TV series rethinks modern world

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It took a few weeks of negotiations with the local shaman, but the jungle spirits finally agreed and the filming was allowed to proceed.

The filming in this case was a 35-hour ritual, celebrated annually by Brazil's Makuna tribe, in which local spirits are invited to the community for a marathon dance

of regeneration.

And the story comes from Richard Meech and Michael Grant, producers of a new 10-part television series exploring the beliefs and values of indigenous cultures around the world.

Millennium: Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World (premiering May 11 on PBS) is a colorful myriad of ideas, reflecting different cultures approaches to human issues like individuality, wealth and death.

The object, say producers Meech and grant, is to shake the complacency of the industrialized world and its value system by drawing contrasts with the indigenous cultures.

"Modern thinking seems to be a one-way street. Either the industrial way or now way," said Meech, a researcher who has travelled extensively in tribal cultures, in a telephone interview.

"One of the primary motivations is to have the modern world look at itself in a new way."

Meech and Grant, a Toronto-based filmmaker, have spent the last 10 years researching and producing the series with a team of anthropologists. The result is ambitious television reaching for what they call "emotional truths" through highly personalized stories and experiences.

For example, episode on love contrasts the customs and expectations of a Canadian couple starting their second marriage with marriages in Nepal and Niger, where some tribes practice polygamy. A look at the meaning of wealth covers the stories of a garbage man in New York and the decision of a boy from Kenya's Gabra tribe to give his camel to a poor stranger.

"This is not an information series. This is an experiential series," Meech said. "What we're hoping is that people will feel a lot of things when they see this."

As a series that delves into wholistic tribal cultures, Millennium takes a couple of difficult twists. For example, the episodes, while focusing on cultures quite different from the developed world's, are organized around concepts and themes that are only separated

in European thinking.

"That is the paradox of the series. Indigenous societies don't separate these things," said Meech. "But when you deal with a mass TV audience, you have to draw them in from their own preconceptions. If we had taken a wholistic approach, we have only addressed those who understand the perspective."

Added Grant: "We had to make this as accessible as possible. We are trying to reach people who have never thought about these things before."

Another difficulty faced by series producers is the history of contact between industrialized societies and indigenous cultures. Millennium deals with this one in its opening episode.

The scene opens in Peru, with the series' host, a well-known anthropologist

and a camera crew in a troublesome search for members of the Mashco Piro tribe.

The tribe has avoided contact with outside world for most of the century. Harvard professor David Maybury-Lewis is caught in an ethical dilemma.

He longs for contact, to learn of ways of understanding the world that are unaffected by western culture. But he also knows the tragic history of contact between tribal and western culture.

After a brief sighting of three Mascho Piro women, Maybury-Lewis decides the time is not right. A meeting will have to wait until he and the Mascho Piro are better prepared, he concludes.

During research many tribal communities were approached to participate in the series through connections in the field of anthropology. Not all wanted to take part. Some feared what the filming might do to their way of life. In other cases, people were concerned about what the television technology actually does, including uneasy feelings that a camera might steal souls.

In the end, some tribes that had been approached by Meech and Grant had to b dropped from the plans out of respect for their wishes. But the technological concerns proved easier to deal with.

The producers brought video cameras along on many shooting trips so communities could get a hands-on understanding of what the cameras did, many "slipped on director's caps" to advise producers on how best to film their communities.

"They were eager to participate in a series that would carry their ideas to the outside world."

One episode that will be of special interest to Canadian viewers deals with Native politics in this country. The Tightrope of Power examines the Mohawk standoff at Oka in 1990. Manitoba MLA Elijah Harper's opposition to the Meech Lake accord and the profiles Assembly of First Nations Chief Ovide Mercredi.

The program hopes to raise questions about the way developed societies govern themselves and how societies based on various cultural groups manage their differences.

Millennium airs for two hours every Monday between May 11 and June 8. A hardcover book has been published as a companion to the series.