April Strickland from Grants Pass, Oregon is a US graduate
student currently in New Zealand on the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation
Research Abroad Fellowships programme. Offered by the US Department of
Education, this programme is for US doctoral students to conduct research
abroad in modern foreign languages and area studies for up to 12 months.
A PhD candidate at New York University, April is studying Māori language
and researching the preservation and cultivation of Māori identity through
television and video, at the University of Auckland.
April Strickland
My research with Māori media practitioners, the topic of my doctoral
dissertation at New York University, began in 2005 with an email correspondence
I had with the late, great filmmaker Barry Barclay, a pioneer of Māori
cinema and an advocate for Indigenous media practices across the world.
In New York, I had seen one of Barclay’s films, Te Rua, in
which a group of Māori activists attempt to reclaim their ancestral statues
held in a museum in Berlin. Though I understood the larger narrative arc
and the thematic arguments of the film, there were culturally specific
aspects - particularly those that related to Māori political activism
- that eluded me.
Through a series of fortuitous events I was given Barclay’s email
address and emailed him directly with my questions. He was generous enough
to respond to my questions about the film, and I remember how intriguing
and challenging his ideas were. From this early email, we developed a
rich correspondence in which Barry helped to guide me through ideas about
Māori filmmaking.
Over the next few years, until his untimely passing in early 2008, I made
annual trips to New Zealand from New York to talk with Barry in person.
We would sit around his kitchen table, drinking coffee after coffee, discussing
local, national, and international issues that effect Māori film and television
makers. We talked about what ethical questions arise when cameras are
brought into Indigenous communities, the power dynamics of filmmaking,
and the specifics of the New Zealand film industry. I learned a great
deal from our interactions, and am grateful for the time we spent together.
These questions still inform my doctoral research. Supported by a Fulbright-Hays
Doctoral Dissertation for Research Abroad Fellowship, I moved to Auckland
in September 2008 to conduct my research fulltime. In the last year, I
have been investigating the connections between Māori media, language
revitalization, and nation building in New Zealand. The constellation
of these research interests has led me to talk to a wide array of Māori
media practitioners, producers, directors, editors, and screenwriters,
as well as elected government officials, school teachers, and political
activists. While the views of those I have talked to differ, there is
general agreement that revitalizing te reo Māori, the Māori language,
is an important and necessary undertaking and that Māori media - specifically
film, television, and radio - plays a vital role in fostering and promoting
the language. How this relationship between media and language revitalization
takes shape onscreen and in government policy varies and remains open
to debate, yet it is a lively and dynamic field that certainly keeps me
busy.
In addition to these academic interests, I am also making a short documentary
film while I am here in New Zealand. As a PhD candidate in New York University’s
Department of Anthropology and a student in their Program in Culture and
Media, I have been trained to make documentary films. Currently, I am
working on a film that concerns Māori relationships with the sea, and
focuses particularly on Māori scuba divers in the Navy. I just finished
pre-production on the film, and will start filming in September when the
weather gets warmer.
My time here in New Zealand has been enriching both personally and professionally.
I am grateful to Fulbright for the time that their support has given me
to develop a more nuanced understanding of Māori media practices and New
Zealand cultural forms. When I return to New York at the end of this year,
I feel like it might be months before the full weight of these observations
is revealed to me. Yet I consider this research as part of my life’s
work, and it will continue long after I have finished my dissertation,
as will the friendships and social relationships I have developed during
my tenure in Auckland.
Filmmaking Fulbright-Hays fellow April
Strickland behind the camera
