Decolonizing Nature Docs
A HERD OF ELEPHANTS traipses across the acacia-dotted savannah alongside stately giraffes and a dazzle of zebra. A pride of hungry lions closes in on an anxious water buffalo. Hundreds of wildebeest swim through a crocodile-infested river to reach fresh grassland. A gorilla mother cuddles her newborn in a high mountain forest. We’ve all seen these types of gripping wildlife scenes play out in nature films of Africa, from an industry that took off on the continent in the late 1960s and flourishes to this day. Leading the world when it comes to charismatic megafauna, Africa remains the ultimate place to film wildlife. But for decades, viewers have watched the same style of narratives that underpin a billion-dollar home entertainment industry mostly outside the continent. The story of Africa’s wildlife is generally presented through the lens of Western film producers and tailored for Western audiences, typically about romanticized wilderness areas or threatened paradises desperately in need of [read: foreign] intervention. Few productions are shown in the source countries due to distribution restrictions, the cost of broadcasting licenses, or supposed-disinterest by Africans towards their natural heritage. “They have been mining our stories for years and keeping everything for themselves,” says Dr. Paula Kahumbu, wildlife ecologist, National Geographic Explorer, and CEO of the Kenyan wildlife protection organization WildlifeDirect. “The heroes are almost always White, the poachers or bad guys Black, and there is hardly anything about Africans caring about nature, living with nature, and having a relationship with nature.” A multi-award-winning conservationist, Kahumbu is often approached by international media companies wanting to tell a certain kind of wildlife story. “It usually hinges on some great White former hunter or conservationist, and they want me as the token Black person to whom they’re handing over the baton [to] end in a positive way.” The unconscious bias is so endemic that “only when you show them Africans are missing do filmmakers realize what they’ve been doing subconsciously for a long time,” says Kahumbu, who is among a growing group of African conservationists, filmmakers, and storytellers pioneering a new path for the industry. Reporter Kari Mutu profiles African conservationists and filmmakers who are working to decolonize the wildlife documentary industry.
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