GULE | The Masks We Carry:
Intersectional Indigenous Storytelling through Visual Arts Narratives, Film and Community-Governance
By
KL. PERUZZO DE ANDRADE BA, Faculdade Pitágoras, 2012
A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS
in the Social Dimensions of Health Program
© Kl. Peruzzo de Andrade, 2020 University of Victoria
All rights reserved. This dissertation may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without the permission of the author.
We acknowledge with respect the Lekwungen peoples on whose traditional territory the university stands and the Songhees, Esquimalt and W̱SÁNEĆ peoples whose historical
ii Supervisory Committee
GULE - The Masks we Carry:
Intersectional Indigenous Storytelling Methods through Visual Arts Narratives, Film and Community-Governance
By Kl. Peruzzo
BA, Faculdade Pitágoras, 2012
Dr. Charlotte Loppie, School of Public Health and Social Policy Supervisor
Dr. Devi Mucina, Indigenous Governance Program Co-Supervisor
Dr. Victoria Wyatt, Department of Art History and Visual Studies Outside Member
iii Abstract
This thesis documents and discusses the production of a film about the Gule Wamkulu Mask Dance, in the village of Mzonde, in the area of traditional authority of Nkanda, Malawi. Through an Ubuntu framework of place-based epistemology, critical race theory and the principles of Indigenous research, I describe my journey of self-reflection about what it means to be Caá-Poré Cafuzo and how I came to understand belonging in the context of diasporic, Black and
iv Table of Contents Supervisory Committee ... ii Abstract ... iii Table of Contents ... iv List of Figures ... vi
Glossary of Terms ... vii
Dedication ... viii
Acknowledgements ... ix
Introduction and Related Literature ...1
Storied Research | Inquiry ...1
Theory and Relations | Ubuntu ...3
Self-Location | Caá-Poré Cafuzo ...6
Back to Gule | The Return ...22
Protocol, Process, and Practice ...24
The Research Journey ...26
Mixed-Media Methods | The Stories we Carry ...26
Frameworks for Making Meaning ...28
The Film Journey ...31
Community Protocol and Local Governance ...32
Amai Direction: Film Process ...34
Tension and Co-Creation ...40
The Dance ...44
The Masks We Carry: Kantu Kuva ...46
The Post-Production Process ...48
Meaning Making ...51
My Learnings | The Masks we Carry Forward ...57
The Mask Dance Continuum ...58
Belonging ...59
Diasporic Belonging ...60
Blackness and Belonging ...63
Indigenous Belonging ...67
Final Words, New Beginnings ...72
v List of Figures:
1.0 Iracema and Francisco (my grandparents) 2.0 Locating my Homelands: Google Map 3.0 Tijuco and Paraná River Map
4.0 Iracema, my grandmother with myself (to her left) and some cousins
5.0: Screenshot of one of our shared learning conversations; featuring Dr. Devi Mucina, Dr. Charlotte Loppie and myself (missing Dr. Victoria Wyatt)
vi Glossary of Terms
Amai mother, aunty, leader also used to honour daughters1 Baba father, uncle, can also be used to honour sons2
Caá-Poré person from the Bush, Nativeness
Cafuzo mixed Black-Indigenous Peoples of Brazil
Gogo grandmother3
Mzungu Aguda dark White Person
Kantu Kuva hearing device, listening, wondering, watching
1 Mucina, Devi. Ubuntu Relational Love: Decolonizing Black Masculinities. University of Manitoba Press. 2019
2 Ibid 3 Ibid
vii Dedication
FOR THE ANCESTORS PAST PRESENT AND FUTURE
viii “The student is never alone as his ancestors are always with him”
-Devi Mucina 4
ix Acknowledgements
To my relations, this work is possible through your love, and I offer my deep gratitude. To my wife Erynne for your guidance, day-by-day radical love and constant compassion. To my family, my Mother Tânia, my Father Damião and my sister Karu, Luna and Marco, for showing me unconditional love and allowing me to become.
To my mentors, Dr. Charlotte Loppie, Dr. Devi Mucina and Dr. Victoria Wyatt, thank you for seeing me. Thank you for protecting the space of this work and for illuminating the pathways. To Vó Iracema and Vô Chico, for leading the way and showing me the sacred legacy and love for the land and waters. To Vó Eva, Tia Vilma for your guidance from the spirit world. Tio Gilvan for the tireless fight for the return of Land for our Peoples and families.
To Douglas, Shirley, Giovani and the Krenak family, for holding space and welcoming me into your families.
To Michelle, Paul and Emilee Gilpin, for being my foundation of love in the north.
To the Elliott family and the WSÁNEĆ territories, for your open hearts and patience as I learn how to be a good guest on your Lands.
To the Amais, for the constant teachings of love, care and governance. O Mato
As águas O Rio Tijuco O Cerrado
To all Knowledge Keepers To all my relations
To the Ancestors,
x In the mask dance
We dance that which we know We dance our futures into being We question what we don’t know
Futurities are imagined and brought to life The question of how to be in good relationship Of what it means to humans among other humans Is the one place where I can express my spirituality It’s The place where I can connect with the Divine It’s the place where I can celebrate life
It’s the place where I can think about health and wellness It’s accountability, it’s relational, It’s governance, It’s the performance of life.
1 Introduction and Related Literature
Storied Research | Inquiry
This research tells the story of my journey of self-reflection while producing a film about the Gule Wamkulu Mask Dance, in the village of Mzonde, in the area of traditional authority of Nkanda, Malawi. Along with my mentor Dr. Devi Mucina, I spent 28 days in Malawi engaging with the Gule Wamkulu Mask Society and community leaders in film-based storytelling practice. It is through community-led direction that it was permissible to use film as a form of my own storied learning; to examine the relationships between people, place, identity and governance enacted through living treaties with Gule Wamkulu. This project was conducted using visual storied narratives recorded on film, photography and mixed-media storytelling. These storied lenses contribute to the development of emergent critical-race frameworks for intersectional learning and knowledge production and are grounded in my own continual self-location and critical reflexivity within the relationships, knowledge translations and regard for unpacking my own intersections of identity.
To be clear, this is not a research project about Gule Wamkulu; the people, experiences, cultural governance and mask dances featured in the film itself are not subjects of research. It is not my place to explore the meaning and structure of Gule Wamkulu. This thesis is a
documentation of the process that I undertook to create the film, embedded in Ubuntu-based protocols and governance. Yet, the film is not a peripheral piece of my M.A., but rather is a central component to the work done within this thesis. This research is also a reflection of the teachings I received as a result of visiting these communities, engaging their permission to make a film, being guided by the Amais in the making of that film; of watching, re-watching, editing and re-editing – until a final vision emerged.
2 The thesis itself diverts from conventional writing styles and research methods, by
instead weaving together personal reflections, ongoing discussion of research methods, learnings and practice throughout the paper. It provides a space to share reflections based on the process pertaining to the creation of the film, why I made the decisions that I did and the teachings gained from the process. In my attempt to resist conventional academic expectations around the presentation of research through the categorization of knowledge and removal of self from relations, my hope is to demonstrate how this work does not belong to me, but to all of the relations presented in these learnings.
This work provided me with opportunities to engage an Ubuntu-centric lens, community leadership and ongoing consent. At first, this process felt intimidating as I was prepared to
divorce my own personal experiences, emotions and growth from the research process. However, through the guidance and support of my committee, I was encouraged to self-locate and to allow the process to expand from my personal relationship with the project. During a conversation with my committee, Dr. Victoria Wyatt asserted that writing through a dynamic that makes space for the synthesis of multiplicity and fluidity is authentic to my own cosmology and self-in research. She shares,
“through your writing, you demonstrate that everything is interconnected, because that’s how we experience life, you’re not dissecting it, and focusing on one component; as if you can talk about your personal experience divorced from the process of the field work, the process of your conclusions, the process of making the film. Instead you are asking us to return and return and return to each of those themes in context, and in how they relate to all the others, instead of acting as if we can academically, put each one of them under a microscope, individually and then in some conclusion try to weave them all together again. I view your
3 work demonstrating to an academic audience, why conventional expectations on how to engage with knowledge doesn’t work in the paper that I am talking about- because it misrepresents experience and it pushes the audience away- instead this work invites the audience to join the learning itself, walk along with you and dance the dance, of the process in returning again and again and again to how all these themes and experiences interconnect.” (V. Wyatt, transcript of personal communication, July 21, 2020).
My interwoven reflections found throughout this thesis engage with existing scholarship around Indigenous research methods, storied methods of learning, knowledge sharing and intersectionality. I hope that they contribute to a deeper examination of the role of Gule Wamkulu within local and Diaspora Governance systems, locating visual and oral narratives through arts-based work, photography and film as meaningful forms of community
determination and knowledge mobilization. I also hope to contribute to both scholarship and community-based work within the areas of Indigenous governance, wellness and health, visual arts and Indigenous visual storytelling methodologies.
Theory and Relations | Ubuntu
The Gule Wamkulu mask dance is a place-based governance practice of reimagining relations to Self, ancestry, futurity and shared responsibilities to the masks themselves. The masks guide the dancers through Spirit-movement in order to teach, offer and ground community learning in shared belonging, prayer and spiritual endurance. Through the lens, through the film, through relations, through memory, through humility, through the return, through remembrance, through initiation, I was honoured to walk beside my relations, and protect the mask as part of the Nyau society. In June of 2018, Dr. Devi Mucina (Chewa, N’goni and Shona), Director of
4 Indigenous Governance at the University of Victoria, returned to his home-communities of the Chewa and N'goni peoples, in their territories in Malawi.
In his book Ubuntu: Relational Love - Decolonizing Black Masculinities, Mucina
examines the intersecting points of Indigenous Black experiences of governance, belonging, and family relations within an Ubuntu framework. Mucina explains that Ubuntu is in fact “spiritually communicated Black personhood … shaped by the philosophical realities and spiritualities of being connected to all global relations and energies” (2019, p. 1). Mucina uses the framework of Indigenous Ubuntu knowledge to better explore his own lived experiences, expressions and dynamic relations. For many Black-Indigenous people who live in diaspora from their home-lands and waters, we must take up the mindful and conscious work to go back, in order to move forward. The Ubuntu framework, among others explored in this thesis, represented a scaffold for my own engagement with Gule Wamkulu through a mixed-media-mixed-Indigenous lens of inquiry.
Mucina’s emergent research inquiries are grounded in Black inter-generational knowing, relational community politics, and engages questions of spiritual power as part of his own return to the Nyau society of his home Nations. Mucina shares that his own Ubuntu lens is a framework for energetic, material and spiritual relatedness through webs of inter-dependency and
responsibility. He says,
“My Ubuntuness is grounded in the philosophical reality of our lived experience and in that of our ancestors, but, even more importantly, my Ubuntuness derives its power from our African spiritual connection to all relational energies. This spiritually communicated Black personhood (Ubuntu) is shaped by the philosophical realities and spiritualities of being connected to all global relation and energies” (2019, p. 1).
5 Furthermore, in his description of Ubuntu epistemology, Mucina goes on to center Ubuntu
relational values as a lens through which he can consider and unpack the complexities of inter-relatedness with the natural world, the waters, and territorial homelands. Mucina shares that he has,
“learned from [his] Ubuntu old ones to see the spirit of the creator in everything”, that “I am of the creator, yet I cannot fully understand my own nature, and the rock is of the creator, but I cannot speak for it as I do not understand it. In Ubuntu epistemology, a force that may be perceived as evil in one context may be good in another context, and vice-versa. This is why we say that we are in a relational cycle with everything on earth. Our job is to figure out how to nurture that relationship in a specific way and at a specific time. This is why the memory of our ancestors is important to keep alive. To know an ancestor is to invite his/her spirit to guide you when you need help. We do not need to keep inventing knowledge that was already invented by our ancestors. If we work with our ancestors, we can perfect this knowledge and move forward” (p. 39).
These words resonate with my own contemplation of time in relation to my ancestors, not as entities or knowledge bodies from the past, but living and breathing governing agents in the present and future. My own relations to ancestral knowledge was not attained through memory or distant stories, but in present moments and present knowledge, living and pulsing through my own and my family’s bodies. Beyond colonial time-lines, which allocate ancestry to the long past, Mucina’s Ubuntu epistemological teachings, along with my own understanding of ancestral relations, is positioned as present-future. Present guidance and consultation to best align actions and thoughts towards a futuristic manner. Ubuntuness is futuristic and reflective of the ways in which I engaged with my own personal growth throughout the writing of this thesis. A continual
6 and consistent inter-play of past-present-future reactions - of ancestry, family-kin, and future generations; all centered on Land and in place. As learner, I am the belly button of these relations; as I learn, grow and engage in my own conscious self-location.
Mucina’s work with Ubuntuness allows for scholarship to transcend traditional western expectations of knowledge presentation, dissemination and mobilization, often bound to a
written format with structured outlines, methods and discussions. Instead, Mucina opens his arms and says, “The student is never alone as his ancestors are always with him”5, and invites us to extend an invitation to our ancestral bodies, our dream-bodies, our ceremonial-bodies, and consider all the experiences that define our full and true being as valid within the context of academic knowledge. He invites the learner to contemplate stories carried in our bodies, and supports our discovery of how stories teach us about what it means to be diasporic from knowledge-systems and what it means to return to them. In some ways, Mucina’s work emboldened my own critical interpretations of valued or valid knowledge within the academic context, through centering my own stories and storytelling as viable channels towards self-actualization, discovery and growth.
Self-Location | Caá-Poré Cafuzo
My entry point into Mucina’s work with the Gule Wamkulu Mask Society was as a Caá-Poré/Cafuzo learner and mixed-media storyteller. As a Caá-Poré person, we often self-regard as “mixed” Indigenous and Black people of Brazil, but our self-conscious identities do not inform an outward political practice or relationality to our home-lands and waters; in my case the rivers of Tijuco. I identify strongly with my Indigeneity due to the knowledge that I was raised with on
7 my home-territories and also have intimate relations to the place of my lineage to the Jê speaking people of Cayapó Meridional.
My last name “de Andrade” means "of the Andrade family”, a reference marker of whose family owned the property-work-relational rights of my grandparents. Social, political and internalized systems of racism prevailed and continue to thrive long past the official abolishment of slavery in Brazil. Post-abolition, relational values, behaviours and inter-community structures continue on through ever-changing colonial slave oppression and experiences of separation. In Brazil, it is common to hear “we are all mixed”, “we are all the same, because we are all just Brazilian”. This Nationalized identity fortifies a systemic denial of racism, colonial history and erasure of Indigenous governance and Land-based thriving societies. It wasn’t until later in my life, I became exposed to foundational work of critical-race and decolonial scholarship. Just as Fanon describes his own agony with colonial imposed violence, and his desire to re-imagine relationships beyond the colonial story (1963), I myself began the intimate and life-long spiritual journey of returning to my own ancestral stories so that I may re-imagine my own journey within the context of Mucina’s Ubuntuness.
In a conversation with one of my committee members, I was asked “Does Indigenous Blackness and Brownness hold power in the same way as whiteness in Brazil?” The answer is no. Identity and skin colour in Brazil are political. I was born in a political body. My experience growing up has been deeply implicated by being racialized, both in Brazil and in Canada. Conceptions of beauty, where I was raised, were based on whiteness - straight blond hair and blue-eyes. Like many in my family, I was told that my “cabelo crespo” or corkscrew hair was unattractive, and frankly, took up too much space. Chemical hair straightening was a common practice and normalized in our communities. I also remember as a young child, an aunty putting
8 a clothes-pin on my nose to see if it would resist the wide flatness and hold a straighter form. Economic prestige and classism were also associated with these physical traits and engrained into the ways that I learned to understand, reject, love and hate myself and the body I lived in. Similarity, the darkness and perceived poverty of my own family came with feelings of shame, embarrassment and anger. Emotions that I inherited and yet, did not fully understand.
Brazilian conceptions of identity, both within academia and on the street, are embedded in an overarching Brazilian Nationalist discourse of mixedness; (Giraldin, 2000; Lamos, 2012; Mori, 2015; Mano, 2015; Oliveira, 2016) making invisible diverse ancestral intersectional identities, histories, origin stories, and therefore futurisms. In O caráter educativo do Movimento Indígena brasileiro: considerações finais written by Daniel Munduruku (2018), he dissects the notion of Brazilian Nationalist identity and recognizes that “Brazil” can only exist through the erasure of distinct Indigenous Nationhood and claim to Indigenous Lands and territories through the guise of assimilation and integration. He notes that “the government's indigenist policy predicted that indigenous peoples should be integrated by the nation and, consequently, give up their ethnic identities, in order to become ‘Brazilian only’. This policy was at the service of national
development and national integration interests, which also hid the intention to exploit the riches present in the soil and subsoil of the lands traditionally occupied by our peoples” (p. 209).
Munduruku (2016, 2018) problematizes efforts to bolster shared Brazilian Nationalities and identities, through identifying the ways that Brazilian identities are built upon the distinct erasure of Indigenous governance leadership, Land-based claims and shared Black-Indigenous histories of resistance, survivance and kin-ship. Through the centering of community-led definitions of Indigeneity, we are able to access family-based histories of genealogy located in our home-territories and waters. It is my hope that through the further centering of
9 Black/Black-Indigenous storytelling within a framework of research inquiry and community-led governance, this thesis may further contribute to the interrogation of a Brazilian colonial identity and salvage our own community-histories and shared genealogies; grounded in resistance, dignity and strength. Weir (2012) claims that, for Indigenous peoples, “humans and nature, and nature and culture, are not regarded as separate, but are entangled together in all types of
relationships” (p. 3). Likewise, spiritual connections to place are established through relationships with the land spanning countless generations (Tonkinson, 2011).
In Brazil, academic translations of community wisdom and lived knowledge is not yet fully represented in the academic context. Since my time in a Canadian University setting, I have had immense exposure to Indigenous and Black scholarship within the fields of education, identity, intersectionality, community wellness and self-determination. As I translate these learnings back to my own Brazilian context, it is clear that the most articulate voices within these realms with my communities, exist within a community-based setting, not yet fully accessed through academic translations. More often than not, experiences of Black Indigeneity and Indigenous Blackness in Brazilian literature is predominantly written, second-hand, by white researchers, scholars and anthropologists. Needless to say, contributions that counter the eraser of Black Indigeneity and Indigenous Blackness through mapping, historical archives and
documentation are an important step towards community knowledge determination within higher education and representation.
Disconnection of our identities, also occurs through stolen histories, the removal of Black and Indigenous knowledge and experiences from Brazilian educational systems and the
imposition of a Brazilian colonialist identity; because of course “We are all mixed! We are all Brazilian!”. Many of us are left trying to pick up the pieces of our past, in order to reconstruct a
10 future based on our birth-right, teachings, values and systems of interconnection & wellbeing. In her thesis, Race and Affirmative Action in “Post-Racial” Democratic Brazil (2017), Alejandra T. Vázquez Baur recognizes the distinct erasure of “Afro-Brazilian” identity within larger Brazilian Nationalist racial politics. She notes that “Brazil, the largest country as well as the largest
economy in Latin America, is often represented positively when it comes to race issues due to its famed ideology of a “racial democracy,” which claims that Brazil overcame racial discrimination as a result of miscegenation. This ideology creates a racial color-continuum that neglects the distinctiveness of Afro-Brazilians in the global context” (p.8). Expanding on this analysis, Indigenous-Black/Black-Indigenous distinct communities are further extinguished from Brazilian identifiers due to the unique and intimate relationship to territory, place and Land in Brazil.
Further examined in Baur’s work is the differentiation between North American segregation politics such as Residential Schools, White only spaces and socially segregated cultural norms, and Brazil’s practices of “embranquecimento or “whitening” of the Brazilian population by government supported, enforced and legislated racial mixing (Skidmore 1972, p. 4). Today, we see a celebrated Brazilian mixed-identity which upholds the notion that ‘we are all mixed, and therefore we are all the same’! Baur quotes Skidmore in affirming that,
the celebration of mixedness, however, did not pacify the inevitable racist assumptions embedded in the system of social classification. Due to the social positioning of Europeans as owners and Africans as slaves in the colonial period, it followed that whiteness was
considered to be the natural and inevitable summit of the social pyramid (Skidmore 1972, p. 4).
11 Skidmore expands on how this “value system created by embranquecimento and how this permeated both academic and colloquial ideologies” (2017, p. 15). She goes on to further quote Skidmore’s work in noting that “On individual terms, Brazilians have deliberately sought sexual partners who are lighter than themselves, hoping by such sexual selection to make their children lighter'” (1972, p. 4). This ‘whitening’ ideology led to anti-black policies in the late nineteenth century, such as the intentional promotion of European immigration to Brazil’s cities and the suppression of African cultural practices in majority-black communities" (Baur, 2017).
Indigenous communities and experiences are often left out of race, politics and identity in Brazil. Additionally, it is important to note, that while valuable in contributions, both of the abovementioned authors are non-Black/non-Indigenous, and therefore take an emboldened outside-looking-in approach to talking about experiences that may not necessarily be their own. Until quite recently, emergent critical-race scholarship and knowledge sharing, authored by mixed-race scholars themselves, had been left to the periphery of Brazilian scholarship and identity politics (Mano, 2015; Turner, 2001; 2003). However, while still underrepresented in emergent scholarship, community-based leaders such as Daniel Mundurku (Munduruku Nation) (2013), Douglas Krenak, Marcel Mano (2015), Ailton Krenak (2020), Milton Santos (1978), Guime Rodrigues Filho (2005), Olinda Muniz (Pataxó Hãhãhãe) (2016), Mailson Santiago (Federal University of Pelotas) (2017), lead the way for Indigenous/Black and mixed researchers, educators and knowledge mobilization. Their contributions bolster the formation of my own critical-self location as I also contemplate my roles and place within resurgence of knowledge mobilization in the Brazilian context.
However, in Brazil, community voices on these subjects remain largely within the community and are accessed through relationships rather than academic papers. For those of us
12 with lived experiences, which supersede academic explorations of intersecting themes of racism, identity and belonging, we come to know the truths of our own existence echoed in academic studies, and later, find the words to express and dissect the socio-political why, how and when our destinies align with our histories. I acknowledge that community lived experience and wisdom is the expertise that grounds my own entry point into this work.
My genealogy to the African continent and belonging to Black diaspora kin-networks is through my own family’s ancestral experiences of slave-trade within the Brazilian context. My grandparents - I say their names now- so that they are present in my own becoming- Francisco and Iracema - were born in 1917 and 1921 respectively, only thirty years after slavery was legally abolished in Brazil (Marquese, 2003). Systems of slavery, like complex and interlocking systems of colonialism, are in constant motion, which require us to continue our ongoing
interrogation and contemplation of their impacts; past, present and future.
Growing up, I spent summers with my grandparents, Iracema and Chico (Francisco), on their small piece of land in the small town of Ituiutaba. Once a week, my grandfather would take his wide wheel barrow and walk through the community and gather food scraps for his pigs. He did this out of necessity. As I became older, I remember feelings of embarrassment when I saw this big man gathering the garbage of others. These memories make me cry. Years later, through exposure and teachings from Indigenous and Black friends and mentors, I have come to name the systems, processes and practices that create the emotions attached to that memory – that
perpetuated Anti-Blackness, Anti-Indigenousness and Anti-Cafuzoness in our contexts and informed our self-worth and value. I am proud of that man. Now I know, that he and my grandmother were bigger than they could even know. Now I look to that memory as one of dignity. My grandparents could not read or write, but they knew the depths and intricacies of
13 relationship to place. It wasn’t categorized, qualified or called a knowledge system, but they knew how to read the stars, the moon, the ways the waters flowed. They were Doctorates in the knowledge that lived in their bones, the true experts of this work.
Figure 1.0: Iracema and Francisco (my grandparents)
For over a decade, I shaved my head with a sharp razor. I would hear, “you’re more beautiful with short hair, you look whiter with short hair” and I began to fear the manifestations of my own body and so I hid it, so I would not have to confront it or understand it. One day, after a tumultuous conflict with my Father, I found myself staring in the mirror - overwhelmed with grief, anger and pain, so strong it felt like it belonged to thousands. I stared at myself, as light entered the dark room, and I watched again, the interplay of shadows and light dance across my body. Who am I? Why am I so angry? What am I afraid of? Can I be loved? What is wrong with me? Am I complete? In this moment, I decided to let my hair grow and I consented to heal. My hair grew quickly, sprouting up in tight curls like a dark halo around my head. No hiding now.
14 As it resurged on my scalp, I resurged within myself. I may not have had the words to analyze my own emergence and reclamation, but I didn’t need them, because I embodied and felt my process. Over time, as my hair grew up - towards the sky; I decided to honour this journey and asked a friend and barber to help me bind my hair in locks. Four days and 73 locks later, my own resurgence manifested through a metamorphosis represented in, through and with my hair. Locks
You told me that you cut your hair for others Now your hair is long
I see again and again people reach out to touch it Grab it, feel it, take it
handfuls of your hair And toss it up in the air
As if it were not a part of your body A part of your spirit
A part of your extension of your highest self on earth Your hair
Your earth Your body Your land
And I buried my heart in the fertile lands of your body They will not conquer here
- a poem written by my wife, Erynne Gilpin, 2020
My hair is sacred. It represents my direct lineage and roots to lands and home-genealogy. Very often, people reach for my hair - to touch, feel and comment on its length and the space it takes up. As a Caá-Poré/Cafuzo person, my hair racializes my body and represents my belonging to my kin and places of origin. When people reach for my hair, they reach for the stories, knowledge and journeys that make me who I am in this body. A healing, transforming
15 and loving body that is not for touching, grabbing or othering, but for the future of the stories and memories that make me who I am.
In some ways, my lighter-skin privileges me in ways that my darker-skinned relatives are not, and distances me from belonging to my genealogy. My body changes from place to place - from Caá-Poré /Cafuzo in Brazil – to mixed-Black in Canada- to a Mzungu Aguda (dark white person) in Malawi. I am used to these feelings, inherited by diaspora, when my mixed-ness separates me; yet, binding me to my mixed ancestry and family members. I was comfortable to be granted Mzungu Aguda in the community, as it created a site for us to have deep
conversations about Africa diaspora, colonial histories, slavery enterprise, whitening policies in Brazil, my own family histories and genealogy to lands we stood on that day. My body became a site for us to explore and share these stories. Conversely, the otherness conferred on me in Brazil and Canada continues to normalize racist assumptions against racialized bodies. Yet, it has taught me how to reclaim my own origin stories, family histories and knowledge so that I can reject its negativity through self-love.
Alfred and Corntassel (2005) coined the term, “shape-shifting colonialism” and define it as a framework for understanding and interrogating “postmodern imperialism and manipulations by shape-shifting colonial powers” because “instruments of domination are evolving and
inventing new methods to erase Indigenous histories and senses of place” (p. 5). Alfred and Corntassel go on to say that, “while some of these shape-shifting tactics may on the surface appear to be subtle, they, like other brutal forms of oppression, threaten the very survival of Indigenous communities” (p. 7). Throughout my own learning and un-learning, I have found that Alfred and Corntassel’s notion of shape-shifting colonialism best supports a strengthened
16 concept of shape-shifting in a way that has positive connotations, acknowledging my own
ancestral, family and personal shape-shifting responses to colonial violence through dynamic resilience, resistance and resurgence.
Most often people associate the term resilience when talking about Indigenous, Black and Brown communities and histories of survival. The problem with this practice is that resilience doesn’t require structural and transformative change to the processes that cause oppression in the first place. In this way, the concept of “shape-shifting” feels like a relevant framework for how I think about my own family’s past-present-future, beyond expectations of resiliency. I am here today, due to the creativity, courage and agency of my shape-shifting relatives and in many ways, I like to also think about how our own stories shape-shift beyond the colonial context. I will be clear throughout this paper, when I use this term, to also define how it is being used in context. This concept, including its multitude of meanings, provides a helpful frame-work for my own family to contemplate the material and spiritual implications of slavery-imposed relations in the lives and experiences of my family and family cosmology. It contributes to my own
understanding of the long-lasting impacts of slavery in the lives of my grandparents in both structural and economic ways but also, the nuances of our own intimate experiences of self-love, wellness and family well-being.
I was raised by stories; stories of my grandparents, stories from Aunties, Uncles; stories of place and stories that make up my memory of what I come to call my storied life. Experiences with education often felt frustrating for me as I grew up because knowledge in the classroom felt different than knowledge shared through the stories of my families. In fact, it was not through the classroom that I came to know the world, but the knowledge carried in and through the stories of my own upbringing and experiences. Like many others, I followed a path into higher education
17 because I believed it was expected of me. My work as a film-maker-storyteller always felt
separate from my educational pursuits, expectations and practice.
The first time I held a camera, it felt like an extension of myself and my interpretation of the world; my examination of the discrepancies and inter-play of shadows and light around and within me. The lens became a tool to encourage my own learning and deeper relationship with the world around me. As a mixed-race person who split my time between the small community and urban life of my families, I quickly learned how my own racialized body was read in
different environments. Without mentors in my life to help me digest and unpack the meaning of my daily experiences of identity, belonging, emotions and place, the camera became a pathway to delve into the depths of the landscapes of my soul.
What are the benefits of finding words to define, describe and articulate the experiences so many of us feel and carry in our bodies, stories and lived experiences? This question, among others is one that I ask frequently, in order to understand why I engage in academic work. I now realize that it has helped me name certain aspects of my own family members’ lives - to extend circles of healing across our kinship networks. I have learned the power of naming, speaking, and identifying meaning in experience so as to more deeply understand self, within a larger network of context, place-based relations and interactive knowledge. Just as my hair is not mine alone, I belong to my genealogy, to my ancestral resilience and to my family stories.
My own understanding of Indigeneity has been largely distorted through the internalized racism within my family and our self-understanding. Caá-Poré, which can be understood as “ser do mato” or “person from the bush” is a word that emerged over time and within the context of encroachment on Indigenous and Cafuzo community territories by urban and agro-industrial dominance in Brazil (Freitas, 2012; Giraldin, 2000; Monteiro, 1994; Oliveira, 1998;
18 Moisés, 1992). Our families and communities found refuge, and each other, in the abundance of the Lands and Waters (the bush) (Amantino, 2001; Barbosa, 1971; Souza, 2004; Mano ,2015). I now understand my own body as a convergence of Indigenous and non-Indigenous identities, Black and non-Black identities. Identities and names, names and identities which have ultimately led me into a journey to seek out more profound understanding and ultimately belonging with my own identity and family histories.
My experiences in a racialized body translate to daily interactions of how I am read across diverse spaces. While I had acquired my own understandings of my self-growth and critical race locations, it was through my travels and relations here in the North that I began to acquire the language to describe and analytically define my own personal consciousness in relation to race, Indigeneity, power and positionality. Ironically, when I traveled from my home-lands to the Canadian context, I also confronted a new or different exposure to racism, colonial violence and discrimination. Nevertheless, my budding critical self-location as a Caá-Poré, uninvited visitor on the territories of the W̱SÁNEĆ, Songhees and Esquimalt Nations has informed my own sense of accountabilities to place and occupancy on unceded territories. As a visitor to these territories, I am also required to locate my own identities and decolonized practices within a web of responsibilities to the local territories I now occupy.
In Decolonizing together, moving beyond a politics of solidarity toward a practice of decolonization (2012), Harsha Walia calls for active and ongoing efforts towards the protection of Indigenous Lands, cultural-governance and localized place-based knowledge systems. As visitors, newcomers and Non-Native peoples of these territories, she asserts that meaningful solidarity must come from a place where we are “able to position ourselves as active and integral participants in a decolonization movement for political liberation, social transformation, renewed
19 cultural kinships and the development of an economic system that serves rather than threatens our collective life on this planet” (p. 3).6 Walia goes on to quote Black-Cherokee writer and composer, Zainab Amadahy in their description of “relational frameworks” for regenerative and healthy activism. Amadahy says, “Understanding the world through a Relationship Framework … we don’t see ourselves, our communities, or our species as inherently superior to any other, but rather see our roles and responsibilities to each other as inherent to enjoying our life experiences” (as cited in Walia, 2012). Through reflection about the ways I contribute, hinder and/or co-create relational frameworks with local kin-networks, Nations and communities, I learn to better situate my own process of internal decolonization and resurgence, not as an isolated, individual process of separation, but within relationship, belonging and care for others, self and the Land.
Figure 3: Locating my Home-lands6
6 Google. (n.d.). [Google Maps, Minas Gerais, Brazil]. Retrieved July 21, 2020.
https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?ie=UTF8&t=h&oe=UTF8&msa=0&mid=1FJhMFzxlGuheL AhQw1vsDuY66U4&ll=-0.792087485318126%2C-5.860519765625&z=3
20 Figure 4: Tijuco and Paraná River7
Iracema
She wakes in the morning It is dark
It is cold
She feels her body like a heavy blanket - Wrapped into herself around herself Made up of all that she is was and will be
she feels the weight of the years that she carries in her wrinkles On her eyes
Her mouth Her hands
She steps in her chinela
And she checks on everyone and her family is still sleeping Their breathing like wind through the trees
She goes to the tiny mirror in her dark room Seeing her unchanging eyes
She breathes a breath just for her
She steps through her family, babies, children, old ones
7 Oiliam, Jose. Indígenas de Minas Gerais: ASPECTOS SOCIAIS, POLíTICOS E ETNOLÓGICOS. Biblioteca Digital Curt Nimuendajú - Coleção Nicolai. Belo Horizonte. Pp. 9, 1965
21 She sits by the fire
Warms her heart She makes tea Sets the fire smoke
What is she thinking as she sits here What is she thinking
What thoughts lay in the territories of her mind Life doesn’t wait so these moments are fleeting Without knowing that she is making poetry Every day
Without knowing she is making possible for generations to come Iracema tijuco and all of her names
She walks with her heavy blanket I hear her breathing
I smell her sweet scent
She sits beside me- and brushes my face with her strong hands Like spider webs
As the dawn light breaks through the window Grandmother
I see you in the light
22 Back to Gule | The Return
I first met Dr. Devi Mucina as a Master’s student in the Social Dimensions of Health program at the University of Victoria, where I heard him speak about Indigenizing Blackness. Up to this point, my own research goal was to understand the roles that relationship has to place (Land and Waters, memories) in personal understandings of identity and belonging, and
furthermore how these experiences inform wellness and well-being. However, as the only mixed-Indigenous student in my cohort, I often felt that my own experiences and questions were
siphoned into a realm of alternate, othered, or even redundant inquiries within western
scholarship and research. Until very recently, within my education8, Indigenous knowledge and place-based knowledge systems have either been entirely absent from the curriculum or
footnoted as less valid or real within the realm of academe. It was not until I met those who would later become my thesis committee, Dr. Devi Mucina, Dr. Charlotte Loppie and Dr. Victoria Wyatt, did I feel encouraged to protect the space my own body, created within the field of research, and express my own learning through ways that not only reflect who I am, but also where I come from and who I belong to.
When my research relationship with Dr. Mucina began to flourish, I was invited as a to accompany him and to witness his own return to his place and to the Gule Wamkulu Mask Dance Society. The Gule Wamkulu mask dance is a significant traditional religious, spiritual and social practice among the Chewa people. It is said that Gule Wamkulu enables the Spirits to visit the people of the village to renew kinship and connection with them. Masked dancers and
members of Gule perform several songs and dances to praise and observe traditional teachings, values and belongings. In 2008, the Gule Wamkulu mask dance societies of Malawi,
8 My education has been largely within the Brazilian context; until 2016, when I began my M.A. in the Social Dimensions of Health program.
23 Mozambique and Zambia, were inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity of UNESCO (The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization)9. The inscription defines Gule Wamkulu as a secret ceremonial society performed by members of the Nyau brotherhood and employed to instill political, social and gendered governance across many villages and further details that,
“Gule Wamkulu dates back to the great Chewa Empire of the seventeenth century. Despite the efforts of Christian missionaries to ban this practice, it managed to survive under British colonial rule by adopting some aspects of Christianity. As a consequence, Chewa men tend to be members of a Christian church as well as a Nyau society.
However, Gule Wamkulu performances are gradually losing their original function and meaning by being reduced to entertainment for tourists and for political purpose”10 Gule cannot be defined within the limits of this single paragraph on a UNESCO website. Gule Wamkulu self-expresses, governs and emerges against and through colonial influence, through living relations, place-based memory and everyday responsibilities to protect the mask. In a review of Claude Boucher’s When Animals Sing and Spirits Dance Gule Wamkulu: The Great Dance of the Chewa People of Malawi, Ibigbolade S. Aderibigbe quotes that
“the Chewa people’s heritage of the spiritual linkage to the ancestral world, in which the ancestors continue to impact their living descendants as agents of societal moral standard, is substantially highlighted. This without any doubt constitutes a significant
representation of the fundamental religious worldview of Africans on the circular nature
9 https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/gule-wamkulu-00142
24 of human existence and the “never ending” reciprocal obligations and privileges between the living and the living dead, i.e. the earthly and the spiritual domains”11
When Dr. Mucina invited me to accompany him on his return to his place amongst the Mask society, I recognized that in some way, I too, was also returning to the mask.
Protocol, Process, and Practice
I accepted Devi’s invitation to accompany him to Gule Wamkulu knowing that I may not be able to film. Our presence in the community and filming of the Mask Dance could only occur with the permission, guidance and ongoing consent of community leaders and authorities. I conceptualized the film with an open heart and positioned myself as a tool of service, which could support the Gule as governance if needed, necessary and called upon. While it was our intention to mobilize knowledge sharing through my work as a film-maker and mixed-media storyteller, our process was embedded within local community governance, protocol-practice and authority. It was never our intention to show up with cameras and film the governance practice for extractive purposes; rather, we hoped to explore the ways in which film could serve, support and mobilize the importance of Gule as Governance within fields of Indigenous knowledge mobilization.
Today, it seems that everyone has access to recording devices which means that, if left unchecked, just about anyone can extract film footage from anywhere around the world. A type of film-based tourism brings the danger of reflecting relationships based on extractive taking, objectification and “othering”, when not undertaken within a relationship based on trust, accountability and purpose. Within the communities in which I was privileged to be a visitor, I quickly learned the depth and significance of each place-based set of local protocols and
11 Ibigbolade S. Aderibigbe Book Reviews | 79 Journal of Retracing Africa, Volume 2, Issue 1, Fall 2015 http://encompass.eku.edu/jora/ Accessed July 20, 2020.
25 practices in regards to knowledge production and sharing. Fortunately, the governance and protection protocols would not have allowed just anyone to arrive and film or record community activities. Each community has its own system of governance and politics that determine the steps and points between arrival and pressing the record button. For example, when they bring the mask dance to a city or public sphere, they are performing a different practice and conducting a different type of work. So, in these spaces, anyone can grab their phones and film, but in the place where we experienced Gule and the teachings of the entire ceremony, this was prohibited.
Our process was grounded in local protocol, ongoing consent and relationship-building. We went with no expectations, only hopes and an openness to take guidance from the
communities. Dr. Devi Mucina had visited his home communities three times previous to our shared visit, and the origin of his own self-location and accountability to his families,
communities and mask dance ceremonies, guided his visions and practice. His original hopes were grounded in conversations with his Elders and community authorities. In this way, our process and relations were from the inside out, not from the outside in. As a community member himself, Devi set the relational foundation for a return to kin-centered relations. .
26 The Research Journey
When I first entered the academy, I did so with the intention to explore ways that the institution could support my learning and my accountability to the greater community. It was through prioritizing Indigenous approaches that I was able to center my own values, ethics and cultural protocols. Being an Indigenous scholar means that I am invested in and have deeper, more complex responsibilities to the communities who have been my teachers. I don’t have the luxury of picking and choosing my research topic of interest, because I am embedded within a larger network of accountabilities, which are defined by who I am and by my responsibilities to lift up our Peoples. If I do not acknowledge the teachings I receive as coming from the communities I hope to serve, then they are obsolete by my own standards. The very fact that I am embedded in the stories I share in this thesis holds me accountable in a more meaningful way but also creates the opportunity for transformative practice on both personal and collective levels.
Deep realizations, reflections and experiences have created a place for me to receive relational support and validation in the unfamiliar world of graduate studies; this began with mentorship by my thesis committee. The guidance and support of my committee helped me translate my lived experiences and learnings into meaningful frameworks, and more importantly methods, which contribute to Caá-Poré mixed Indigenous cosmologies and determinants of wellness. Over time, and with support, my own research methods, lens and frameworks emerged as a synthesis of personal and academic perspectives (Kovach, 2009; Mucina, 2019; Smith, 2012).
Mixed-Media Methods | The Stories we Carry
Despite diversity of geography, language, and social structure, Indigenous peoples share many values, which are philosophically distinct to their cultures (Kuokkanen, 2014;
27 Harvard & Cornier, 2006; Nelson, 2008). The wellness of Indigenous peoples reflects an
intimate connection to their ancestral landscapes, cultures, kinship networks, and ways of knowing (Taylor, 2007; Panelli & Tipa, 2009). For Indigenous communities around the world, concepts of well-being can be understood as a series of relationships which extends, first and foremost, from a living relationship to Land and Waters (Alfred, 2005; Corntassel, 2015; Grande, 2004; Salmón, 2012; Simpson, 2005). Indigenous-wellness researchers turn to methodologies, which prioritize relationship-based accountability, land and water-based local protocol and visual art storytelling as viable pathways of self-determination and experiences of community defined wellness. Furthermore, Indigenous community-definitions of wellness also require critical race approaches, as well as Indigenous perspectives and world-views, which uphold decolonial intersectionality.
Mixed-media approaches facilitate internal conversations about the diverse experiences of Indigenous communities and Nations. Indigenous scholars such as Duran and Munduruku advance “Indigenized” research methodologies that center Indigenous knowledge, world-views, languages and relationships as guiding principles (Gaudry, 2012; Smith, 2012; Archibald, 2008; Tafoya ,1995). Indigenous research pedagogies incorporate traditional teachings, ceremonies, language, culture, and visual arts, which contribute to a conscious-restored relationship between the student, researcher, communities and, of course, the land (Battiste, 2013; Goodyear-Ka' õpua, 2009; Smith, 2012).
As someone whose own familial, genealogical and personal story is in some ways intertwined with the stories of the Masks, I recognize certain benefits which attribute to an elevated research process and enlightened research relations that I would not assume if I were a complete objective outsider coming in. I am reminded again and again by my committee, to
28 contemplate whether if objectivity is even possible. Is it possible for an outsider to be completely objective? Indigenous research methods centre the practice of researcher identity, critical self-location and relational integrity at the foundation of safer and culturally grounded research (Gaudry, 2018; Wilson, 2008). The methods presented by Indigenous scholars illuminate the ways in which I, as a researcher/learner with deeply personal and family ties to the research, am better suited to conduct research that can best reflect the relations, teachings and knowledge shared through Gule.
The process I undertook to complete this re-search was organic – it did not begin through formulation of research questions based on a review of existing literature. Unbeknownst to me, it began when I accepted Devi’s invitation and took the first step on my journey of learning – about myself, my identity, the power of Indigenous governance and about finding one’s way home. As a result of the experience, answers emerged to questions I had not contemplated – discoveries to inquiries that had only lingered on the periphery of my consciousness. Recently, I heard a quote by esteemed Indigenous scholar Madeleine Dion Stout that, “as Indigenous people, we are organic researchers because we seek to explore the experiences from which we have grown” (Loppie, 2020, Personal Communication). And so, I offer you this exploration of my experience and the meaning I have made of it.
Frameworks for Making Meaning
Indigenous scholars, including Mucina (2011), Archibald (2008), Wilson (2008), Martineau (2017), and Kuokkanen (2014), describe story-telling within a framework of Indigenous governance, knowledge transference and community-based cultural belonging. Within many Indigenous cultures, stories symbolize connection to that which is central to individual,
29 offer socially and place-based knowledge, encoded with information necessary to live out a life of balance and respect (Battiste, 2002). My narrative, born out of our time with the Gule
Wamkulu Society, offers insights into the ways in which community-defined notions of well-being and community strength are connected with self-determination, land, culture and identity.
Chico (grandfather) would tell me stories that would move me. Exciting stories of bravery, courage, adventure, and fear.
Iracema (grandmother) would tell me stories that were meant for the soul-place. Stories of remembering, contemplating, silence. Stories that would make me cry. In laughter, thrill, sorrow and joy, these stories made up who I am and who I carry.
Academic research, when not grounded in Indigenous approaches, has the capacity to extract place-based knowledge out of context and ultimately contribute to the disempowerment of communities themselves (Gaudry, 2011). Fortunately, Indigenous scholars such as Drs. Eduardo Duran, Jeff Corntassel and Adam Gaudry promote “Indigenized” research methodologies that center Indigenous world-views, knowledge systems, languages and relationships as guiding principles (Gaudry, 2012; Smith, 2012). Through exploration of their work, I applied an intersectional Indigenous lens to this work. Intersectionality can be
understood as an examination of diverse social, economic, political, racial, experiential and systemic dimensions, in order to gain a more in-depth and authentic assessment of any single situation, experience or theory. Kimberlé Crenshaw first coined the term intersectionality in 1989, defining it as “a prism from which we as researchers can look through in order to examine various intersectional components of a single reality, moment or topic” (p. 177). Intersectionality
30 reflects Indigenous approaches to knowledge production, as it centers the belief that all beings and actions are interrelated and exist in a web-like system of connections (Atleo, 2004; Chilisa, 2011; Crenshaw, 2005; Duran, 2005).
Within the Brazilian context, Djamila Ribeira is a populist figure and community-scholar whose works Lugar de Fala (A Place to speak) (2019) and Quem ten medo de feminismo negro? (Who is Afraid of Black Feminism?) (2018) have most recently informed and bolstered Black-identity & critical race politics across social and public learning spheres in Brazil. Ribeira expresses her lens of Intersectionality as a way to “to realize that you cannot prioritize one oppression over another”(Ribeiro, 2016, p. 101) because they are inflicted through structures that impose, normalize and naturalize oppressive dynamics and therefore; "é preciso romper com a estrutura” (2016), we must break the structures at hand. She also shares that ,“É pensar que raça, classe e gênero não podem ser categorias pensadas de forma isolada, mas sim de modo
indissociável” (2016, p. 101); which is to say that, when we think about race, class and gender, we cannot separate these categories as if they are isolated from one another, but engage with them in a way that recognizes and grounds them in a deep interconnectivity.
Currently, Ribeira is a public face of Black feminist intersectionality in Brazil; however, it is important to note that she stands on the shoulders of Black leaders and
community-caretakers whose voices are not represented in Brazilian scholarship and academic realms of political theory. In her public talks and social engagement, Ribeira’s work emboldens Black feminist intersectionality in the larger Brazilian context; however, it fails to locate this discourse on Indigenous Lands. What I mean by this is that she does not complicate how Black
Intersectionality implicates occupancy and relationships with Indigenous Nations and Indigenous territories. As I engaged with the co-creation and process of this film, I employ an Indigenous
31 Intersectional approach that centers shared experiences, authority and collaboration grounded in relationship with and for the communities featured in this work.
The Film Journey
Although this thesis is not about the Gule film per se, it is about the transformation I experienced as a result of making the film. Indeed, my experience with that process represents what western researchers would refer to as “data”. Therefore, it is critical that I describe my experience of this experience. I hope that my description will also promote innovative and meaningful knowledge production such as documentary film, visual narration, Indigenous storytelling, and storied multi-media. For those not familiar with these art forms, there are four main concepts which both define and demonstrate my utilization of Visual Narrative
Storytelling/Mixed Media, including: community-led story direction (ownership and authority), community protocol and local governance, identity and critical self-location, and knowledge translation. Community-led story direction upholds Indigenous approaches, which center community ownership and authority over processes and products. Knowledge belongs to and therefore returns to community, and as a learner, I am required to contemplate meaningful and authentic ways to uphold these relational values. Through centering community-led practices, which provide tools for image-making through self-determined practices, like film, photography and story-telling, communities have direct access and ability to the production of their own experience, knowledge and also determine dissemination of their work. Upon layers of ongoing consent and permission, I received local direction and filmed pieces of Gule that were deemed significant by the communities. In particular, the entire process of community connection and film direction was authorized and led by the Aunties (or Amais) who hosted us and who held us accountable to local conduct and responsibilities.
32 Community Protocol and Local Governance
There is a difference between describing something and interpreting its meaning. In this thesis, and specifically in this section, I describe my commitment to Indigenous research approaches, which prioritize critical self-location and require me to follow protocol and ensure that the entire process is led by the community.
Our invitation to join the dance came from Baba Chisala, who I never had the chance to meet in person. When we first arrived in the communities, Baba Chisala fell very ill and
therefore granted his permission by appointing the leadership, chaperone and care of our journey to the Amais. In fact, I first met Baba at his funeral, as he graced me with his presence in the in-between. His funeral, with over 3,000 people present, I felt overwhelmed with emotions I did not comprehend but also, in some way, connected me to my own grandparents who have also
traveled on to the unseen Ancestor world. In my grief, Baba Chisala’s wife saw me and called me to sit at her side, where she embraced me and cried. As we cried together, I felt the return of Baba Chisala and sensed that his permission was one made in love, kindness, gentleness and deep, deep knowing.
Every day, every action, and every relationship was embedded within a series of ongoing consent, guidance and authority. Upon arriving in the community, we immediately sought out consultation with and permission from six community Elders, but we were also aware that there were close to 20 others from whom we would need to obtain consent. If just one Elder did not give their consent, we would not be able to go ahead with filming. This meant that we were embedded within a process of ongoing, rather than static, consent; one that would be determined by continual introductions and self-location. After the approval of the first six Elders, we met with a few community Chiefs who invited us to community events, including the preliminary
33 stages of the mask dance. While we waited to meet with the remaining community Elders, the Chiefs told us that they would facilitate further community permissions and that, in the meantime, we could begin to engage in some filming, with their immediate permission.
We piled into a small car, directed by three Aunties, Devi in the front seat translating directions, and me driving (at this time Devi had a torn Achilles tendon); [00:47-01:53 in the film]. And so, the politics began … As we traveled through the villages, community members immediately approached us to inquire about the filming equipment, who I was and what I was doing there. Devi’s Aunties translated my previous self-location to the larger community and began to advocate for our presence, intentions with the film and integrity to the larger
community. By this point and based on my own ethical protocols and teachings, which require full consent, I did not film the community governance unfolding before me. In these continual introductory conversations, Devi supported me by explaining Diaspora and removal of our Peoples from our homelands (Indigenous and African Diaspora), drawing maps of shared genealogy, which connect Brazil to the continent of Africa through slavery and displacement.
Shortly after I began filming, one of the Aunties we had not yet met, came forward and saying that she saw the camera, and wanted to personally know our intentions with being there. Even though we had acquired community support and consent, it was necessary for us to also hold space and engage with personal and individual consent as need presented. These
conversations and this specific Aunty12 are featured in the film at 005:000, and her presence in the film represents the layers of consent and permissions required in order for us to film. Her presence is significant because she enacted community governance and protection of her
34 relations and accountabilities at both collective and individual layers. Amai participated in the film with her direction and consent. She was only filmed when she chose to approach us and request the specific shots she viewed as important or significant to Gule Wamkulu. This is significant, because she required that our collaboration was grounded in relationship, in time and in her own agency and decision-making processes.
Amai Direction: Film Process
In the Chewa language, Amai means Mother-figure and is another way to say Aunty. My presence in community was permissible, determined, allowed and governed by the authority of the Amais. The Amais recognized that I did not know the significance of each person, place, and subject in the larger network of the community and society. In this way, their direction helped translate the meaning and value of certain pieces of the society so that I could be sure to authentically represent their role in the film. They also knew that they would not be actively engaged in post-production or edits and therefore, affirmed their full agency in ensuring I would gather important and relevant symbols, features and pieces of their community and ceremony. In this way, the Amais were the directors of this film and I was their tool. Not only were they film directors, but they directed the entire ceremony, wellbeing and inter-relations throughout the community. With full authority, what they say is governance - authority without question. They directed us in what to film, what not to film, what we could share with our families and
communities, and what would constitute a secret to their society. The scene at 002:39 is an example of Amai direction and complete ownership over the filmed knowledge13. The songs, practices and protocols shown in this scene contain the sacred and specific roles and conducts of
13 In this scene, I am driving and Devi is in the front passenger seat (he has a torn Achilles tendon). The Amais are in the back seat composing and singing a song to us. They are simultaneously directing Devi, who in turn directs me to our destination.
35 the Amais in their responsibilities to carry forward the feminine balance and governance. As the Amais determined what to film and what not to film, they ultimately presented this ceremony as extremely important to the larger story of the Mask.
On one occasion, we were awoken in the middle of the night and brought to the sound of drums coming from a small dark room. Within it, the women’s chants were constitutional to the feminine governance in the entire Nyau society. In earlier conversations, we were told that we should not film this ceremonial practice, and so when we were awoken, I grabbed my sweater and accompanied Devi towards the sounds of the drums. As I was leaving, the Amais snapped at me “Jámbola”, or “camera/photo”; in this moment granting me not only permission but directing me to bring my camera; an example of living governance and ongoing consent. When I arrived, the ceremony was transpiring in pitch darkness, so I asked if I could add a light to capture the intimacy, depths and profundity of this moment. They allowed for me to hang two head-lamps and sit in the shadows to witness their work; my knees as my tripod. They determined I could film for ten minutes, until I was signaled to put the camera away and be present for the rest of the ceremony, without the interruption of the camera.
As time passed, in some ways the process of filming became easier because it was entirely directed and determined by the Amais. In moments of doubt, when the Amais were unsure of whether or not something should be filmed, or there was some discrepancy amongst them, I would simply erase the footage in question. In this way, I could ensure that every single shot and component was embedded within a system of ongoing, layered and relational consent. This is a concrete example of the ways in which the process itself was embedded in the direct engagement and ethical direction of the community and the protocol of each individual and collective.
