OUAS Connections: Hunters and Bombers: a film screening and discussion

Abstract: Hunters And Bombers is a film about conflict.  Between global powers  and a community of Innu, a First Nation of the Canadian eastern subarctic.  Two cultures, two ways of seeing and knowing the same landscape, collide.   The bombers are the pilots and planes of a NATO base.  They have come to the Labrador boreal forest because it is so similar to the lands of the great Soviet enemy.  The hunters react and resist from within a deep and deadly colonial history. The film follows two ethnographic paths.

At the same time, it raises a set of questions about the anthropologist as activist film-maker.  There is observation of both sides of the conflict, but there is no commitment to neutrality.  The struggle against colonial domination means a refusal of invisibility.  And I was asked by the Innu to find a way to give support to their struggle, to help create visibility.  Thus is film, like the maps that also have played a part in supporting northern hunting peoples, of obvious value.

Or is it?  We can discuss both the politics of this kind of work and the consequences of turning a whole web of life and struggle into a 55 minute documentary.

Bio: Hugh Brody is an author, filmmaker and anthropologist who has lived and worked with the Inuit of the High Arctic, the Khomani San of the Southern Kalahari and the Dane-zaa people of the Canadian North - amongst many others. He has held teaching positions at several universities in Ireland, Canada and England, and is the recipient of several Honorary positions: Associate, Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge; Honorary Professor Of Anthropology, University of Kent, Canterbury. The 50+ years of his career, however, have not been primarily spent in academia, but as a freelance writer, researcher, expert witness, filmmaker and author.

Oxford University Anthropological Society (OUAS) events for Hilary Term 2025

OUAS & SAME Coffee & Co-Working (Week 1 to 8)

Every Tuesday and Thursday from 2 - 4:30 PM at the Old Library, 51-53 Banbury road.