Page 208 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

Image right unavailable

Fig. 9.2. Still of senior Warlpiri men from the documentary Jardiwarnpa: A Warlpiri
Fire Ceremony, 1993. Used by permission.

the television transmitter so that viewings could take place at people’s homes.
(Langton 1993, 80)

Other questions addressed ¤nance and copyright for all parties to the nego-
tiations: the ritual authorities for the ceremony, the SBS producers, Warlukur-
langu (the Warlpiri Artist’s Association), and the Australian Film Finance Cor-
poration. These negotiations were particularly signi¤cant in light of prior media
made in Aboriginal communities that disregarded their rights to their own im-
ages and entitlement to compensation for use of their intellectual property. 14
When Jardiwarnpa was due to be rebroadcast on SBS in 1995, negotiations took
place over how to manage images of people who had died since its completion
in 1993. An arrangement was made so that those people’s images could be digi-
tally blocked, allowing the ¤lm to be shown in its unedited version without
violating protocol (Hinkson 1999, 112). Overall the project made clear the po-
tential value of a co-production between urban and rural Aboriginal media
makers. 15
The making of Jardiwarnpa raises once again the question Michaels had
posed in 1987 regarding the impact of introduced media on ritual practice.
Based on the producer’s documentation, they thought that “the process would
actually motivate people to organize and perform the ceremony. . . . It can be

Rethinking the “Voice Of God” in Indigenous Australia 197