Repatriation and Tribe sourcing of Yaqui Easter Films from 1972
This collaboration between the University of Arizona, Old Pascua Museum and Yaqui Culture Center is an inclusive language and cultural preservation initiative: repurposing two films from 1972 about the Yaqui people’s sacred Easter ceremonies. Made by National Geographic, these films now have value to the Yaqui people as documents of people, landscape, and cultural practices in a moment-in-time 40 years ago. The project created new digital scans and newly recorded Yaqui narrations for the films in Yaqui, Spanish, and English. By recording Yaqui tri-lingual narrations and collecting culturally competent metadata through community-based “tribesourcing,” the project is restoring the Yaqui voice and sensibility to these moving images in the three languages of the people. The work will be completed in spring, 2017.
The Yaqui language is a less-commonly-taught-language (LCTL) of the Uto-Aztecan group.
The project was conducted by Jennifer L. Jenkins, Curator, American Indian Film Gallery, and Associate Professor, Department of English, University of Arizona; Guillermo Quiroga, Director, Old Pascua Museum and Yaqui Culture Center; and Hanni Nabahe, Knowledge River Cohort 13.