Innovative Inuits

Using at least two ethnographic examples, critically assess how indigenous communities have responded to opportunities offered by new media and visual technologies

In our globalised world there are few societies where the long investigating arm of the media and its technological fingers have not stretched and touched upon. In even the remotest corners of the globe we are likely to find at least one internet café serving a community with opportunities to embrace cyber interactivity and offering screen shaped windows to the Western world.

However, not all new opportunities are positive and not all gifts are beneficial; in some cases contributing to the exploitation and corruption of fragile societies. A recently televised documentary explored

In Robert Flaherty 's 1922 movie "Nanook of the North" (citation required?), the life of the indigenous Inuit tribe is romanticised in a heart-warming ‘home movie style’, invoking sympathy and awe for the traditional ways.

The opening blurb of the film clearly explains the opportune benefit for Flaherty in creating this cinematique gem following the loss of his earlier fieldwork material in a fire; the staged and directed video record of the life of ‘Nanook’ was seemingly the most time efficient method of producing a second study

For example, at the time of filming the tribe would have been familiar and well acquainted with modern weaponry and tools, yet for the purposes of the production Flaherty had his participants re-enact a dangerous method of Walrus baiting which had long been abandoned by the hunter society when they could trade fur pelts for guns (Rothman, 2013). With the commercialism of trade in place it is also unlikely that at the time of filming the Inuit’s would have been awe struck and confused at the presence of a record player. However, the Inuit males were agreeable to playing out a scene where they are clearly puzzled by the magic of the voice emanating from the