March 06, 2012

"Freakshow TV" campaign targets stereotypes

Outrage at ‘Freakshow TV’ as reporter brands Amazon tribe child murderersAn Australian TV report which branded an Amazon tribe as child murderers; a ‘suicide cult’ from the ‘Stone Age’; and the ‘worst human rights violators in the world’ has become the first target of a new Survival campaign against the racist depiction of tribal people on TV.

The ‘Freakshow TV’ campaign aims to challenge the depiction of tribal people on TV as primitive, backward savages.

The broadcast on Australia’s Channel 7 Sunday Night show featured ‘adventurer’ Paul Raffaele and reporter Tim Noonan visiting Brazil’s Suruwaha tribe.

The Suruwaha have already been targeted by fundamentalist missionaries, who falsely say they regularly kill newborn babies. The missionaries have lobbied Brazil’s Congress to pass a law allowing Indian children to be removed from their families.
And:Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said today, ‘It’s freakshow TV at its very worst. The Indians are made out to be cruel and inhuman monsters, in the spirit of 19th century colonialist scorn for ‘primitive savages’. It’s clearly designed to have the same effect – to suggest that they don’t deserve any rights. The idea that such nonsense is supposed to help tribal children is breathtaking.’

Survival has written a set of ethical guidelines to help filmmakers work responsibly with tribal peoples. It is also using its Stamp it Out campaign to challenge racist depictions, however unwitting, in the media.

Note to Editors: Forms of infanticide are found in all societies, including industrialized ones. The practice is rare and dying out amongst Amazon Indians. Survival opposes non-consensual practices, however ‘traditional’, which hurt or kill people. This includes infanticide.
The source for this posting, including videos:

Amazon's ancient tribe

Comment:  I gather the Australian show is called Sunday Night. And "Freakshow TV" is the name of Survival International's campaign against such shows.

For more on Amazon Indians, see Morcegos in The River and Brazilian Indians Protest Site Conversion.

Below:  "Paul Raffaele said a Suruwaha girl refused to shake his hand because she wanted to kill him. In fact, he was wearing so much sun cream the Suruwaha thought he had a skin disease."

5 comments:

Jaine said...

"worst human rights violators in the world" coming from white Australians - that's rich

dmarks said...

Your blog is a lot harder to use since you got that new background. The scrolling works only sort of now, in fits and starts. I don't know if it is the background that dogs down the page, or other changes from Google Blogger that coincidentally came at the same time. And I have a very high speed internet connection.

dmarks said...

Jaine: Are you speaking of the group that denied indigenous (non-white ) Australians the right to vote until the late 1960s?

Jaine said...

Dmarks - yes I am referring to that group. I talking about the country where Aboringal deaths in custody remains high, where the government still holds on to stolen wages, where the government interferes and pays Aboringals in vouchers because it doesn't deem them fit to be paid in money...(believing them all to be alcoholics) all this is still happening.

Anonymous said...

Survival International is actually based in London. They used to have a documentary where this guy would go native, usually in Papua New Guinea for some reason.

dmarks: There's also the stolen generation: Aboriginal children who were taken from their parents and raised in white (and sometimes not even Australian) homes. So basically, it's the same old song with a different singer.

This kind of crap is the stuff the UN lists as genocide.