Itaataatawi

Résumé du livre

Because taatawi are closely tied to Hopi relations to one another and the land, and sometimes contain specialized forms of knowledge held closely by Hopi clans and ceremonial societies, their ownership and circulation remains of vital concern to Hopi people. Laura Boulton's recording of Hopi singers Dan Qötshongva, Thomas Bahnaqya and David Monongye in the Summer of 1940, and the travels of those recordings afterwards, show us the complex politics of Hopi song circulation in the early Twentieth Century up through the present, and how settler cultural and intellectual property laws provide only limited possibilities for indigenous groups seeking to bring their ancestors' voices back under their control. And even if tribes could reclaim taatawi under settler property laws, these laws require physical and conceptual transformations that effectively sever them from the networks of relations from which they were created. To better support Hopi sonic sovereignty going forward, I offer brief sketches for three potential interventions: (1) an indigenous works amendment to the United States Copyright Act; (2) the use of indigenized licensing frameworks to embed indigenous protocols into the governance and circulation of indigenous creative works both on and off indigenous lands; and (3) establishing a right to indigenous care, similar to Europe's right to forget, whereby our ancestors' voices can be subject to indigenous care rather than preserved anonymously and perpetually as archival objects.