Naturaleza, territorio y la mirada viajera. Intervenciones del canon en los cines indígenas del Ártico canadiense y la Amazonía brasileña

Abstract

The article analyzes the way in which films made by Indigenous people in the Canadian Arctic and the Brazilian Amazon intervene in the canonical forms of representation of their landscapes, especially those housed in the notion of terra nullius or "land without an owner" that the national states produced in continuity with colonial imaginaries. The article inquires, first, into the way in which both regions were symbolically integrated into the national imaginaries at the dawn of their formation. To do this, it reviews written documents as well as photographic, filmic and pictorial works of travelers who were sent by the Canadian and Brazilian governments to the Arctic and the Amazon. Finally, it proposes that Indigenous cinemas respond to these dominant images by staging "aesthetics of inhabiting", which deny the idea of an empty Arctic and Amazon, to articulate aesthetic-political arguments that support the demands of sovereignty. To do this, I analyze several films made by the Igloolik Isuma Productions in Nunavut, Canada, and the organization Video nas aldeias in Brazil.