Beyond Pluralism and Media Rights: Indigenous Communication for a Decolonizing Transformation of Latin America and Abya Yala

• Author: Kathryn Lehman
• Published date: 01 May 2018
• Date: 01 May 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X18766911
• Subject Matter: Articles

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 220, Vol. 45 No. 3, May 2018, 171–192

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X18766911

© 2018 Latin American Perspectives

171

Beyond Pluralism and Media Rights

Indigenous Communication for a Decolonizing

Transformation of Latin America and Abya Yala

by

Kathryn Lehman

In resisting genocidal projects of modernity since the Conquest and their most recent

phase, neoliberalism, indigenous peoples have provided leadership in maintaining plural-

ist societies and protecting the rights of all living beings. This role is little known even to

many on the left because of the history of the nation-state and current communications

and research practices. Drawing on community-based autonomous alternatives to neolib-

eralism, indigenous media contribute to twenty-first-century Latin American participa-

tory democracy and plurinational socialism by defending communication as a basic

human right. They evoke a long history of place-based narratives whose values are encoded

in language, and their epistemologies are strengthened by transnational indigenous com-

munication networks and practices. Moving beyond pluralism and media rights, indige-

nous communication transforms media practices in order to decolonize relations among

humans, other living beings, and the environment that sustains life.

Al resistir los proyectos genocidas de la modernidad desde la Conquista y, su más

reciente fase, el neoliberalismo, los pueblos indígenas han tomado una posición líder en el

acto de mantener sociedades pluralistas y proteger los derechos de todos los seres vivos.

Esto es poco sabido, incluso por muchos en la izquierda, debido a la historia del estado-

nación y las prácticas actuales de comunicación e investigación. Basados en alternativas

autónomas comunales al neoliberalismo, los medios indígenas contribuyen a la democracia

participativa latinoamericana del siglo XXI y al socialismo plurinacional, a la vez que

defienden la comunicación como un derecho humano básico. Evocan una larga historia de

narrativas asentadas en lugares cuyos valores están codificados en el lenguaje, y sus epis-

temologías se ven reforzadas por las redes y prácticas transnacionales de comunicación

indígena. Al ir más allá del pluralismo y los derechos de los medios, la comunicación

indígena está transformando las prácticas mediáticas para descolonizar las relaciones

entre los seres humanos, otros seres vivos y el medio ambiente que sustenta la vida.

Keywords: Indigenous media, Participatory democracy, Plurinationalism,

Decolonization, Mapuche

Kathryn Lehman is cofounder of the New Zealand Centre for Latin American Studies at the

University of Auckland and coproducer of the documentary film People’s Media Venezuela. She

thanks the University of Auckland’s Te Whare Kura for support for this research, Joe Te Rito, and

the Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga for collaborating with the New Zealand Centre for Latin American

Studies in knowledge exchange with David Hernández Palmar, and Jeannette Paillan, Alfredo

Seguel, Ulises de la Orden, and Jason de Santolo for discussing their work with her.

766911LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X18766911Latin American PerspectivesLehman / INDIGENOUS COMMUNICATION FOR DECOLONIZATION

research-article2018

172 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

Latin America is a continent where indigenous peoples have made a huge contribution

to the construction of pluralist societies, in which the rights of all the peoples who have

shaped these different nation-states are guaranteed. Paradoxically, in the same region

there is evidence of high levels of discrimination against us; and in many cases our

fundamental claims are not understood by the rest of the society.

—Jeannette Paillan, 2014

Although indigenous place-names surround citizens in settler states, few

outside the indigenous community know the history of the cultures they rep-

resent because most information about indigenous peoples is disseminated

through mass culture industries and systems of communication and education

created by others. This article provides examples of the role of indigenous

media in promoting twenty-first-century Latin American participatory democ-

racy and plurinational socialism in order to foreground their leadership in

maintaining pluralist societies and protecting the rights of all living beings. The

focus is on their defense of autonomy of thought and communication as a basic

human right. Together these communication processes transform the purpose

of the media in order to decolonize relations among humans, other living

beings, and the environment that sustains life.

Major media corporations across Abya Yala (Kuna for “Life in Abundance”

or “Continent of Life,” a term used by many indigenous organizations to refer

to the Americas) often reinforce unique national identities in ways that normal-

ize ignorance of and even contempt for indigenous cultures and their histories.

An editorial in Argentina’s influential La Nación (October 22, 2014) reiterated

three inaccurate but commonly held assumptions that exemplify this practice:

that Argentina has no genuine indigenous peoples, that those that once lived

there came from Chile, and that those who demand recognition and rights

today are violent nonindigenous activists who attack private property. In the

United States, the National Congress of American Indians has faced a virtual

media blackout of its 45-year campaign to drop “Indian” sports mascots (NCAI,

2013). Although research provides evidence of their detrimental effects (Kim-

Prieto etal., 2010) and there is strong academic and popular support for this

campaign, major networks rarely interview indigenous people to allow them

to explain their position in their own terms (APA, 2005).

The Mapuche filmmaker Jeannette Paillan (2014: 2) summarizes Latin

American indigenous experience of these practices as follows: “When the

media don’t overlook us—which often happens—they depict us using exoti-

cism, stereotypes, and the abysmal distance of the Western gaze according to

its standards of progress.” I suggest here that citizens’ identity rests on a nation-

state communication system that promotes the idea of progress by maintaining

an image of indigenous peoples stuck in a remote past that renders their fun-

damental contemporary claims imperceptible, even for many on the left. This

system conceals the important contributions that indigenous peoples have

made to the major social transformations taking place across the world today.

Indigenous media are essential if citizens are to locate their own brief

Eurocentric national histories within the more comprehensive histories of those

who have survived genocide since the Conquest. A review of indigenous media

shows that these communities have retained memories of autonomous living