Cultural Activism

Section: Anthropology

In our society we have the convenience of technology—computers, television (the media, film, and video), and other means of communication with the general public. Our society has developed ways to convey ideas and beliefs through the use of technology. In other parts of the world, there are still some societies that are not aware of this technology that our society embraces. However, the growth of technology will soon reach and combine with traditional cultural societies. In Faye Ginsburg's article From Little Things, Big Things Grow, she argues that these latest products of indigenous expressive culture are part of self-conscious efforts to sustain and transform culture in aboriginal communities, an activity that is linked to indigenous efforts for rights to self-representation, governance, and cultural autonomy after centuries of colonial assimilationist policies by surrounding states. It is important for a culture to sustain its beliefs and not to completely be assimilated into Western culture.

However, by the use of the media, we as a society are able to better understand those of different cultural backgrounds and are able to see what other cultures, besides our own, are like. Ginsburg also states, I suggest that indigenous media work is significant not simply as a transformation of Western technologies, but also as a new form of collective self-production that is being used self-consciously by indigenous producers to mediate historical ruptures within their own cultures and to assert the presence and concerns of First Nations peoples in the broader societies that encompass them. By introducing media technology to other cultures, those cultures, in turn, are able to use the technology and fuse it in with their traditional beliefs. Also, these cultures are able to bring forth issues that occurring in their societies that need to be addressed and made known to others. Technology makes for better communication, and with this communication these cultures can reach other cultures besides their own. Through the use of technology (the media), we can better understand the histories of many cultures and the ways of life of in other societies.

The very creation of media work that both reflects and revisions their lives and histories is a kind of self-conscious and direct social action that establishes and reinforces the visible cultural presence of indigenous lives in a form that can circulate in and among many communities (Ginsberg, 121). The use of the media can reveal growing issues in communities and portray the lives of people in many cultures. Therefore, turning the media into a global application and a window into the customs of other cultures. They (indigenous producers) see the capabilities of visual media to transcend boundaries of time, space, and even language can be used in part to transform historically produced social ruptures by renarrating, from their perspective, the relationships between indigenous histories and cultures and the encompassing societies in which they live (Ginsberg, 123). The media is able to surpass the obstacles of time, space and language. Americans can watch a documetary on the Aztecs and be able to understand their culture because it is spoken in English.

 

 

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