Conversations with Spirits and Humans: What is Communication from a Latin American Indigenous Perspective?

• In Event: Indigenous Knowledges and Technologies - III

Abstract

This papers examines how Indigenous peoples from different nations in Latin America understand and use communication from an indigenous perspective. Based on an extensive literature review of documents produced by (mainly) Indigenous men and women from Colombia, Ecuador and México, and on ongoing research with Indigenous communicators (broadcasters, filmmakers, journalists, digital media makers) for the past 10 years I discuss five dimensions of communication as defined and used by first nations in Latin America.
Departing from a decolonial perspective and drawing on the work of Anibal Quijano (2000) and Walter Mignolo (2002) I argue that Indigenous peoples use communication for decolonization purposes. Communication is a key aspect of their ongoing struggles for self-determination and autonomy and the ways they understand and use communication embodies ancestral knowledges (de la Cadena 2015, Tuhiwai Smith 2012) as well as technological appropriations (Ginsburg 1991, Schiwy, 2009).
The five dimensions of communication from a Latin American Indigenous perspective I have identified, and will discuss in detail in this paper, are: 1) Communication as a political strategy, 2) Communication as a Right, 3), Communication as a Cosmovision, 4) Communication as a practice that has products and 5) Communication as a way for community self-reflexivity. These dimensions exemplify the capacity of Indigenous Peoples from Latin America to produce new knowledges and answers to the ongoing yet ever-changing threats to their lives and territories making a contribution to the field of Indigenous STS.

Author

• Claudia Magallanes-Blanco, UNIVERSIDAD IBEROAMERICANA PUEBLA