Ulises García Figueroa - The creative and ethical work of video editing in research

This episode delves into the creative work in video editing and my positionality as a research assistant in this activity regarding ethical stances and lived experience. During an audiovisual collective effort, the post-production phase involves gathering necessary materials to create a final piece that not only presents data but also ensures a respectful treatment of information. Typically, this process follows the production stage, during which I have not been involved as a research assistant. Still, my involvement tries to go beyond the mechanical ensemble of images in a narrative sequence as the mere final point of the assembly line. A work in the category of representation related to oppressed groups is always an endeavour that should be taken as susceptible to causing effects over time. Some misinformed representations could result in unwanted outcomes to the detriment of diverse populations; therefore, video editing activity bears a significant responsibility in an ethical final piece that respects people and cultures.

When dealing with human history and stories, representation constitutes a crucial issue in order to deliver clear messages while avoiding biases and harmful stereotypes or tropes. In the podcast, I narrate my encounter with footage created for exhibition at the ICTMD Pre-Conference Symposium held in September 2024 about the topic of Healing, Health, and Wellbeing from Indigenous Perspectives on Music and Dance. In those videos, there were valuable testimonies, music, dance, and a brief insight into Mi'kmaq cultural practices, language, and worldview. Being the last member of the team who joined the project, I tried to show a final product that included all relevant material from the Mi'kmaq perspective, forming an attractive storyline for the audience without changing messages or the purpose of the video.

Topics in the documentary film, such as colonization, racism, and Indigenous history, deeply resonated with my own lived experience in the Global South national state of Mexico. This prompted an unexpected analysis of the various Indigenous realities and histories in different locations within the Americas. As a de-indigenized mestizo person from Mexico, this video-editing task resulted in a reexamination of my own impact and actions regarding an external contribution of Indigenous representation in research. By comparing the different processes of violence, dispossession, and denial of sovereignty, the public display —academic or not— of any Indigenous representation on video can contribute to a societal acknowledgement of the harm done and in-doing. It can shed light on the path to reparation and new social agreements of coexistence and justice in general.

Episode Transcript

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[Music]

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Sound Stories, a Centre for Sound Communities podcast.
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Hello, Bienvenidos.
Welcome back to Sound Stories, a Centre for Sound Communities podcast.
Where we talk about the incredible people we work with and the creative work we do
at the Centre for Sound Communities at Cape Breton University. I'm Ulises García Figueroa,

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and in this episode, we will be discussing the creative work of video editing in research.
[Music]
The tasks I usually perform today are related to video editing. My goal is the final ensemble of stories
on video that try to communicate human relationships and the complexity of different social phenomena

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in an accessible way for different audiences. While multimedia production is a field with diverse
steps and frontiers, my labour has been confined to the post-production terrain on a remote basis
in Newfoundland. While I have not participated in pre-production and production of the different
materials I have edited, my responsibility has been shaping the final form of those works.

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The first production I edited at the Centre for Sound Communities was a video for the
ICTMD pre-conference symposium held last year in September about the topic of “Healing,
Health and Well-being from Indigenous Perspectives on Music and Dance."
My work consisted on the delivery of a 46-minute piece that reflected on how the process of healing

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is related to the historical acknowledgement of lived experiences among the Mi'kmaq people.
[Music]
In that video the music and dance were presented as an intimate journey through collective healing
regarding issues such as language teaching, music learning and dance exploration in the context of

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colonization, intergenerational trauma, genocidal acts, and injustice in general.
Music and dance in this video are crucial testimonies of a community that employs great efforts
to rediscover, keep and pass traditions as a nation with memory and perspectives of prosperity
in the immediate present and the upcoming future.

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My approach towards that video was based on an intercultural understanding of the different
processes of colonization in the "New World," called the American continent among non-English speakers

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or now, Abya Yala, from an Indigenous Pan-American perspective.
Indigenous and Black populations outside Canada and the United States suffered different colonization
schemes. In the Mexican case, my case, colonization was not about segregation, prosecution
and population replacement, but a process of de-indigenization, miscegenation based on racist

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hierarchies and categories, the construction of a national identity based on the mestizaje myth
and the achievable path towards whiteness in a pigmentocracy.
The work of Federico Navarrete was fundamental to my understanding of colonial population dynamics
in Mexico, as well as the texts of Yásnaya Aguilar for developing an understanding of how Indigenous

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nations remain contained in national states that deny them sovereignty and access to a communal
life way in self-determination.
[Music]
Before my encounter with the editing task of this piece, my only sensible knowledge about
Indigenous nation's experiences related to colonial memory and aftermath in Canada was related

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to three different sources, “Nishga" by Jordan Abel, “A History of My Brief Body" by Billy-Ray Belcourt
and "Approaching Fire" by Michelle Porter.
In addition to that, I tried to ensure my own intervention in the workflow respected
boundaries of representation in access to Indigenous knowledge, avoiding or at least

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minimizing the harm that it could cause because of my factual status as a settler in Newfoundland,
a traditional territory of the Beothuk, Mi'kmaq, Innu and Inuit people.
To consider my impact on that, I relied on the invaluable critiques Dylan Robinson wrote
in "Hungry Listening", a decolonial approach from an Indigenous perspective.

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Considering my role as a research assistant and ethnomusicologist, I hope that music, dance,
and any other possibility in culture can help people around the world understand that different
worldviews can coexist and thrive without supporting relationships of subalternity,

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dispossession, and suffering.
In the middle of a time that threatens to engulf all hope through violence and intolerance,
decolonial sound perspectives along with other allied positionalities can generate the much-needed
changes for all forms of life on Earth and all peoples in humankind.

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Thanks for listening to this episode of Sound Stories, a Centre for Sound Communities podcast.
The show is hosted by research assistants of the Centre for Sound Communities,
a social innovation lab at Cape Breton University. Be sure to tune in to our next episode to hear
our classmates discuss another exciting Centre for Sound Communities project.

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