The Afterlife of Film: Tribesourcing Southwestern Materials in the American Indian Film Gallery

FAIN: PW-253731-17

Arizona Board of Regents (Tucson, AZ 85721-0073)
Jennifer Lei Jenkins (Project Director: July 2016 to December 2021)

This three-year project seeks inclusive repurposing of mid-century films about native peoples of the Southwest. After digitally re-mastering 60 films in the American Indian Film Gallery (AIFG) collection, we will invite native people to re-narrate the films and provide descriptive metadata in indigenous languages and English.  These "tribesourced" MP3 audio files will provide culturally-competent counter-narratives to the films, balancing the historical record by shifting the emphasis in these mid-century films from external perceptions of native peoples to the voices, understandings, and reflections of the peoples represented in the films.  Positioning the AIFG as an interactive, multimedia, multiethnic, and polyvocal site demands culturally sensitive archiving, labeling, and use guidelines; using Traditional Knowledge Systems in concert with archival best practices; incorporating tribal information in finding aids and taxonomies; native language presence in the archive as a whole.