Indigenous Communication Theory

There is increasing recognition of the significance of how traditional knowledges (TKs) can inform our understanding of the impacts of climate change and strategies for adaptation and mitigation. And yet there are potential risks to indigenous peoples in sharing TKs in federal and other non-indigenous climate change initiatives. We intend the term indigenous peoples to designate the diverse populations in the U.S. who could interact with federal and non-indigenous climate change initiatives in ways that involve TKs, whether in the U.S. they are federally-recognized, state-recognized, or unrecognized. We refer to “indigenous peoples” and “tribes” interchangeably in this document, unless we are talking about a specific group or a specific status related to recognition. These guidelines are intended to examine the significance of TKs in relation to climate change and the potential risks to indigenous peoples in the U.S. for sharing TKs in federal and other non-indigenous climate change initiatives. Although it is common to refer to "traditional knowledge(s)" as individual pieces of information, this term also refers to traditional “knowledge systems" that are deeply embedded in indigenous ways of life. These guidelines use the phrase "traditional knowledges" deliberately in plural form because knowledges are emergent from the symbiotic relationship of indigenous peoples and places - a nature-culture nexus. Tribes and indigenous peoples use “knowledges” to emphasize that there are diverse forms of traditional knowledge and knowledge systems that must be recognized as unique to each tribe and knowledge holder. These guidelines should be used to inform the development of specific protocols in direct and close consultation with indigenous peoples. [http://climatetkw.wordpress.com/] Federal agencies and national climate change initiatives are recognizing the significance of TKs, and are proposing and funding collaborative efforts between indigenous communities and federal and non-indigenous climate change entities in ways that involve TKs. This interaction requires an understanding of how individual tribes and knowledge holders choose to share or not to share TKs.

This article reviews the historical and theoretical foundations of communication for development and, in particular, communication for social change, a recently coined concept that remains anchored to an anthropocentric and unsustainable perspective of development. Based on the review of literature, we would like to open a dialogue between the field and Latin American contemporary debates, with a special focus on a number of theoretical frameworks that share a radical critique of modernity and stand for a biocentric turn in social sciences: the so-called modernity/coloniality research program, critical ecology, and indigenous epistemologies. We propose approaching communication theories from the indigenous worldview of " good living " (buen vivir) and quote several inspiring participatory projects that apply the new epistemologies to the field.
El artículo revisa los fundamentos históricos y teóricos de la comunicación para el desarrollo y, en particular, del nuevo paradigma de la comunicación para el cambio social, un concepto acuñado recientemente que permanece anclado a una visión en exceso antropocéntrica e insostenible del desarrollo. Basado en la revisión de bibliografía de referencia, se invita a abrir un diálogo entre el campo y los debates latinoamericanos contemporáneos, en especial con un conjunto de perspectivas teóricas que comparten su crítica radical a la modernidad e invitan a establecer un giro biocéntrico en el ámbito de las ciencias sociales: el programa de investigación modernidad/ colonialidad, la ecología crítica y las epistemologías indígenas. Finalmente se propone una aproximación a la teoría comunicacional desde la cosmovisión del buen vivir y se citan un conjunto de proyectos participativos inspiradores que ponen en práctica las nuevas epistemologías sobre el terreno.

This article explores the implications of widely publicized national anthem protests by several Indigenous rugby league players in Australia during 2019. With a goal of doing justice to these Indigenous voices (and in this case also their silence), a critical race theory framework was deployed to both listen to and interpret the reasons behind the protests. The data source was online media reports that centered on the perspectives of players and rugby league officials, along with responses to the protests by prominent journalists and politicians via online opinion pieces. The findings indicate that the voices of Indigenous athletes in Australia are important in raising concerns about nationalist rituals and symbols that, by their colonialist nature, subjugate Aboriginal peoples. Importantly, the Indigenous rugby league players were not alone in their campaign. The Recognition in Anthem Project, which began in 2017, indicates that the perspectives of these protesting rugby players were part of a wider discussion about change. The movement for a new national anthem, therefore, was not just isolated to sport, and this appears to have provided the Indigenous rugby players-as social commentators-with atypical influence.

Speakers of Eastern Tukanoan languages in Brazil and Colombia construe linguistic differences as indices of group identity, intrinsic to a complex ontology in which language is a consubstantial, metaphysical productda 'substance' in the development of the person. Through speech, speakers of the same language signal a corporality based in theories of shared ancestry and mutual belonging while speakers of different languages signal difference. For Tukanoans, then, one creates one's self in the act of speaking. These ontological beliefs underlie speech practices, influencing language maintenance and contributing to one of the most extreme examples of multilingualism reported in the literature.

This essay is written to address conversations about the best ways to engage in knowledge exchange on important sustainability issues between Indigenous knowledges and fields of climate, environmental and sustainability sciences. In terms of sustainability, a crucial facet of the self-determination of peoples such as Indigenous nations and communities is the responsibility and the right to make plans for the future using planning processes that are inclusive, well-informed, culturally-relevant, and respectful of human interdependence with nonhumans and the environment. Indigenous knowledges often play a crucial role in Indigenous planning processes. In my work, I have found that scientists often appreciate what I will call here the supplemental-value of Indigenous knowledges—the value of Indigenous knowledges as inputs for adding (i.e. supplementing) data that scientific methods do not normally track. In the domain of supplemental-value, Indigenous people’s planning processes will improve, in turn, by having access to the supplemented and hence improved science. But it is also the case that Indigenous knowledges have governance-value. That is, they serve as irreplaceable sources of guidance for Indigenous resurgence and nation-building. Scientists should appreciate governance-value because it suggests that for some Indigenous peoples in knowledge exchange situations, we need to be assured that the flourishing of our knowledges is respected and protected. I hope to make the case for why it is important for scientists who work with Indigenous peoples to understand governance value in the hopes that this understanding will improve their approaches to knowledge exchange with Indigenous peoples.

The proceedings of the National Science Foundation supported WIS2DOM workshop state that sustainability scientists must respect the “protocols” of practitioners of Indigenous sciences if the practitioners of the two knowledge systems are to learn from each other. Indigenous persons at the workshop described protocols as referring to attitudes about how to approach the world that are inseparable from how people approach scientific inquiry; they used the terms caretaking and stewardship to characterize protocols in their Indigenous communities and nations. Yet sustainability scientists may be rather mystified by the idea of protocols as a necessary dimension of scientific inquiry. Moreover, the terms stewardship and caretaking are seldom used in sustainability science. In this case report, the authors seek to elaborate on some possible meanings of protocols for sustainability scientists who may be unaccustomed to talking about stewardship and caretaking in relation to scientific inquiry. To do so, the authors describe cases of Indigenous protocols in action in relation to scientific inquiry in two Indigenous-led sustainability initiatives in the Great Lakes/Midwest North American region. We claim that each case expresses concepts of stewardship and caretaking to describe protocols in which humans approach the world with the attitude of respectful partners in genealogical relationships of interconnected humans, non-human beings, entities and collectives who have reciprocal responsibilities to one another. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of Indigenous protocols for future dialog between practitioners of sustainability and Indigenous sciences.

Like other communities, Indigenous peoples must adapt to climate-induced ecological variations like sea level rise, glacier retreat and shifts in the habitat ranges of different species. In ongoing conversations on climate change, some Indigenous women articulate how seriously they take the specific responsibilities they perceive themselves to have within the systems of responsibilities that matter to their communities. Such responsibilities can range from acting as custodians and teachers of local ecological knowledge to acting as conveners of political movements aiming at respectful co-existence with neighbors. For these Indigenous women, the responsibilities that they assume in their communities can expose them to harms stemming from climate change and other environmental changes. Yet at the same time, their commitment to these responsibilities motivates them to serve as enablers of adaptation and mitigation. efforts.
This paper offers a starting point for the following positions: Some Indigenous women have their own unique capacities for collective action that advance adaptation and mitigation. Non-Indigenous parties’ political responsibilities should involve deferring to Indigenous women’s own knowledges of and motivations for collective action. Deference can be expressed through political institutions that bolster the conditions needed to support Indigenous women’s collective actions. In many cases, deference  is incumbent on Indigenous national governments and political organizations. Further work beyond this paper should seek to further clarify the political reforms needed to support Indigenous women’s collective agencies for adapting to and mitigating climate change.

The starting point of this article is the thesis developed in 1991 by Isabelle Combès and Thierry Saignes on the birth of Chiriguano ethnicity and identity, both mixed ‘in essence.’ The Chiriguano and the Chané appear to maintain a somewhat paradoxical relationship with miscegenation, however. Although considered paradigmatic examples of Amerindian miscegenation, some contemporary views anticipate the dissolution of the ethnic group precisely because of its mixture with whites. At the same time, the Chiriguano themselves reject any idea of mixture, proclaiming themselves to be simply ‘Guarani.’ Based on a double case study of the Bolivian Isoso and the Argentinean Northwest, the article casts doubt on the idea of the complete absorption of the Chané by the Chiriguano complex; it then analyzes the different types of miscegenation in existence and their relation to an asymmetrical schema that creates a scale of values between different ethnic groups. Finally, the authors suggest that the ideological ambivalence surrounding miscegenation is precisely due to the fact that it is a hybrid construct, the product of the fusion between Chané and Guarani ideologies.

The Apinayé are a Brazilian indigenous ethnic group that live in a transition zone between the Cerrado and the Amazon. This study primarily aims to understand the meaning that art holds for Apinayé indigenous students at a Brazilian Indigenous School. We used an ethnographic research methodology, while also observing art classes and distributing open questionnaires to these students. The results showed that the arts produced by the indigenous people mostly refer to the body paintings and cultural artifacts they produce, such as necklaces made of beads, fans, coufo, and babassu coconuts, among others. In addition, the indigenous people characterize the Brazilian indigenous culture as something that is extremely significant for their lives, as art represents not only their reality but also their history, struggle, and resistance. Finally, the study suggests that the discipline of art in the indigenous school can help the students understand that the handicrafts they develop and the body painting, babassu coconut straw beds, and other artifacts they produce are also artistic and aesthetic objects that represent their story. Therefore, they are not dissociated from Brazilian art and culture.

Time is a particularly powerful construct in postcolonial societies. Intermeshed with discourses of race, place and belonging, European ideas of time as linear, Cartesian and chronological function as enduring discursive categories that frame public debate within conceptual legacies from colonialism. There is substantial evidence internationally that modernist and mechanical temporal discourses of progress and efficiency have impeded Indigenous aspirations, including attempts to achieve sovereignty. In this article, we use a critical whiteness studies framework, and a critical discourse analysis methodology, to make visible the temporal assumptions in mainstream news articles from Aotearoa New Zealand. These articles, from influential, agenda-setting media, discuss crucial issues of indigenous rights, including Te Tiriti o Waitangi negotiations. Our analysis shows that they do so within a culturally specific, Western temporal framework, which limits their ability to provide balanced, informative coverage of the issues at stake.

While responses to native addictions and mental issues are continued priorities, the overarching focus is to recognize the diasporic status of indigenous peoples, to improve native wellness, and to establish cross-cultural identity for all Canadians. Historical culture, ways of knowing and language support strength-based approaches, alongside which relational structures-elders, families, communities, creation-play essential roles in native whole health. A comprehensive Continuum Framework guides federal, provincial, and territorial stakeholder efforts toward native wellness, supported by engaging indigenous communities. Indigenous wellness balances the physical, spiritual, emotional, and mental quadrants of whole health. Balanced well-being is enriched by (i) purpose in individuals' daily lives through education, employment, caregiving, and cultural ways of being and doing; (ii) hope for the future grounded in a sense of core identity, indigenous values, and spirit; (iii) a sense of belonging and connectedness with all relations and culture; and (iv) understanding and deriving meaning from individual, family, and community lives as part of creation and rich history. Indigenous philosophy can be understood and appreciated through the lenses of various Western theoretical approaches that are constructionist by design, whereby Canadians may get one step closer toward achieving a cross-cultural identity. This shared vision requires innovative leadership, sustained commitment, and effective partnerships.

The essentialism implicit in Western discourses about the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) plays to assumptions that there is limited possibility of indigenous democratic construction in the region. Our study analyzes the importance of local/indigenous knowledge in Tunisia and in Egypt, the specific, local contexts that have shaped the revolutions in both nations, and how social media and communication technologies were used to engage in social change. It also interrogates how change elsewhere in the region may emerge in very different ways than has been the case in Tunisia and Egypt.

This article discusses Fredrik Barth's approach to the problem of ethnicity based on a wide-ranging analysis of his work. Analysis focuses on various key ideas recurrent in the authors programmatic and theoretical-methodological writings, as well as his ethnographic studies. A critical evaluation is made of the explanatory power of ecological and demographic factors in his model, the importance of his thesis of relative identity, the genealogy of theoretical influences found in Barthian explanations and the problem of the rational actor as the binding element in his interactionist conception of social relations.

Resumen. Para los nahuas de la Sierra de Texcoco, cercana a México D. F., los ahuaques o deidades pluviales constituyen espíritus hostiles que habitan los manantiales. Los niños de 11 y 12 años asimilan este aspecto específico de la cosmovisión mediante episodios concretos que los parientes les narran en el interior del grupo doméstico. A partir de la información reunida en encuestas y entrevistas realizadas en trabajo de campo, el artículo enfatiza las diferentes clases de historias así como el paren-tesco de los sujetos transmisores, y muestra el papel crucial que desempeñan los niños en el proceso de reproducción de un sistema de creencias de tradición mesoamericana. Palabras clave: transmisión, cosmovisión, tradición oral, infancia, grupo doméstico. Abstract. For the Nahuas of Sierra de Texcoco, near Mexico City, the Ahuaques or pluvial deities are hostile spirits who dwell in springwaters. Eleven or twelve years old children assimilate this particular aspect of the local cosmovision through stories that are told by older relatives inside their domestic group. Based on information from questionnaires and interviews realized in anthropological fieldwork, the paper emphasizes on the different types of those stories and the relatives who tell them, and shows the crucial role played by those children in the reproduction process of a Mesoamerican tradition belief system.

Jair Bolsonaro’s victory is likely to further reduce investments in several of Brazil’s strategic sectors, such as education and other important departments concerning the development of the nation and the quality of life of Brazilians, as these are not the priority issues for his government (Editorial 2018). The prioritization and maintenance of existing investments in strategic institutions, particularly in Brazilian universities, is important to promote the development of the nation, because almost all research produced in the country is performed in these institutions (ABC 2019). Such research includes the studies aimed, for example, at preserving the environment and combating the use of pesticides. The reduction in financial resources allocated to the two federal environmental agencies, the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA) and the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio), is of particular significance when considering environmental issues. It should be considered a threat to nature, and especially to the world’s largest rainforest, the Amazon, which has been affected by deforestation and biodiversity decline for years. Many Brazilian scientists estimate that almost 7,000 km2 of the Amazon had been deforested by 2017 (Tollefson 2018), which can further increase deforestation in this region, as it happened in 2019. That is, according to the data from the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE 2019), deforestation in the Amazon region due to fires and the acceleration of mining activities increased by 29.54% in 2019, a significant rise compared to 2018 (Brazilian National Institute for Space Research 2019). Natural resources and ecosystems in Brazil continue to disappear, and getting support from the universities, development agencies, research institutes and indigenous communities at this time is of crucial importance.

These notes reflect on the unreserved collaborative essence of Kanymarda Yuwa/Two Laws (Cavadini and Strachlan, 1981). Its re-release draws us once again back to the core of the story’s existence – ‘the people of Borroloola’. It fundamentally re-asserts some of the messages of Borroloola Elders and community and highlights the continuing impacts of a more sophisticated
colonial agenda.

La leyenda apapocúva-guaraní de la “Tierra Sin Mal” irrumpe en la literatura americanista de la mano de Curt U. Nimuendajú en 1914. Este texto sugiere una conexión significativa entre un contenido de creencia particular y determinados hechos más generales como las migraciones tupí-guaraní, el factor étnico, la pulsión mesiánica, la religiosidad profética, la ritualidad exuberante o las representaciones escatológicas; todos estos ingredientes serán luego retomados –dosificados e interpretados de manera diferente– por cada uno de los autores que a la vera de Alfred Métraux utilizaron el tema como hilo conductor de sus investigaciones. Mito apapocúva, mito tupí-guaraní, mito amerindio, leyenda cultural o meta explícita de la nueva constitución política del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia, la exégesis misma de la “Tierra Sin Mal” no deja de ser una variación más sujeta al proceso mitopoiético, y su misma trayectoria puede ser por tanto analizada en clave de una mito-lógica. Palabras clave: Guaraní; Tierra Sin Mal; Mito-lógica.

People who perpetrate colonialism often defend their actions as necessary responses to real or perceived crises. Epistemologies of crisis involve knowing the world in such a way that a certain present is experienced as new. I will discuss newness in terms of the presumptions of unprecedentedness and urgency. In contradistinction to an epistemology of crisis, I will suggest that one interpretation of certain Indigenous intellectual traditions emphasizes what I will just call here an epistemology of coordination. Different from crisis, coordination refers to ways of knowing the world that emphasize the importance of moral bonds—or kinship relationships—for generating the (responsible) capacity to respond to constant change. Epistemologies of coordination are conducive to responding to expected and drastic changes without validating harm or violence.

Song and dance are a traditional means of strengthening culture and passing knowledge to successive generations in the Torres Strait of northeastern Australia. Dances incorporate a range of apparatuses to enhance the performance, such as dance machines (Zamiyakal) and headdresses (Dhari). The dances, songs, headdresses and dance machines work together to transfer important knowledge about subsistence survival, social structure, and cultural continuity. This paper explores how celestial phenomena inspire and inform music and dance.

Media activists who are women, queer, trans, Indigenous and/or people of colour are shifting mediascapes through intersectional autonomous journalism practices. This community-based co-research project analyses data from six semi-structured focus group workshops with media activists, who identify a contradictory logic between mainstream and alternative journalism. Two distinct autonomous journalism practices emerge that complement and extend traditional horizontal prefigurative media activist practices through an attentiveness to intersectional identities and interlocking systems of oppression. In rooted direct-action journalism, grassroots autonomous journalists collectively report from a perspective rooted in the concerns of the movement, creating media as a direct-action tactic; whereas in solidarity journalism, autonomous journalists report across movements in solidarity with intersectionally marginalised groups and communities. We argue that, emphasising intersectional mutual aid, relationship building, consent, accountability and content co-creation, these value-based practices have begun to shift dominant media and cultural logics. Finally, we offer critical reflections on some of the challenges inherent in these practices, including a meta-analysis of the intersectional value practices in our activist co-research methodology.

This article presents the participatory evaluation of four Community Communication Spaces (ECC for their initials in Spanish) that produce radio and video in the States of Oaxaca and Puebla, in Mexico. The ECC have been developed by Ojo de Agua, an NGO with more than ten years of experience in indigenous video production with the financial assistance of the government of the Basque Country in its initial stage. The methodology we designed had four stages: a) the systematization and summary of ten years of experience of Ojo de Agua, emphasizing its long term goals and the causes and consequences of their main problems and achievements; b) the ideas of Ojo de Agua regarding the ECC and its relationship with them in the medium and long terms and; c) the  ideas of the participants of the ECC about their everyday practices, their participation in the ECC, and the possible repercussions in their communities. Inspired in the tradition of popular education, for each of these stages we used participatory techniques to stimulate analysis and reflection. We are currently processing the data gathered in the three stages. Preliminary findings describe the participative nature of the evaluation and analyze the relationship between Ojo de Agua and the four ECC.

In February 2007 we embarked on an Australian Research Council (ARC) project led by Yolŋu elder Joseph Gumbula to explore his people’s recorded history in the University of Sydney Archives. The aims of this initiative were to identify and assess some of the earliest photographic and written records of Yolŋu life in north- east Arnhem Land and to make them accessible to their source communities in Miliŋinbi (Milingimbi) and Galiwin’ku on Elcho Island. Other central aims were for us to work consultatively with these communities to determine their ongoing access requirements to the university’s archived materials, and to consider how emerging digital technologies might be deployed to facilitate secure remote access at the local level. This was the first ARC project of any kind to be led by aYolŋu Chief Investigator. It focused on materials held in the University of Sydney Archives that include many photographic negatives and prints taken at Miliŋinbi by the anthropologist WL Warner and the missionary TT Webb from 1926 onwards. First seen by Gumbula in 2005, these images had been absorbed into a much larger series of materials within the AP Elkin Personal Archives (named after the university’s Professor of Anthropology from 1933–56, yet including records dating from his department’s creation in 1926). These early records are now of great importance to the Yolŋu, who have come to view their return home in the spirit of gifting and reciprocity found in traditional exchange ceremonies.

Le point de départ de cet article est la thèse développée en 1991 par Isabelle Combès et Thierry Saignes sur la naissance de l’ethnie et l’identité chiriguano, « essentiellement » métisses. Le rapport au métissage  des Chiriguano et Chané semble paradoxal. Bien qu’ils soient considérés comme un exemple paradigmatique de métissage amérindien, certains points de vue contemporains condamnent l’ethnie à la disparition à cause, précisément, du métissage avec les Blancs. Les Chiriguano et Chané, quant à eux, rejettent aujourd’hui toute idée de mélange, se proclamant seulement « Guaraní ». À partir d’une double étude de cas (l’Isoso bolivien et le nord-ouest argentin), on relativise d’abord le postulat de la complète absorption des Chané dans l’ensemble chiriguano ; on analyse ensuite les différents types de métissage existants et leur relation dans un schéma asymétrique que crée une véritable échelle de valeurs entre différentes ethnies. On suggère finalement que l’ambivalence idéologique qui entoure le métissage découle précisément du fait qu’il s’agit d’une construction elle-même métisse, produit de la fusion entre les idéologies chané et guaraní.

En el artículo se analiza el sentido de la comunicación indígena en Colombia desde la perspectiva de los Colectivos Vientos del Consejo Regional Indígena - CRIHU- y el movimiento “Tejido de Comunicación” de la Asociación de Cabildos Indígenas del Norte del Cauca- ACIN. Se entiende la comunicación propia como la simbólica, territorial, familiar, político organizativa y la apropiada como radio, tv, uso de herramientas tecnológicas y plataformas digitales. En estas comunidades la comunicación se articula a procesos políticosculturales ligados a la acción movilizadora. Para la recolección de datos se recurrió a la etnografía digital, entrevistas abiertas, paneles y la observación participante. Se advierte que es necesario reconocer, fortalecer, investigar y participar en la construcción de la comunicación en este tipo de comunidades.

This paper explores how and why ancient Indigenous societies, exchanged information. The emergence of symbolic productions or early languages is explored through scholarly work provided by archaeologists and anthropologists, as well as others such as paleobiologists and paleogeologists. Ancient communication forms are described with respect to the following dimensions: the media used, the motifs, designs and colors depicted, location, diffusion through time and space, and some specific social uses. Information about birthing, habitat, orientation, transportation, hunting and life skills, and religious/cosmological beliefs is also included.

The growing pressure to decolonize and Indigenize cultural and educational organizations has exposed the paradoxes and difficulties of developing more generative relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, including non-Indigenous communities that are themselves targets of systemic violence. Our work examines the complexities and paradoxes of decolonization and Indigenization, including multiple understandings, conflicting aspirations, contradictory desires, institutional instrumentalizations, heterogeneity within and between Indigenous communities and enduring limitations of efforts in this area. This article offers an analysis of common harmful patterns of relationship that are often reproduced in efforts to "include" Indigenous peoples in non-Indigenous organizations in what is known as Canada. We emphasize that these patterns are difficult to communicate/translate to non-Indigenous audiences, and therefore we invite readers to engage with these patterns using different points of entry. We start with an overview of the work of the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures arts/research/ecology collective and the "Towards Braiding" mode of inquiry, which provide the context for our work. Next, we use this mode of inquiry to present three telling scenarios that illustrate how Indigeneity is consumed in non-Indigenous contexts and institutions. We conclude the article with a reflection about the difficult path towards non-consumptive modes of engagement with Indigenous peoples grounded on long-term relations rooted in trust, respect, reciprocity, consent and accountability i and where difficult conversations can happen without relations falling apart.

This article refutes dominant views that define evangelical indigenous media as intrinsic tools for religious indoctrination. The case of the Colombian Misak community shows that evangelical radio stations can contribute to community building. However, the degree of the positive or negative contribution of evangelical media depends on the dominance of evangelical presence at indigenous localities. The rapid expansion of indigenized evangelical groups via the provision of social services has radicalized Evangelicals against views different from their own. As a result, these evangelical media are progressively leaving their role as promoters of positive social change to become tools for religious indoctrination.

Tesis doctoral depositada en la Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
Los pueblos indígenas de América Latina han recuperado la palabra. Sin intermediarios ventrílocuos, son capaces de movilizar las distintas dimensiones en las que interviene la comunicación en los ámbitos intra e intercultural. Esto ha sucedido a partir de la emergencia del movimiento indígena en el continente, y ha evolucionado a la par que otros movimientos, estableciendo la diferencia identitaria como eje de su discurso. El hecho está inmerso además en la Sociedad de la Información, y son numerosos los retos que aún afrontan para relacionarse en este entorno desde una posición de autonomía; retos que se relacionan con su autorrepresentación y su emplazamiento en las relaciones de poder. Pero, más allá de presentar resistencia a la aculturación, los Sistemas de Comunicación Indígena se adentran en la articulación de proyectos. Entre ellos, el proyecto del Buen Vivir y su discurso ecosocial se sitúan como las estrategias comunicativas del futuro inmediato de los pueblos indígenas, y contiene los elementos adecuados para constituir un marco dominante de acción colectiva en el que puedan confluir otros movimientos sociales.

La fiesta del arete es tradicionalmente el rito más importante de la vida religiosa chané. Se trata de un evento festivo anual de gran complejidad, que en sus fases de inicio, desarrollo y cierre involucra un buen número de prohibiciones simbólicas y prescripciones rituales, referencias al simbolismo y al horizonte cosmológico, convites de bebidas, danzas, luchas rituales, la renovación de la cosmogonía, la escenificación de las relaciones interétnicas, una reflexión colectiva sobre el problema de la temporalidad y finalmente la destrucción ritual de todos los elementos de la fiesta. El elemento que aquí interesa examinar de manera particular es uno de los tantos tipos de máscara que aparecen en las jornadas finales de la celebración. Se trata de las aña-häti, que según revelan la etimología de su nombre, los testimonios nativos y las observaciones de la literatura etnográfica, están estrechamente ligadas con el alma de los muertos –llamadas, justamente, aña. Sin embargo, no es menos cierto que esta relación tan íntima origina interpretaciones abusivas: así, sin mayores precauciones exegéticas, se señala con ligereza que los chané creen literalmente que estas aña-häti 'son' los espíritus de los muertos. Nuestra intención aquí consiste, justamente, en examinar con cierto cuidado esa sola idea; no para negar su realidad, sino más bien para problematizarla al restituirla a su contexto de sentido correspondiente, advirtiendo matices que revelen en qué medida es lícito –si es que lo es– traducir la vaga, nebulosa y presentida identificación entre enmascarados y muertos a equivalentes de ideas como 'transformación', 'posesión' o 'encarnación'. Parece imperioso, en este sentido, realizar una revisión crítica de la presunta credulidad de los chané, haciendo el esfuerzo de evitar algunas de las trampas que nuestras categorías y nuestro propio lenguaje nos imponen en la labor de traducción.

Late Colonial documents about Bolivian Amazonia show the ubiquity of «Pacaguara» Indians. However, during the second half of the 20th Century, several discourses by missionaries, scientists, politicians and even journalists regret the imminent extinction of the «the last of the Pacaguaras», hardly a dozen individuals settled with the Chacobo of Alto Ivon since the 1960s. Contrary to this fatalism, the National Census of 2012 reveals a surprising number of 161 Pacaguara. The paradoxical reasons of this demographic boom are discussed in terms of the indigenous and external manipulation of the representations of ethnic identity. KEYWORDS: Ethnicity, Pacaguara, Indigenous Peoples, Endangered Languages and Peoples, Interethnic Relations, Social Representations.

The National Recording Project for Indigenous Performance in Australia (NRP) was conceived in 2002 and launched at the Garma Festival in north-east Arnhem Land in August 2004. The primary motivations behind the NRP were as much philosophical as they were pragmatic. First, those of us who envisioned the potential usefulness of such an initiative were dissatisfied at the way that Indigenous communities were rarely able to access, within their own localities, the decades of recorded materials held in collections worldwide that documented their cultural heritage. So to encourage collectors to make their recordings immediately available to their source communities, rather than stockpiling them in shoeboxes under their desks as in many instances in decades past, we have since fostered a national network of interested people from academic, technical and Indigenous community backgrounds through the NRP, which is working collaboratively towards this end. Fundamentally, the NRP aims to develop a national digital repository through which all Indigenous communities in Australia will be able to store and access any existing and future recordings of their music and dance heritage from within their own home towns. Second, we seek to achieve this aim by sustaining a collegial network through which leading Indigenous cultural exponents can share information and shape new strategies for content delivery with recognised world leaders in the field of digital archiving and sustainable repositories.

Culture is a key resource for tourism. Any destabilisation of a local culture makes a destination less attractive for visitors. It is therefore in the interest of tour providers to protect and restabilise culture. Tourism needs to employ policies that ensure the maintenance of indigenous cultures. But the dominant, globalised culture often does not even respect the traditional physical appearance of persons belonging to indigenous cultures, which, in tropical areas, is often unclothed. Indigenous persons would have a slim chance to be acknowledged as citizens, let alone apply for a passport, unless they submit themselves to the dominant standards. This situation contrasts sharply with some basic claims of the global culture. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples clearly demands the acceptance of indigenous lifestyles. Despite this safeguard, the dominant culture is now poised to extinguish any reminder of what has been typical for the human species for most of its history. This book chapter analyses the specific contact situations of dominant and dominated culture from where problems arise, and then presents  effective interventions. It starts with theoretical considerations from a psychological perspective, and then explains the methodology of the minimally invasive approach and its application.

This paper gives insights into the ways an Indigenous group has continued to teach and learn their language(s) during the COVID-19 pandemic. As an insider researcher from this community, I draw upon observations and dialogue among my people globally, as part of an inquiry into our language sustainability. Although social distancing and border closures hindered communal gatherings, this cohort continued to teach and learn their language(s). Many used digital forums such as social media, Zoom and Facebook to facilitate their language transmission. This article shares how this group has been able to maintain and sustain their language(s) in a time of global crisis, may their story support the Indigenous language fight.

Any appeal to a right raises the question of a corresponding duty. If one bears a right, then who bears the duty to respect, protect, and enforce that right? In this essay, I contend that human rights claims need not be oriented to or reliant on the state. I start from and conclude with lessons from the 2016 protests at Standing Rock. Standing Rock, I argue, exemplifies critical theory that organizes communities through the language of human rights.

Link: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/802487

The Huamantla Map is a cartographic and historical manuscript, painted by speakers of the Otomi language in the eastern Tlaxcala province on a large rectangle of fig-bark paper during the final third of the 16 th century. Originally measuring approximately 7.0 by 1.9 meters, it represents a strip of land extending from the mountains northwest of the Valley of Mexico to the southeastern slope of La Malinche volcano. Within this geographic setting, designed in the native central Mexican tradition, the collective past of the Otomi of Huamantla is depicted, superimposing a narrative structure on the landscape. The story begins with the emergence of sacred ancestors from a primordial cave in cosmological time and ends with the adaptation of the native lords of Huamantla to Spanish colonial rule. The exceptionally large format of this environmentally embedded and socially situated cognitive tool suggests certain types of bodily interaction with its surface, at the time of its execution and during public performances of the story it contains. On a smaller scale, the meaningful placement of pictorial representations of human bodies within this pictorial space provides a path to reflection on the way the Otomi perceived their relationship with the geographic, cultural, and political landscape surrounding them. Resumen: El Mapa de Huamantla es un manuscrito cartográfico e histórico, pintado por otomíes del oriente de la provincia de Tlaxcala sobre un gran rectángulo de papel de amate durante el último tercio del siglo XVI. En su estado original, medía alrededor de 7.0 por 1.9 metros; representa una franja de tierra que se extiende desde las montañas al noroeste del valle de México hasta la falda oriental del volcán La Malinche. Dentro de este entorno geográfico, diseñado dentro de la tradición pictórica indígena del centro de México, se representa el pasado colectivo de los otomíes de Huamantla, sobreponiendo una estructura narrativa al paisaje. La historia inicia con el surgimiento de los antepasados sagrados en el tiempo cosmogónico y termina con la adaptación de los señores indios de Huamantla al dominio colonial español. El formato de esta herramienta cognitiva, socialmente situada, es excepcionalmente grande; esto sugiere ciertos tipos de interacción corporal con su superficie, tanto en el momento de su ejecución como en las actuaciones públicas de la historia que encierra. En una escala menor, la colocación significativa de las representaciones de cuerpos humanos dentro del espacio cartográfico permite la reflexión acerca de cómo los otomíes percibían su relación con el paisaje geográfico, cultural y político que les rodeaba.

Digital media in the Indian perspective is vastly diverse from the other cultures of the world. The internet revolution comes with the challenge of selective language accessibility online, as well as limited language options used for the dissemination of information by digital media platforms. There is scarcity of languages in the digital space, as the internet is not exposed to all the languages of the world, thus restricting its reach to some of the most used global languages as well as the people using them. This means that a large number of people speaking other languages are left without using and benefitting from the various online platforms. India has a huge collection of languages. These languages are grouped as official, vernacular, local, classical and indigenous languages. These languages are used throughout the nation according to the literacy, knowledge, cultural inclination and preference of an individual. The relationship of the ordinary Indian and the digital space is a definite test when it comes to language diversity. While there has been a steady rise in the literacy of the tribes but the participation of the tribal scribes in mainstream media is almost insignificant. The tribal language print media circulation remains negligible or more-or less non-existent. The present paper studies the growth and existence of Santhali language in the digital media space. It also gives an insight into the digital media divide based on language and the entry of the digital media into the Indian indigenous language space.

Somalia has a long history and well known figures who developed unique systems of governance, which allowed economic development, social harmony and political participation long before the colonial occupation. The history of the Jama'a of Baardheere offers one such example. This work part of a larger project exploring the Jama'a system of administration, structure of governance,

In 2014, the government of Western Australia proposed a plan to defund, and in effect close, about half of the nearly three hundred remote Aboriginal communities in the state. During this time, the author collaborated on a hand sign video project with five women Elders at the Kapululangu Women’s Law and Culture Centre in Balgo, an Aboriginal community in the Great Sandy Desert. The author articulates why Marumpu Wangka! Kukatja Hand Talk—an unassuming and largely improvised video—struck a chord at this precarious moment for Aboriginal communities. The author argues that hand sign videos provide a rare mode of intercultural engagement that is simultaneously culturally specific and broadly relatable. In a mediascape in which most Australian viewers are inundated with visual tropes of Aboriginal communities as either suffering or mystical, representations of jovial gesture encourage understanding beyond these stereotypes by intimately engaging everyday community interaction. Referencing the supplemental eight-minute video throughout, the author (1) overviews the significance of hand sign systems in Aboriginal Australian communities, (2) describes the collaborative and improvised hand sign video production process, and (3) argues for the importance of visual representations that can transcend—even if modestly—settler/Indigenous divides during the current dangerous times for Aboriginal communities.

This dissertation addresses the inherent social and political impacts engendered by the materiality of the internet and the societal dynamics of infrastructure. With a focus on the information circulation infrastructure of the internet, this is a study of internet governance and design. Specifically, this dissertation makes a first effort in internet governance scholarship to examine governance by internet exchange points (IXPs). It aims to illuminate sociotechnical aspects of IXPs, and reveal the controversies behind them and the social, political, and public values at stake. For that, the research focuses on the significance of IXPs in terms of three pathways: the rights’ vectors of interconnection deployment, the infrastructural interdependencies between the global North and global South, and the search for bodies in the making of surveillance through internet infrastructure.

Guided by science and technology studies (STS) and actor network theory (ANT) as methods to unveil power relations in loco, and decolonial and feminist studies to build on epistemologies of the South, this dissertation uses qualitative methods, such as ethnography of infrastructure and code ethnography, to investigate primary data, along with quantitative methods to analyze secondary data. The methods involve the analysis of 1) the merging of four IXPs datasets; 2) Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) data of the largest IXP in the global South, IX.br São Paulo; and in the global North, DE-CIX Frankfurt; and 3) ethnographic data collected in Brazil, Germany and Mexico.

The contributions are made along six chapters. In Chapter 1, previous works on IXPs in network engineering are examined, and the dissertation’s theoretical framework, methodology and methods are presented. Chapter 2 shows how Tseltal and Zapoteco communities, in Oaxaca and Chiapas, Mexico, are infrastructuring their wireless networks to reach the larger internet, and how the very moment of network interconnection becomes key to understanding the role of internet infrastructure to challenge and co-produce societal values. Chapter 3 examines the development of the first IXP in Mexico City and reveals how the narrative of potential social benefits from an IXP are not realized in a market of low telecommunications and internet competition.
Consequently, it exposes the resultant disparity and lost link between an IXP embedded in commercial values and the need for internet access by indigenous communities, distant, not only territorially, from that IXP.
In Chapters 4 and 5, the global North and the global South are analyzed symmetrically in the IXP ecosystem, in order to make visible both the consistent concealment of the South in the study of internet infrastructure and how illuminating its role leverages our public understanding of internet interconnection politics. Specifically, these chapters rebut the paradigm of “free flow” of information revealing that, instead, the internet is marked by a one-way flow in which giant IXPs in the North benefit from both their common interests with big content delivery networks and the lack of infrastructural resources in the South.
Finally, Chapter 6 explores how an IXP becomes an instrument of state surveillance by showing the dynamics of the German state to collect data through DE-CIX, exploiting the design affordances of this giant IXP.

By unveiling a case that makes explicit the manufacturing of the “turn to infrastructure to control information” involving public and private actors, the chapter problematizes the extraterritorial effects of a global North country jurisdiction. It also reframes data packets to be conceptually understood as potential information and the virtualization of our bodies that traverse the information circulation infrastructure of the internet attracting the interest of opportunistic actors. The conclusions make recommendations and suggestions for future studies.

This dissertation moves IXPs to a different “mode of existence,” beyond the ones sustained by network engineering scholarship. It touches on key and urgent contemporaneous communication issues, and seek to bring theoretical, empirical and methodological contributions to internet governance policy and scholarship.

En el proceso de construcción de la categoría de ciudadano en Colombia han primado prácticas constitutivas excluyentes, fundadas en una división sistemática entre individuos considerados dignos de ser ciudadanos e homines sacri (Agamben), es decir, hombres marginados y sacrificables. Dichas prácticas han contribuido a la formación de espacios de tolerancia de dinámicas de dominación necropolítica (Mbembe). El nororiente del Cauca es un caso de territorio en donde se ha sido permitido un ejercicio constante de necropolíticas, manifestadas tanto en el actuar de los centros de poder como en sus construcciones discursivas. Sin embargo, en una región históricamente capaz de generar epicentros de resistencias, ¿las comunidades locales se piensan en tanto marginadas?, ¿cuáles imaginarios de disidencia se están produciendo en el territorio? El presente artículo se orienta a la indagación de las respuestas más actuales elaboradas desde la comunidad nasa del Cauca. El proceso investigativo se centra en el análisis de la configuración y del uso de nuevas prácticas discursivas en el texto Entre la emancipación y la captura (2017) de la escritora Vilma Almendra, quien, a través de un trabajo de textura de voces comunitarias, se propone replicar a las marginalizaciones impuestas por medio de un replantamiento descolonizador de la función de la palabra, con el fin de proteger el “territorio del imaginario” de las intervenciones estatales y paraestatales.

Indigenous knowledge journeys involve talk, story, song, dance, dream, being on country. But research carries a legacy of exploitation for oppressed peoples. Indigenous theories and methodologies open up decolonising ways to transform shared meaning making experiences (Smith 1999) (Sherwood 2010). This study explores cultural powers of Garrwa resurgence through story research renewal of Ngabaya and Darrbarrwarra traditions as music videos. Garrwa are under threat from mining in South West Gulf country, Northern Territory. This exegesis focuses on three spheres, sharing how vibrant cultural powers are intergenerational and interrelational, sourced in the Yigan (dreaming creation) and passed down through ancestors, Elders, family, clan (Hoosan 2018). It re-orientates Garrwa video practice into greater resonance with visual/aural sovereignty (Raheja 2010) (Behrendt 2016) and Indigenous storywork where interrelatedness is a “synergistic interaction between storyteller, listener, and story” (Archibald 2008:32). Yarnbar Jarngkurr is described by Elders as voices and stories that shape renewal of the relational world through song, dance, ceremony and ancient land practices (McDinny 2017). In transforming perceptions and understandings we must seek unity in meaning making (Van Leeuwen 2017). Yarnbar Jarngkurr is an Indigenous Theory of Transformation (Pihama 2018) and creative Indigenous methodology for visioning and enacting Garrwa self determination.

The presence of reports in the big mass media spreading the existence of isolated indigenous people in the Amazon forest has grown exponentially over the last years. Such movement is associated mainly due to the onslaughts of a “developmental” nature that is moving forward to lands that are most wanted from the predatory capitalism, along with persistent illegal activities looking for timber and other resources from the forest. Yet, Brazil is a reference when it comes to protection measures to such indigenous communities, and this reputation is due mostly to policies related to demarcation of lands, highlighting the demarcation of an indigenous area exclusively to isolated people in 1996: the indigenous land called Massaco, in the state of Rondônia. In order to enable the land demarcation, it was necessary to create innovations regarding demarcation procedures, in which, as a matter of course, must host the attendance of the indigenous themselves when defining their traditional territory. Regarding the Massaco’s area, it was by the track and traces from an indigenous group that their territory and existence have been defined, while their image is still being designed as an ongoing study of the artifacts found, forsaken Camps, appearance reports and distance observations: they cannot be heard, obviously, therefore they cannot define “their” own territory. The aim of this research is to explore the debates related to the identification of such groups in order to, subsequently, investigate how the land demarcation took place, as well as seeking the knowledge of how their image remains continuously under negotiation at the politics scope for the isolated indigenous people from Rondônia and the Brazilian Amazon.

When we examine psychoanalytic theory the burning question that should occupy our time should concern where the complex of ideas that constitute Western civilization originated, how they originated, and whether they have any realistic correspondence to what we can observe and expreince in nature. I think they do not correspond, and I wonder quite often and quite profoundly if the Western psyche has been interfered with at some remote time in planetary history." (Deloria Jr. 1999b, p. 30) 'Primal Feminine Dominion' "Let me emphasize neolithic man's concentration on organic life and growth: not merely a sampling and testing of what nature had provided, but a discriminating selection and propagation, to such good purpose that historic man had not added a plant or animal of major importance to those domesticated or cultivated by neolithic communities. Domestication in all its aspects implies two large changes: permanence and continuity in residence, and the exercise of control and foresight over processes once subject to the caprices of nature. With this go habits of gentling and nurturing and breeding. Here woman's needs, woman's solicitudes, woman's intimacy with the process of growth, woman's capacity for tenderness and love, must have played a dominating part." (Mumford 1961, p. 12) "Under woman's dominance, the neolithic period is pre-eminently one of containers… It was in permanent containers that neolithic invention outshone all earlier cultures…" (Mumford 1961, p. 16) Whether we accept the notion of a feminine principle associated with love, care, regeneration, resiliency-with the qualities of darkness and the night-or not, and while we should surely reject the patriarchal undertones in Mumford's work, it is clear that Mumford's summation of woman's 'dominating part' clearly illustrates his subjugation to the Artificial Worldview and its assumptions concerning the relationship between order and domination. Femininity, like masculinity, need not play a dominating part… The feminine principle, which, like the masculine principle, exists in all people regardless of their biological identity, can just as easily be seen as playing a reciprocal, harmonious role of power with (power with the order of nature, power with the masculine principle, power with our plant and animal kin, etc.) rather than a domineering role of power over. What is more, the notion of 'permanent containers' is as problematic as the notion of 'permanent dwellings'-better that we say long term rather than permanent, for nothing with a beginning lacks an end… This is the same distinction we have attempted to draw between the quest for life extension and the quest to 'conquer death' (to 'eat death') and thus attain 'permanent life'.

In  what  sense  do  we  speak  of  the planetary university? This  essay  belongs  to  a  more  comprehensive, still  unpublished reflection  that the authors have been developing over  the  past  years  while teaching  and  doing  research in Italy  and  abroad. However,  the essay  delineates  neither  the  situation  of  single  academic institutions, nor  a  general picture obtained by induction starting  from a variety of observational data. Rather,  it  attempts  to clarify,  in  the  specific  situation in which the authors  operate,  the powers  that  act  upon  teaching  and  research  once  they  let  themselves  be  informed  by  the laws  of  the  earth  turned  into  a  planet, that is,  in the words  of  common  language, by the new order of the globalized earth.