehearsing to die’, or wanting to kill off the woman inside me. I was in fact “not driven towards death but by death” (Homer 89), the close proximity to my mortality, acting as a limit, was calling for a strengthening of my life force, a rebirth of my agency (Bettelheim 36). Mansfield acknowledges that death “offers us a freedom outside of the repression and logic that dominate our daily practices of keeping ourselves in order, within the lines” (87).I challenged myself to write the uncomfortable, the unfamiliar, the unexplored and to allow myself to go to places in me that I had never before let speak by investigating my agency from a much more layered and critical perspective. This was both incredibly terrifying and liberating and enabled me to discard the agentic ‘corset’ I had previously worn in my creative praxis. Dancyger and Rush confirm that “one of the things that happens when we break out of the restorative three-act form is that the effaced narrator becomes increasingly visible and overt” (38). I experienced an invigorating feeling of empowerment through my appropriation of the female gaze in the screenplay which initially appeased some of the post-crash turmoil and general sense of injustice I was experiencing. However, I soon, found something toxic rising inside of me. Like the acrimonious feminist cinema I was immersed in – Raw (Ducournau), A Girl Walks Home at Night (Amirpour), Romance (Breillat), Trouble Every Day (Denis), Baise-Moi (Despentes and Thi), In My Skin (Van), Anatomy of Hell (Breillat) – the screenplay I had produced involved a female character turning the tables on men and using acts of revenge to satisfy her needs. Not only was I creating a highly dystopian world filled with explicit themes of suffering in the screenplay, I too existed in a displaced state of rage and ‘psychic nausea’ in my daily life (Baldick and Sartre). I became haunted by vivid flashbacks of the car crash as abject images, sounds and sensations played over and over in my mind and body like a horror movie on loop. I struggled to find the necessary clarity and counterbalance of stability required to successfully handle this type of experimentation.I do not wish to undermine the creative potential of deconstructive practices, such as writing the body and militant cinema, for female filmmakers. However, I believe my post-trauma sensitivity to visceral entrapment and spiritual violence magnifies some of the psychological and physiological risks involved. Deconstructive experimentation “happens much more easily in the realm of “texts” than in the world of human interaction” (hooks 22) and presents agentic limitations for women since it offers a “utopian vision of female creativity” (Moi 119) that is “devoid of reality...except in a poetic sense” (Moi 122). In jettisoning the restorative qualities of narrative film, new boundaries for women are inadvertently created through restricting us to “intellectual pleasure but rarely emotional pleasure” (Citron 51). Moreover, by reducing women’s agency to retaliation we are denied the opportunity for catharsis and transformation; something I desperately longed to experience in my injured state. Kaplan acknowledges this problem, arguing that female filmmakers need to move theoretically beyond deconstruction to reconstruction, “to manipulate the recognized, dominating discourses so as to begin to free ourselves through rather than beyond them (for what is there ‘beyond’?)” (Women and Film 141).A potent desire to regain a sense of connectedness and control pushed itself out from deep inside me. I yearned for a tonic to move myself and my female character to an active position, rather than a reactive one that merely repeats the victimising dynamic of mainstream film by appropriating a reversed (female) gaze and now makes women the violent victors (Kaplan, Feminism and Film 130). We have arrived at a point where we must destabilise the dominance-submission structure and “think about ways of transcending a polarity that has only brought us all pain” (Kaplan, Feminism and Film 135). I became determined to write a screen narrative that, while dealing with some of the harsh realities of humanity I had become exposed to, involved an existentialist movement towards catharsis and activity.ReframingWhen our stories break down or no longer serve us well, it is imperative that we examine the quality of the stories we are telling and actively reinvent our accounts in ways that permit us to live more fulfilling lives.— Christine Kiesinger (107)I’m frightened by life’s randomness, so I want to deal with it, make some sense of it by telling a film story. But it’s not without hope. I don’t believe in telling stories without some hope.— Susanne Bier (Thomas)Narrative reframing is underlined by the existentialist belief that our spiritual freedom is an artistic process of self-creation, dependent on our free will to organise the elements of our lives, many determined out of our control, into the subjective frame that is to be our experience of our selves and the world around us (107). As a filmmaker, I recognise the power of selective editing and composition. Narrative reframing’s demand for a rational assessment of “the degree to which we live our stories versus the degree to which our stories live us” (Kiesinger 109), helped me to understand how I could use these filmmaking skills to take a step back from my trauma so as to look at it objectively “as a text for study” (Ellis 108) and to exercise power over the creative-destructive forces it, and the deconstructive writing methods I had employed, produced. Richardson confirms the benefits of this practice, since narrative “is the universal way in which humans accommodate to finitude” (Writing Strategies 65).In the script’s development, I found my resilience lay in my capacity to imagine more positive alternatives for female agency. I focussed on writing a narrative that did not avoid life’s hardships and injustices, or require them to be “attenuated, veiled, sweetened, blunted, and falsified” (Nietzsche and Hollingdale 68), yet still involved a life-affirming sentiment. With this in mind, I reintroduced the three-act structure in the revised script as its affectivity and therapeutic denouement enabled me to experience a sense of agentic catharsis that turned “nauseous thoughts into imaginations with which it is possible to live” (Nietzsche 52). Nevertheless, I remained vigilant not to lapse into didacticism; to allow my female character to be free to transgress social conventions surrounding women’s agency. Indebted to Kaplan’s writing on the cinematic gaze, I chose to take up what she identifies as a ‘mutual gaze’; an ethical framework that enabled me to privilege the female character’s perspective and autonomy with a neutral subject-subject gaze rather than the “subject-object kind that reduces one of the parties to the place of submission” (Feminism and Film 135). I incorporated the filmic technique of the point of view (POV) shot for key narrative moments as it allows an audience to literally view the world through a character’s eyes, as well as direct address, which involves the character looking back down the lens at the viewer (us); establishing the highest level of identification between the spectator and the subject on screen.The most pertinent illustration of these significant scriptwriting changes through my engagement with narrative reframing and feminist film theory, is in the reworking of my family’s car crash which became a pivotal turning point in the final draft. In the scene, I use POV and direct address to turn the weaponised gaze back around onto the ‘paparazzi’ who are filming the spectacle. When the central (pregnant) character frees herself from the wreckage, she notices these men filming her and we see the moment from her point of view as she looks at these men laughing and revelling in the commercial potential of their mediatised act. Switching between POV and direct address, the men soon notice they have been exposed as the woman looks back down the lens at them (us) with disbelief, reproaching them (us) for daring to film her in this traumatic moment. She holds her determined gaze while they glance awkwardly back at her, until their laughter dissipates, they stop recording and appear to recognise the culpability of their actions. With these techniques of mutual gazing, I set out to humanise and empower the female victim and neutralise the power dynamic: the woman is now also a viewing agent, and the men equally perform the role of the viewed. In this creative reframing, I hope to provide an antidote to filmic violence against and/or by women as this female character reclaims her (my) experience of survival without adhering to the culture of female passivity or ressentiment.This article has examined how a serious car crash, being filmed against my will in its aftermath and the attendant damages that prevailed from this experience, catalysed a critical change of direction in my scriptwriting. The victimising event helped me recognise the manifest and latent forms of violence against women that are normalised through everyday ideological and institutional systems in film and prevent us from performing as active agents in our creative praxis. There is a critical need for more inclusive modes of practice – across the film industry, discourse and pedagogy – that are cognisant and respectful of women’s specificity and our difference to the androcentric landscape of mainstream film. We need to continue to exert pressure on changing violent mechanisms that marginalise us and ghettoise our stories. As this article has demonstrated, working outside dominant forms can enable important emancipatory opportunities for women, however, this type or deconstruction also presents risks that generally leave us powerless in everyday spaces. While I advocate that female filmmakers should look to techniques of feminist cinema for an alternative lens, we must also work within popular film to critique and subvert it, and not deny women the pleasures and political advantages of its restorative structure. By enabling female filmmakers to (re)humanise woman though encouraging empathy and compassion, this affective storytelling form has the potential to counter violence against women and mobilise female agency. Equally, CAP ethnography and narrative reframing are critical discourses for the retrieval and actualisation of female filmmakers’ agency as they allow us to contextualise our stories of resistance and survival within the framework of a larger picture of violence to gain perspective on our subjective experiences and render them as significant, informative and useful to the lives of others. This enables us to move from the isolated margins of subcultural film and discourse to reclaim our stories at the centre.ReferencesA Girl Walks Home at Night. Dir. Ana Lily Amirpour. Say Ahh Productions, 2014.Anatomy of Hell. Dir. Catherine Breillat. Tartan Films, 2004. Baise-Moi. Dirs. Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi. FilmFixx, 2000.Baldick, Robert, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Nausea. 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