Page 212 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

cieties in which knowledge of certain ceremonies, rituals, and objects is both
valorized and restricted. This case, then, raises key questions for us regarding
religion, media, and the public sphere, and offers a cautionary tale regarding the
profound ethnocentrism that too often blinds the ways in which we understand
media and its relationship to collective religious expression.

Notes

Thanks to Birgit Meyer and Annelies Moors who encouraged me to write this essay and
inspired its improvement through their 2002 Conference on Religion, Media, and the
Public Sphere at the University of Amsterdam. I am deeply grateful to anthropologists
Nicolas Peterson and Françoise Dussart for their comprehensive comments on this essay,
and to Nicolas Peterson for the use of his 1972 photos and to Cheryl Furjanic for her
help in digitizing them. Thanks as well to Barbara Abrash, Rayna Rapp, Angela Zito, and,
in particular, Fred Myers, as ever, for reading various drafts of this essay.

1. As anthropologist Nicolas Peterson writes: “Initially the project appeared quite
unproblematic, but by 1975 the program of ¤lming ceremonies, particularly men’s secret
ceremonies, was virtually abandoned. In less than a decade, social and political change
among Aboriginal people and a developing interest in ¤lm and media among anthropolo-
gists made the enterprise impossible” (n.d., 1).
2. Recently those protocols have become less strict regarding the circulation of ¤lm
and photographic images, especially among younger people (Deger 2004; Hinkson 1999;
Dussart and Peterson, personal communication).
3. For further information on this program, a joint project of the Graduate Pro-
grams in Anthropology and Cinema Studies, please see our website at http://www.nyu.
edu/gsas/dept/anthro/programs/cultmedia.
4. According to Ian Bryson’s 2002 history of the Film Unit, Sandall had gone out to
the Central Desert to ¤lm in August 1967. He had planned to ¤lm a Warlpiri Ceremony
at the community of Lajamanu (Hooker Creek) later that year. However, on arriving at
Yuendumu, their ceremony was already in progress so he ¤lmed that instead. Sandall
regarded the footage as technically ®awed—he had left the wrong ¤lter on—and so only
edited an archival print. In 1977 Kim McKenzie, a recent arrival at the Institute, worked
with anthropologist Nic Peterson, an expert on Warlpiri life, and edited a release print in
1977 (Bryson 2002, 38).
5. At the time, and until quite recently, it was my understanding that this ¤lm was
not appropriate for circulation. When I sent a copy of this essay to Nicolas Peterson to
be sure I had gotten the details right, he informed me that everything they ¤lmed was
considered a public ceremony; the restricted parts of the ceremony had not been ¤lmed.
6. According to anthropologist Nicolas Peterson (2004, personal communication),
“This quotation from Eric is his sensationalizing of the Warlpiri (payback murders).
There were aspects of the ceremony that should not be shown in public such as blood
letting . . . , and singeing pubic hair, but neither of these was shown.”
7. Located in the Tanami Desert in Central Australia, Yuendumu was established as
a government settlement in 1946, and has been self-governing since 1978. The popula-

Rethinking the “Voice Of God” in Indigenous Australia 201