Nation-Building: The Theme of the 13th Annual Indigenous Film & Arts Festival

Nation-Building: The Theme of the 13^th Annual Indigenous Film & Arts Festival

International Institute for Indigenous Resource Management

October 5-10, 2016

Denver, Colorado

http://tinyurl.com/jewl6al

On June 23, 2016 the people of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland voted for a British exit or Brexit from the European Union.

For me, this statement perfectly illustrates the morass that is the post-Westphalian state and why we think Nation-Building is an especially appropriate theme for the 13^th Annual Indigenous Film & Arts Festival. There are actually four countries or nations that make up the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, or UK—England, Scotland, and Wales which together make up Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Similarly, within the United States, Canada, and Aotearoa are Indian Tribes, First Nations, and Iwi.

In 1648, the Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years War in Europe and marked the transition from feudal principalities to sovereign nation-states. This Westphalian sovereignty is the principle of international law that each nation state has sovereignty over its territory and domestic affairs, to the exclusion of all external powers, on the principle of non-interference in another country's domestic affairs, and that each state (no matter how large or small) is equal in international law. Today, in the post-Westphalian era, this notion of complete sovereignty is no longer true if it ever was. The degree of penetration in modern nation-state decision-making by non-state actors such as corporations, the World Trade Organization, European Union, and World Intellectual Property Organization is extensive and nearly irrevocable. Call it globalization, liberalization, or post-Westphalian, the nation-state is enmeshed in a bewildering labyrinth of treaties and agreements from which it can exit only at the expense of economic pain and political capital.

But, what, you may ask, has the Treaty of Westphalia, the European Union, and Brexit, have to do with the Indian Tribes and Native Hawaiians of the United States, the First Nations of Canada, and the Iwi of Aotearoa? And, what do these have to do with film?

I think Ernest Renan, the 19^th century French theorist; in his influential essay, “What is a Nation?” provides an answer to both these questions. He wrote: “A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Two things, which in truth are but one, constitute this soul or spiritual principle. One lies in the past, one in the present. One is the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories; the other is present- day consent, the desire to live together, the will to perpetuate the value of the heritage that one has received in an undivided form.”

The films selected for the 13^th Annual Indigenous Film & Arts Festival tell of culture, tradition, spirituality, and memory but they also show why, like the UK’s difficulty in extricating itself from the European Union, the efforts of indigenous peoples to perpetuate their heritage and to exercise their self-determination are also challenged and aided by a complex web of inter-related corporate, government, and non-state actors. The films demonstrate that it takes much more than flags, proclamations, constitutions, and legislative bodies to achieve Renan’s concept of the nation. It also takes stories, songs, and remembrances to build a nation. And of utmost importance, nation-building requires the storytellers, memory keepers, dancers, songwriters, and singers that are the builders of nations.