February 2009
 In 2008 scholar Laura Graham
was the executive producer and co-director with indigenous filmmakers
Caimi Waissé (Xavante) and David Hernández Palmar
(Wayuu) of Owners of the Water, a documentary about the
collaboration of numerous Xavante communities to care for their
shared river, which has screened at film festivals in Canada and
Venezuela. Graham studies the role of intangible culture and the
impact of new technologies on indigenous peoples. She has published
a book concerned with philosophical thought and discourse among
Xavante Indians of central Brazil and numerous articles about
the impact of technologies on Native languages. In 2005 Graham
won a Fulbright Research-Lecture Fellowship to study at the Universidad
de los Andes, Mérida, Venezuela. She was awarded a National
Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship in 2000. In 1993 she won
the National Endowment for the Humanities Resident Scholar Fellowship
at the School of American Research (now the School for Advanced
Research) in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She currently serves on the
board of directors for the non-profit organization Cultural Survival
and holds the Linguistics seat on the executive board of the American
Anthropological Association. Graham is fluent in Spanish, Portuguese,
and is conversant in Xavante. She is an associate professor of
anthropology at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.
"Film is a powerful expressive and political medium that
indigenous peoples use to create, express and share culture. It
is also a potent means of communicating the challenges of contemporary
indigenous life both within and across communities. My work with
indigenous media is collaborative; I envision film as a means
to promote exchange between artists, cultural activists and tradition
bearers and as a space for sharing ideas about different ways
of seeing and being in the world. I seek to facilitate opportunities
for overcoming challenges that work with new technologies presents
and to discovering ways to make all aspects of engaging with the
medium accessible."
Bibliography
- Graham, Laura, Performing Dreams: Discourses of Immortality
among the Xavante Indians of Central Brazil. University
of Texas Press. Paperback edition, Fall 1998.
- Graham, Laura, "Documenting Intangible Culture: New Media
Solutions, New Media Problems?" In Richard Grounds, ed.
Native American Languages in Crisis: Exploring the Interface
between Academia, Technology and Smaller Language Communities.
- Graham, Laura, "Values of Technologies for Documenting
Intangible Culture" in Helaine Silverman and D. Fairchild
Ruggles, eds., Intangible Culture Embodied, New York:
Springer.
Screened by NMAI
Image credit: Laura Graham - courtesy of the filmmaker; Laura Graham - courtesy of the filmmaker
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