The Evolution of Anthropological Research in Documenting Diversity: How Anthropologists Record Human Life

By Muna Ali and Ashley Ray     

Documenting Diversity: How Anthropologists Record Human Life is an exhibit that outlines the ways in which anthropologists have utilized changing technology to record various aspects of human life. The exhibit is organized into four sections: film, photography, paper, and sound. It includes the equipment used for documentation such as rolls of film, video cameras of various ages, wax cylinders, phonographs, and multiple notebooks. The objects shown in the exhibit come from the National Anthropological Archives (NAA) and the Human Studies Film Archive (HSFA), respectively. The NAA is a product of a 1965 merger between the Smithsonian Institution’s Bureau of American Ethnology (1879-1965) and the Department of Anthropology (1883-present). The collection holds anthropological material produced by anthropologists including fieldnotes, journals, manuscripts, correspondence, photographs, maps and more [1]. The NAA contains one of the largest archival collections related to North American archaeology, ethnography, indigenous artwork, and historical photographs in the world. The HSFA, a sister repository to the NAA, was founded in 1975. The HSFA possesses an audiovisual collection that documents the history of filmmaking worldwide, as it relates to anthropology. The documents and equipment included in this exhibit are a key part of tracking the evolution of the study of anthropology through time. One might even say that the documents are a more accurate representation of the attitudes of the researchers rather than the people they are attempting to record. In the following sections, we will explore two examples in which these attitudes are apparent. 

Garson & Read’s Color Swatch 

Underneath the exhibit’s “Documenting on Paper” section, a sample color swatch is displayed prominently across two pages from the 1899 work Notes and Queries on Anthropology by John George Garson (1854-1932) and Charles Hercules Read (1857-1929) [2, 3]. The exhibit designates the color swatch as “a practice borrowed from geology to describe skin, hair, and eye colors” [2]. Similar to the techniques used to classify geological typology, soil compositions, or categorical distinctions based on shared general characteristics, late 19th century anthropologists erroneously figured a scientific typology of humanity could similarly be created, based on variation in color. Both Garson and Read were affiliated with the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, with Read being appointed as the RAI’s President in both 1899 and 1917 [3]. Given anthropology’s complicated history with ascribing meaning to differences in human physical characteristics in the late 19th century (and prior), it’s certainly no surprise that anthropologists who replicated such rhetoric found themselves in positions of intellectual authority.

Garson & Read’s color swatch, as depicted in Notes and Queries on Anthropology, Smithsonian Libraries & Archives. 

Critiques of Garson and Read’s color swatch were generally limited to its inability to provide universal descriptors. In the September 1913 edition of a journal titled Folklore, reviewer John H. Weeks even provided suggestions on how to improve the color swatch through “standardise[d]” colors, as “scarcely two men will call an intermediate shade by the same name” [5]. Despite institutionally affiliated anthropologists such as Garson and Read perceiving the color swatch as an intellectual innovation, this exhibit vehemently rejects such attempts to seek meaning in physical differences, declaring “such techniques falsely assumed skin color as a meaningful marker of difference” [7]. The color swatch’s inclusion within the exhibit addresses troubling legacies in anthropology in a compelling manner: the exhibit distances our contemporary understanding of anthropology from harmful conclusions drawn during anthropology of the past, while simultaneously acknowledging that such conclusions are inextricably linked to the field.  

“No. 7 Song with Lacrosse Game” from Menominee Music by Frances Densmore 

In the “Documenting Sound” section, visitors will find a manuscript with marbled edges. The book is opened to a page of sheet music at the top, labeled “No. 7 Song with Lacrosse Game,” followed by an analysis of the notation. The description for this document states that this is a manuscript of “analyses and translations” of songs recorded and translated by ethnomusicologist Frances Densmore (1867-1957). The manuscript, Menominee Music, was published in collaboration with the Bureau of American Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution in 1932. This book is one of many published by Densmore throughout her career of studying and advocating for the preservation of Native American music [6].  

 

“No. 7 Song with Lacrosse Game” from Menominee Music by Frances Densmore, 1932.
Smithsonian Libraries & Archives

There are many examples of non-Western forms of music that do not have a system for written notation. Instead, these songs are passed down orally, generation by generation, with each adding slight changes to a particular piece [7].  

From a musicological standpoint, there is the question of whether it is even possible to accurately notate Non-Western forms of music using classical Western notation. And perhaps whether one even should. Western musical notation is limited in what it can and cannot represent. It was designed with western instruments in mind and thus lacks the ability to fully accommodate the nuances of other instruments. On top of that, Western music relies largely on major and minor scales while non-Western music utilizes more diatonic and chromatic scales, differs greatly between the two groups [8]. As one composer aptly describes, “The Western system of notation is governed by rigid elementary mathematics inherited from the ancient past,” meaning that the Western system of notation is only ever able to create an imperfect outline, and the nuances of pitch and rhythm must be added in by the performer. Imposing the limiting Western system of notation on other forms of music creates a document that cannot fully capture the intricacies of the original piece [9].  

In summary, though the document has its flaws, that does not mean it is without value. On the contrary, it is more constructive to view this document as a type of translation which is inherently transformative and results in an end-product that cannot be identical to the source material. Documents such as this are valuable in that they offer a glimpse at what music was like at a specific point in time. In addition to that, present-day members of the Menominee Tribe could potentially use this manuscript to recover songs that may have been lost, suppressed, or erased from public consciousness and, more importantly, the community itself. It is the reader’s responsibility to read critically and remember that culture, and music, are dynamic and ever-changing.  

Densmore was able to mitigate weaknesses in her work of the types explored in this section through inclusion of audio recordings in her research. Densmore’s use of both aural and written mediums is an apt example of the ways anthropologists have adapted to emerging technologies so that methodologies are improving as well as the capacity to accurately record human life. 

Anthropology as an Advancing Field 

The thematic structure of the exhibit based on medium—along with its more general focus on technological advancements aiding anthropological fieldwork—presents anthropology to the general public as a constantly transforming field. The selection of objects within the exhibit is particularly effective in conveying this: for instance, in the “Documenting on Film” section, the description for Object 11, a diagram on synchronized sound from 1955, is placed strategically next to object 12, a 1995 Sony camera [4]. Visitors are able to easily envision advancements in recording tools used for fieldwork merely through the two descriptions’ adjacent positions. What’s particularly interesting about the position of these two descriptions is that objects 11 and 12 were used by the same individual, anthropologist John Marshall, exactly forty years apart. This choice allows for the exhibit to portray individual anthropologists and anthropology more broadly as advancing in the wake of major shifts in technology.

Photo of Exhibit Description, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. 

Overall, the exhibit addresses anthropological discoveries in four mediums: photography, paper, sound, and film. Additionally, on the left side of the hallway, photography, paper, and sound are in one display case, while on the right side, an entire display case is solely dedicated to anthropological film. Given the heightened importance of ethnographic film in anthropological fieldwork, the exhibit’s choice to have film presented separately from the other mediums is certainly advantageous. The choice to separate film from the other anthropological mediums is also indicative of the two repositories mentioned in the exhibit: the National Anthropological Archives and the Human Studies Film Archives. Although the two repositories are closely related to one another, they operate separately. Visitors can envision the physical constraints in having the exhibit spread across two sides of a wide hallway in the context of the separate nature of the two repositories, ultimately complicating the expression of these four mediums as a coherent whole. Regardless of its physical limitations, the exhibit is successful in highlighting changing attitudes and technologies throughout anthropology’s history.

Acknowledgements

Documenting Diversity was co-curated by Diana Marsh, a former NMNH postdoctoral fellow who partook in a three-year long NSF-funded project on NAA collections, and Joshua A. Bell, who serves as NMNH’s Curator of Globalization, Director of the Recovering Voices Program and Acting Director of the National Anthropological Archives. The exhibit was made possible by close collaboration between the NAA, HSFA, Smithsonian Libraries, and Smithsonian Exhibits.

By Muna Ali and Ashley Ray

Natural History Research Experiences (NHRE) Interns

National Anthropological Archives, National Museum of Natural History 

Sources:

[1] “Documenting Diversity,” Smithsonian Libraries and Archives, accessed June 20, 2022, https://library.si.edu/exhibition/documenting-diversity. 

[2] Erdöl, Das " “Dr. J. G. Garson.” Nature 129 (1932): 931. https://doi.org/10.1038/129931a0 

[3] Balfour, Henry. “Sir Charles Hercules Read, July 6, 1857-February 11, 1929,” Obituaries. Accessed June 2, 2022. https://www.therai.org.uk/archives-and-manuscripts/obituaries/charles-hercules-read 

[4] Bell, Josh and Marsh, Diana. Documenting Diversity: How Anthropologists Record Human Life. Washington: Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, 2020. https://naturalhistory.si.edu/exhibits/documenting-diversity-how-anthropologists-record-human-life 

[5] Weeks, John H. Folklore 24, no. 3 (1913): 392–97. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1255441. 

[6] “Frances Densmore (1867-1957).” Smithsonian Institution Archives. 2005. https://siarchives.si.edu/research/sciservwomendensmore.html 

[7] Pasler, Jann. “Sonic Anthropology in 1900: The Challenge of Transcribing Non-Western Music and Language.” Twentieth-Century Music 11, no. 1 (2014): 7–36. doi:10.1017/S1478572213000157. 

[8] Robertson-Wilson, Marian. “The Challenges of Notating Music in General and Coptic Music in Particular: Observations of a Professional Cellist, Composer, and Linguist.” Library of Congress Web. https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200156229/

[9] Zon, Bennett. “Music in the Literature of Anthropology from the 1780s to the 1860s.” In Representing Non-Western Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain, NED-New edition., 48–68. Boydell & Brewer, 2007. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7722/j.ctt14brrwv.9.

One Picture is Worth A Thousand Stories

By Adam Gray, May 2022

Rehearsal of the toka dance in Yoohnanan on the island of Tanna, September 1974. Kal Muller films and photographs of Vanuatu (New Hebrides), Tanna Island slides, Slide roll #56.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Vanuatu (then known as the New Hebrides) was on the brink of independence from French and British colonial governance. The culturally and linguistically diverse archipelago in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, with over 100 languages spoken across multiple islands, had been governed as the New Hebrides under a joint French and British “Condominium” administration since 1906. Ni-Vanuatu political resistance, which incorporated expressions of traditional culture into the movement for independence, would go on to achieve independence for the nation in 1980, establishing the Republic of Vanuatu.

The Human Studies Film Archives, part of the National Anthropological Archives (NAA) at the National Museum of Natural History, recently digitized a group of 29,000 photographs taken by photographer and author Kal Muller in the midst of these transformations in Vanuatu society. (1)

The making of the photographs also took place against the backdrop of changes in the tools and methods of anthropology. In the mid-twentieth century, a new generation of relatively portable and inexpensive film and audio equipment, such as the Nagra III tape recorder and Arriflex film cameras, offered anthropologists new opportunities to incorporate photography and film into their research. The establishment of institutions such as the Film Study Center at Harvard University (1957) and the National Anthropological Film Center (1975) at the Smithsonian contributed to the development of “visual anthropology,” an academic discipline that incorporates the production and analysis of images, as well as the study of how people use and produce images, into studies of cultural phenomena.

Muller’s photographs are part of the Kal Muller films and photographs of Vanuatu (New Hebrides), which also contains 15 hours of uncut film footage, over 50 sound recordings, and a small amount of correspondence. (These portions of the collection are not digitized.) The collection will be of interest to Ni-Vanuatu communities interested in their history, traditions, and local knowledge, and will prompt discussions about the history and theory of visual anthropology.

A group of women and girls, possibly in Lendombwey village, island of Malekula, in December 1968. The photograph appears to show the production of one of the sound recordings in the collection. Kal Muller films and photographs of Vanuatu (New Hebrides), Vanuatu slides, Slide roll #147.

Kalman “Kal” Muller, a photographer and author with an interest in anthropology, spent several years during the late 1960s and early 1970s living with and photographing communities on several islands of what is now the Republic of Vanuatu. Though he did not have the formal training of an academic anthropologist, Muller’s skill as a photographer, along with ties he developed with local communities, brought him into contact with some of the people and institutions that played key roles in promoting the use of film in ethnographic research: Muller collaborated with American anthropologist and filmmaker Robert Gardner (1925 – 2014) and the Harvard Film Study Center to film the naghol (in Bislama; land dive, in English) carried out by the Bunlap community on Pentecost Island, resulting in the film Land-Divers of Melanesia (1972). He also received support from the National Anthropological Film Center. The Film Center, which in 1981 was relocated within the National Museum of Natural History and renamed the Human Studies Film Archives, acquired Muller’s photographs and films shortly after they were made. (2)  In 2019, the Archives acquired an additional group of Muller’s photographs from the Harvard Peabody Museum, now incorporated with the previous acquisition.

Cinematographer (possibly Muller) films a group of men, possibly in Lendombwey village, island of Malekula, in January 1969. In correspondence from December 1968, Muller states that he was in Lendombwey village, island of Malekula, filming men in a grade-taking ceremony, and this image may relate to those events. Kal Muller films and photographs of Vanuatu (New Hebrides), Vanuatu slides, Slide roll #180.

In the years since Muller made these photographs, anthropologists--as well as archives and museums that hold knowledge created by and about indigenous communities--have re-examined the assumptions, concepts, and power dynamics intertwined with the production of anthropological images. Photographs don’t just provide evidence of cultural phenomena; they provide a means of exploring questions of memory, history, and interpretation. Like other materials found in archives, they can be valuable resources for cultural sustainability and community-based research activities. One photograph can be used to tell a thousand stories. 

The photographs Muller created during his time in Vanuatu, alongside the films, sound recordings, correspondence, and other documents in this collection, form a complex and voluminous group of images that hold complex layers of information and value. As in other archival collections, the different components speak to each other: correspondence between Muller and E. Richard Sorenson, the inaugural director of the National Anthropological Film Center, points to the interplay between individuals, institutions, and local communities which resulted in the production of the films and photographs; the films contain footage that would be edited into Land-Divers of Melanesia; the photographs show expressions of Ni-Vanuatu heritage, images of western filmmakers and anthropologists shooting film and recording sound, as well as urban and festival scenes in Vanuatu shortly before independence, making them records of the diversity of Ni-Vanuatu culture and of anthropologists’ attempts to represent that diversity.

Men construct a tower for the naghol (land dive), likely in Bunlap, South Pentecost, Pentecost Island, October 1968. Kal Muller films and photographs of Vanuatu (New Hebrides), Vanuatu slides, Slide roll #15.

Before putting the digitized photographs online, the NAA reviewed them to identify culturally sensitive content in order to prevent such images from being made public. As it does with all of its collections, the NAA extends an open-invitation to individuals and communities represented in the NAA to engage in collaborative efforts to improve how it describes and stewards those materials. The NAA looks forward to the conversations that the digitization of these images will enable.

The finding aid for the Kal Muller films and photographs of Vanuatu (New Hebrides), along with the digitized photographs can be found here. To learn how you can access parts of the collection that have not been digitized, get in touch with an archivist at hsfa@si.edu.

Notes:

(1) As Muller himself can be seen in some of the images, apparently at least one other person took some of the photographs; unfortunately, the NAA has not been able to identify the additional photographer(s).

(2) Muller also worked with the Film Center in an effort to produce films and photographs of religious ceremonies practiced by the Huichol of San Andres Coamiata, Jalisco, Mexico. The resulting materials are also held by the Human Studies Film Archives. Former Smithsonian Department of Anthropology Graduate Fellow José Carlos Pons Ballesteros has written an informative series of blog posts about his research with that collection here.

Sources Consulted:

“About.” The Film Study Center at Harvard University, Accessed April 26, 2022. https://filmstudycenter.fas.harvard.edu/about/.

Chio, Jenny. “Visual anthropology.” Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology (2021). DOI: http://doi.org/10.29164/21visual

Foster, S. and Adams, Ron. "Vanuatu." Encyclopedia Britannica, March 10, 2021. https://www.britannica.com/place/Vanuatu.

“The History of ARRI in a Century of Cinema.” ARRI, Accessed May 12, 2022. https://www.arri.com/news-en/the-history-of-arri-in-a-century-of-cinema

“History of the Film Archives.” National Anthropological Archives, Accessed April 20, 2022. https://web.archive.org/web/20001022013618/http://www.nmnh.si.edu/naa/guide/film_history.htm

Jolly, Margaret. “Custom and the Way of the Land: Past and Present in Vanuatu and Fiji.” Oceania 62, no.4 (June 1992): 330-354. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40332509

“Nagra III.” Nagra Audio, Accessed May 12, 2022. https://www.nagraaudio.com/product/nagra-iii/

Ruby, Jay. "The Professionalization of Visual Anthropology in the United States: The 1960s and 1970s." Visual Anthropology Review 17, no. 2 (2001): 5-12. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/var.2001.17.2.5

Schäuble, Michaela. "Visual anthropology." The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology (2018): 1-21. DOI: 10.1002/9781118924396.wbiea1969

By Adam Gray, Contractor, Human Studies Film Archives

Submitted by Daisy Njoku, Anthropology Archives, National Museum of Natural History

Spotlight on Women Amateur Photographers No. 3

 By Pamela Wintle

"For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.” Virginia Woolf

Mayme Lou Bruce, known as Stevey, was married to James Bruce, a prolific amateur filmmaker and explorer who had a particular interest in Melanesia but also filmed in other areas of the world.  As with other husband-and-wife teams, in the Human Studies Film Archives collections, we know that Stevey accompanied her husband and photographed their adventures. As is so often true, the full extent to which she contributed remains “anonymous.” 

Indonesia, ca. 1975, photograph by Stevey Bruce (James S. and Stevey Bruce Collection, sihsfa_2002_17_op_Indonesia75_026

Ecuador, 1976, photograph by Stevey Bruce (James S. and Stevey Bruce Collection, sihsfa_2002_17_op_Ecuador76_005)

Nepal, ca. 1968, photograph by Stevey Bruce (James S. and Stevey Bruce Collection, sihsfa_2002_17_op_Nepal68)

Pamela Wintle

Human Studies Film Archives

Spotlight on Women Amateur Photographers, No. 2

 By Pamela Wintle

“The rule seemed to be that a great woman must either die unwed ... or find a still greater man to marry her. ... The great man, on the other hand, could marry where he liked, not being restricted to great women; indeed, it was often found sweet and commendable in him to choose a woman of no sort of greatness at all.”

― Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night (1935)

Anne Hansen married John V. Hansen, a Danish adventurer and accomplished amateur filmmaker, and fully participated in his journeys to various European countries, the American West, Alaska and Central America. We know that Anne Hansen served as the travel photographer, necessitating her own intrepid spirit and sense of adventure. We don’t know for certain if this is Anne Hansen with the rope tied around her waist, but one can imagine that it is she risking a perilous slide in order to witness a geologic feature. Below this image are two of her photographs from their many other travels.

Grinnel Glacier at fissure, Glacier National Park, Montana, ca. 1942, photograph by Anne Hansen
(John and Anne Hansen Collection, sihsfa_1999_10_op_americanwest_007)

Tikal Guatemala, 1968, photograph by Anne Hansen (John and Anne Hansen Collection, sihsfa_1999_10_mexico037)

Mendenhall Glacier, ca. 1945, Anne Hansen (John and Anne Hansen Collection sihsfa_1999_10_americanwest028)

Pamela Wintle

Human Studies Film Archives

Cultures in Motion: The Huichol Film Project 1973-1975 Part II

For Part I of this blog post please click here.

 

Image from copy at University of California Libraries.
Accessed via Internet Archive

Kalman Müller was not to the first outsider to experience the Hikuri Neixa (a ceremony which marks the end of the Huichol year and the time prepare the soil for planting and to call upon the rain), but he was likely the first to film it. Other foreign researchers, mostly ethnographers, had visited San Andres Cohamiata during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The eminent Norwegian explorer and ethnographer Carl Lumholtz (1851 – 1922) had been the most prolific researcher to visit the place to date. On a grant from the American Museum of Natural History, Lumholtz visited most of the indigenous communities in Sierra Madre from 1895 to 1898. Following this experience, in 1900 and in 1902, Lumholtz would author Symbolism of the Huichol Indians and Unknown Mexico, which remain important works on the Huichol. 

Like Lumholtz, Müller also extensively documented Huichol lifeways, but he stuck to the camera. After filming the Hikuri Neixa ceremony in 1973, Müller produced and helped produce four more film projects totaling 43,590 feet of film (approximately 20 hours).[i] The Huichol ceremonies of Las Pachitas, the Peyote Pilgrimage, and the

Cambio de Varas are among other important ceremonies that Müller documented. Aspects of daily life of Huichols, with a particular emphasis on child rearing and development also figure prominently in the films.

Notes for camera roll 28, 

helping to identify film after processing and printing.

HSFA 1989.3.3 (ephemera)

This interest did not come from Müller himself, but came from of a group of researchers at the National Institute of Health, the patrons who had financed Müller’s expedition into the Sierra Madre.[ii]

Indeed, one key difference between the film project Müller led in Mexico and the film projects he had led in Europe or the South Pacific, was that the former was conceived and produced as a scientific project. The project was itself part of a broader research agenda to use film as a research method.



According to E. Richard Sorenson, Müller’s supervisor for this project and one of the proponents of the film research agenda:

because the light sensitive emulsion of film produces an objective chemical facsimile of the pattern of light falling on it, it preserves a phenomenological record of the pattern of light received. The data does not have to be screened by the cognitive organization of a human observer before it can be preserved. Because of this, film preserves information not just of what has been “seen” and “selected” by the culturally programmed mind of the filmer but also what he has not.[iii]

Film, in other words, would be inevitably more objective a method of describing reality than the pen of even the most experienced researcher. Unlike humans, the argument went, cameras could capture a fuller representation of the present, which would enable future researchers to see aspects which would have otherwise escaped the eye of the field researcher. Sorenson’s perspective was heavily influenced by his mentor Margaret Mead, who also believed in the objectivity and emancipatory nature of film. It was this faith in film that motivated Mead to help found the National Anthropological Film Center in 1975, the predecessor to today’s Human Studies Film Archives.

Huichol social interaction at the Fiesta de las Pachitas, Summer 1974 [iv]
Frame grab from HSFA 1989.3.1-3A

Applied to the Huichol people of San Andres, the research film method would generate increased understanding on questions such as: How do children in isolated societies become “enculturated”? How do psychedelic plants influence indigenous social organization? And, perhaps more importantly, what can the U.S. learn from people like the Huichol to address their own sociocultural ailments?[v]  

In practice, however, the research film method as Müller applied translated into long and mostly static takes without an explicit narrative arc or angle, and indeed most of the 46 film rolls that make up this collection were made this way. The other, and perhaps more important component of the Huichol project as a scientific enterprise, was the annotations to the films themselves. Dozens of synchronized and non-synchronized, Spanish and English annotations accompany the films Müller made. These annotations, drafted in collaboration with Eliseo Castro Villa (Müller’s main indigenous informant/collaborator in San Andres) and Rocio Echaverría (a government nurse who had worked in San Andres for many years prior to Müller’s arrival and who would marry him in 1973), added a rich layer of detail on the specific names and processes for the people, ceremonies, plants and other things filmed. 

Kalman Müller narrating the first time a child in San Andres Cohamiata consumes peyote during the Hikuri Neixa ceremony, Winter 1975. HSFA 1989.3.3-9A 16mm workprint (Workprint is a temporary copy of film footage used for editing. It can have unstable color dyes causing the film to fade to a reddish hue.)

This added layer greatly amplifies the amount of contextual information about the moving images that appear on the films. But it would be after longs hours of conversation—while annotating these films behind a flat bed editing table—when Müller, Castro, and Echaverría would reveal even more telling pieces of information regarding Huichol culture and behavior. For it was at these times, when the commentators would reveal in jest, irritation, or silence, how their visions and concerns about the Huichol people differed. 

It is through Echaverría’s silence, punctuated with occasional outbursts of detailed information during one of these sessions, that one learns about the ways the Huichol people were coping with the debt and poverty the U.S.-backed Green Revolution was bringing to Huichol communities in the early ‘70s. [vi] It is through Müller’s repetitive dismissal of her comments that we may infer why she keeps mostly silent through the annotation process. It is also through Castro’s mocking of Müller as a friend of the Huichols who does not know their names that we learn about his possible irritation with the project.[vii]  A frustration which other Huichols may or may not have shared with Castro but that nonetheless makes one wonder: what was the story on the other side of the lens?

Photo by Kalman Müller, 1975

As master storytellers who were historically weary of the power of narratives in shaping their cultures, landscapes, and societies, who knows how the Huichol of San Andres Cohamiata may have bent their own reality for Müller’s camera?  We may never know, but what is certain is that to understand how cultures negotiate power in film, we must look at what lay behind the camera as well as in front of it.  

Enabling viewers to do so—to see through both sides of the lens—is indeed what makes the Huichol Film Project most remarkable. Influenced by the scientific film method, the extensive annotations and structured approach to filmmaking of this collection offer not only a more nuanced image of the Huichol people as film subjects, but also a more detailed glimpse into the culture and perspective of its filmmakers. As a clear and multifaceted window into the past, this collection represents a valuable resource for scholars interested in the history of film and of the Huichol people. For its incredible detail on the social and cultural practices of their ancestors, the Huichol Film Project should be of most interest and value to the Huichol people of San Andres Cohamiata. 

José Carlos Pons Ballesteros

Graduate Fellow

NMNH-Department of Anthropology

Original film footage of the Huichol Film Project, along with sound recordings and associated documentation, form part of the collections of the Human Studies Film Archives.  You can find more information about this film collection here.

---

[i] According to catalogue records the Huichol Film Project is made of 50 camera rolls, according to the Processing Proposal for the collection, the Huichol Film Project is made of 46 rolls.  Muller’s footage was used to produce the edited film Huichols: People of the Peyote around 1976. Thomas Perry produced this film in collaboration with Steven Dreben, who edited and directed it.

[ii] There is dark back story to the main proponents of this research film method, visual anthropologist E. Richard Sorenson (1939 – 2015) and his mentor medical researcher Carleton Gajdusek (1923 – 2008), interest in childhood development, which I will not address here as it is complex and not the focus of this essay.  Suffice it to say that Gajdusek was charged with child molestation in April 1996. For more information about this watch the excellent documentary The Genius and the Boys by Bosse Lindquist (2009) or read: Spark, Ceridwen. 2009. “Carleton’s Kids: The Papua New Guinean Children of D. Carleton Gajdusek.” The Journal of Pacific History 44 (1): 1–19. 

[iii] Quote drawn from The Huichol Film Project, Unfinished Draft of the Huichol Enculturation: a Preliminary Report. Human Studies Film Archives, Smithsonian NMNH.

 [iv] The Huichols celebrate the Fiesta de las Pachitas around the time of Ash Wednesday. This ceremony mixes Mesoamerican, Mexican, and Catholic symbolism and rituals to commemorate the early attempts by Catholic missionaries to convert the Huichol people into Christianity. For this festival the Huichol participants are divided into two main bands, the Jews and the Toros, while the rest of the community watches, as the film roll 89.3.1-3A suggests, often in jest. The Jews represent the Huichol ancestors. The Huichol represent the Jews by painting their faces black, some men dressing as women, all of whom try to escape the Toros. Huichols representing the Toros carry red flags and bull horns with which they run after the Jews. One interesting historical relationship this festival, and in particular the depiction of Christian missionaries as Toros, may speak to is the connection between the arrival of Christianity and the development of cattle agriculture in northwest Mexico. For more information on this complex ceremony read:  Jáuregui, Jesús. "Las Pachitas en la Mesa del Nayar (Yaujque’e)." Dimensión antropológica 34 (2009). 

[v] The Huichol Film Project, Grant Application. Human Studies Film Archives, Smithsonian NMNH. The question as to what Western society can learn from indigenous peoples is not unique to the Huichol film project, in fact it has served as the inspiration for much of the ethnographical research that has been conducted for the last half-century. For a short but interesting comment on this matter see the Introduction by Kathleen Berrin in her edited book Art of the Huichol Indians, 1979.

[vi] Huichol FIlm Project, 1975, sound roll 1989.3.3-1, annotation track in Spanish. This tape describes the First Use of  a Corn Thresher

[vii] Huichol FIlm Project, 1975, round roll 1989.3.1-14, annotation track in Spanish. This tape describes the yearly Huichol Tree Planting Ceremony

Cultures in Motion: The Huichol Film Project, 1973-1975 - Part I

 

Young Huichol man sitting on a cliff overlooking the Western Sierra Madre, Summer 1974

Frame grab from HSFA 1989.3.1-8

Before arriving in the Western Sierra Madre of Mexico in April 1973 to produce one of the richest visual ethnographic collections of the Huichol community of San Andres Cohamiata to date, Hungarian-American filmmaker Kalman Antal Müller (1939 – ) had already had a wealth of experiences. By his mid-thirties, Müller had traveled extensively across Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and the South Pacific, making films and writing articles for popular and academic outlets such as Atlas, National Geographic, and the Journal de la Société des Océanistes along the way. Müller had also worked as an administrator for the United Nations in Zaire (now D.R.C.) and as a translator for the Department of State in the U.S.— all while moonlighting as a doctoral student in French Literature at the University of Arizona.[i]

Like most of the places where Müller had spent time through the 1960s and early 1970s, San Andres Cohamiata was not a town one could easily get to. This village or rancho (in Huichol lore) sat (and still sits) in a high plateau, some 6,000 feet above sea level, amid deep, treacherous barrancas—in what is perhaps one of the roughest landscapes in Mexico and the Americas. That the Huichol ancestors settled in this difficult terrain some four hundred years before Müller arrived on the scene was not an accident. Around 1530, following a series of military conflicts known today as the Mixtón Wars, through which the Spanish state and their Nahuatl indigenous allies sought to subjugate northern Mesoamerican peoples, the Huichol ancestors fled west from the lower and drier valleys of what is now the Mexican State of San Luis Potosi to the Sierra Madre highlands.[ii]  One could imagine that the smallpox, measles and other epidemics which decimated Mesoamerican populations to about five percent of its pre-contact numbers would have also provided a strong incentive for the Huichol ancestors to seek geographical isolation.

By the early seventeenth century, the Huichol environment was so uninviting to the eyes of the Spanish government and their indigenous allies that they referred to it as Colotlán--Nahuatl for “the place of scorpions.”

 Carrying a French-made,16-mm Eclair movie camera, a Swiss-made Nagra sound recording system, and a Japanese-made Pentax 120 still camera, along with enough batteries and film rolls to make these gadgets work, what Müller found and recorded upon his arrival in San Andres was one of the most culturally (and geographically) isolated communities in Mexico in the 1970s. At the same time, the residents’ way of life had been increasingly changing over the last few centuries. While Huichols had been relatively successful in evading colonial governments by taking refuge amid the Sierra Madre, they had been less successful escaping other influences such as the Catholic Church and, increasingly, Mexican bureaucrats. Thus, what Müller found on his first visit to San Andres, and what his film footage would most clearly depict, was a Mesoamerican culture in motion: a community with so well preserved a heritage that the traces of its cultural transformation were still fresh.

Huichol man and children, 1975.  Photo by Kalman Müller.

The Hikuri Neixa ceremony is a case in point, as it was the first ceremony Müller documented in the Sierra Madre (HSFA 1989.3.4).   He recorded this ceremony, which formally marks the end of the Huichol year, on his first visit to San Andres in April 1973 and 1974. 

Huichol peyote seeker painting his face during the Hikuri Neixa ceremony, Winter 1974
Frame grab from HSFA 1989.3.2-4

The film of this ceremony shows a group of indigenous people under a midday sun painting bright yellow figures (such as suns, snakes, rain drops, and maize plants) over each other’s faces, while other people drink, dance, and make more yellow paint by grinding up in a molcajete[iii] a root named urra (Mahonia trifofiolata)[iv], Huichol for spark. The painted images represented (and that participants sought to elicit) the blessings and protection of Tatewari, or the god Fire, one of the main deities for the polytheistic Huichol and the most important one for assuring a good harvest for the upcoming year.  Tortillas and beans as well as tepe (a kind of beer made of maize) flow in abundance during the celebration.

Peyote pilgrims on their way to Wirikuta, the sacred land. Summer 1974

Frame grab from HSFA 1989.3.1-4

 Beyond drink and food, during this ceremony Huichols share and consume their sacred peyote plant (Lophophora williamsii).  The Hikuri Neixa (the name of which comes from hikuri, Huichol for peyote, and neixa, Huichol for dance), is as much a celebration marking the end of the Huichol year as a celebration of the end of the peyote pilgrimage to the Huichol sacred land Wirikuta.[v] This is no coincidence, as the peyote pilgrimage is one of the most important rituals for pleasing Tatewari and other Huichol deities. During the pilgrimage to Wirikuta, Huichols gather many of the sacred plants they will use for rituals throughout the year, such as the yellow urra itself. For the Huichol, returning to one’s community with ample quantities of peyote, urra, and other goods to share with the community indicated a successful pilgrimage.  Judging by the liberal amounts of tepe the peyote seekers or kawiteros[vi] drank during the Hikuri Neixa ceremony of 1973, one could assume the peyote hunt for that year was a fruitful one.[vii]

To learn more about the Huichol Film Project check back soon for part 2!

José Carlos Pons Ballesteros

Graduate Fellow
NMNH-Department of Anthropology

Original film footage of the Huichol Film Project, along with sound recordings and associated documentation, form part of the collections of the Human Studies Film Archives.  You can find more information about this film collection here.

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[i] Information about Müller for this paragraph drawn from The Huichol Film Project, Kalman Müller’s 1975 C.V.  Human Studies Film Archives, Smithsonian NMNH.. 

[ii] According to Peter Furst’s Rock Crystals and Peyote Dreams (2006) and to Stacey Shaefer’s Huchol Women, Weavers, and Shamans (2015) linguistic proximity suggests the people today identified as Guachichils as the most likely ancestors of the Huichol.

[iii] The stone-made traditional Mesoamerican equivalent to the mortar and pestle. 

[iv] Ethnobotanist James A. Bauml et al. were the first scholars to uncover the scientific classification for the urra plant. Their findings were published in the Journal of Ethnobiology in 1990. Bauml, James, Gilbert Voss, and Peter Collings. 1990. “Uxa Identified.” Journal of Ethnobiology 10: 99–101. 

[v] Indeed, according to Schaefer and Furst (1996), the main purpose of the Hikuri Neixa (The Dance of the Peyote) Ceremony would be to prepare the soil for planting and to call upon the rain. The successful “hunt” of peyote would thus be an activity important as a means to both supply the community with this sacred plant as well as invoke the blessings of the Gods for the growing season. As a ceremony linking hunting and agriculture, the Hikuri Neixa represents the hybrid ecological and productive heritage of the Huichol people.  Schaefer, Stacy B., and Peter T. Furst. 1996. People of the Peyote: Huichol Indian History, Religion & Survival. UNM Press. Other scholars such as french anthropologist Michel Perrin (1994), and Kalman Muller himself referred to this same ceremony as “Hikurineira.”  Perrin, Michel. 1994. “Notes D’Ethnographie Huichol: La Notion de  ‘ma’ive’ et  la  nosologie.” Journal de La Société Des Américanistes 80: 195–206.

[vi] The peyote seekers or kawiteros are identifiable by their large squirrel-adorned sombreros. 

[vii]Information about the Hikuri Neixa for this paragraph drawn from: The Huichol Film Project, Document #3, p. 9.  Human Studies Film Archives, Smithsonian NMNH. August 2019. Schaefer and Furst (1996) also provide important information about this ceremony in their book People of the Peyote.