Experience Of Native People Research Articles

Are the indigenous media community media? Experiences of native peoples’ media practices in Argentina

The study focuses on indigenous radio practices in Argentina under the implementation of the 2009 Law 26.522 on Audiovisual Communication Services, currently undergoing reform. This pioneering law recognised indigenous broadcasters, thereby satisfying the call of indigenous organisations, during the legislative process, for their right to ‘communication with identity’ to be included. Nevertheless, we believe that the application of the law has been weak overall, and that the legal definition of media is questionable. Furthermore, we have hypothesised that indigenous media are caught between de jure public ownership and de facto communal belonging. This hypothesis derives from a comparative analysis of the Argentinian legal framework and similar reforms implemented throughout Latin America, as well as from a dialogue between international studies on community media and the literature on indigenous media. In order to determine whether and in what terms indigenous media can be considered as community media, we carried out semi-structured interviews with key informants from indigenous communities who had been authorised to broadcast under the law’s implementation. We explored the genesis and objectives of their communication projects; programming and agendas; external relationships; internal organisation (with a focus on the sustainability strategies adopted); respondents’ definitions of ‘community communication’, ‘indigenous communication’ and ‘communication with identity’; and respondents’ opinions on the application of the law and its media definition. We found that many indigenous broadcasters in Argentina act as community media and resemble them ontically – that is to say, in how and why they remain in the (mediatised) public space. Nevertheless, indigenous radio is ontologically different from community media because it is often shaped by its ethnic identity, namely, who the indigenous peoples are and how they represent themselves in the (mediatised) public space.

History without Silos, Ignorance versus Knowledge, Education beyond Schools

Contributors to this thematic issue of theQuarterlycall education historians' scholarly attention to the particularities of Native histories and the diverse ways that Native people experience and think about our worlds. Their call to envision—or re-vision—histories of Indigenous education weaves together suggestive directions for productive scholarly inquiry. In my commentary, I focus on three of their main points. First, they note the unfortunate phenomenon of academic “silo-ization” that all too often leads to a disciplinary tunnel vision blocking our view of useful—even necessary—sources, archives, methods, evidence, perspectives, questions, and analytic frameworks. Second, they point out the vast and critical difference between two common interpretations of the phrase “American Indian education,” which is to say the difference between Indigenous self-education and colonial education of Indians by settlers and their institutions. Over the last five centuries, the divide between educationbyIndians and educationforIndians has been glaringly obvious to Native peoples but often conveniently ignored by others. That willful ignorance, of course, has been necessary to the settler colonial imperative to “eliminate the Native” and thus solidify settler claims to lands and national identity itself. Third, they make an urgent and timely call for more attention to Indigenous educational philosophies and practices in Indigenous contexts, that is,education(in Bailyn's terms) outside of the walls of (usually colonial)schools.They direct our attention to teaching, learning, and intergenerational transmission of knowledge embedded within and constitutive of Native histories.

Perspectives on an ecosystem approach to ecogenic challenges in the Great Laurentian Basin and beyond

During the past three centuries in North America, the science and practice of fisheries emerged pragmatically based on experiences of Native Peoples and on practices imported by invading Europeans. Achieving sustainability of high-value harvests became progressively more difficult with expansion of harvesting to low value fish and intensification of other cultural stresses that undercut natural production of the valued species. The history of fisheries has parallels in trapping, forestry, agriculture and other features of ‘development’ including disposal of wastes of all kinds. Further, adverse consequences of ‘conventional progress’ in one sector spilled over to undercut benefits in others. Features of an heuristic mindscape termed ‘ecogeny’, within which to address sustainability in evolving natural/cultural complexes, may be as old as human history. An ecogenic mindscape subsumes implicitly-shared conceptual and practical traditions in ecology, economics, ekistics, ecosophy and other eco-studies. Here ‘eco’ refers to a natural/cultural complex as a holonistic reality, both part and whole. Experimentation, reductionist analyses and quantitative models play important, but not sufficient, roles in this evolving understanding. Here I have situated my personal account, some eight decades long, within this emerging ecogenic mindscape as focused initially on fish and fisheries in the Laurentian Great Lakes Basin. Our lives are complex happenings, with events that cannot be forced into a linear spatio-temporal narrative. With many others, I participated in collaborative networks that addressed major issues in trans-cultural/trans-jurisdictional settings, each at several nested levels of ecogenic organization from local to global: identifying and correcting bad fishing and environmental practices to achieve sustainable high-value fisheries; diagnosing causes of observed degradation of aquatic ecosystems in order to suppress harmful, interacting stresses and achieve rehabilitation; strengthening earlier collaborative governance traditions among fishers and regulators; and assessing likely effects of climate warming on cold-blooded fish in their warming and otherwise stressed habitats. Large culturally-modified natural processes (sun, wind, rain) generate vast amounts of valued goods; but other culturally-modified natural processes (fire, flood, drought) also generate vast harm. Any manifestation of such goods and harms transcends the spatial boundaries of any particular private property or governmental jurisdiction. With just governance of good and/or bad ecogenic realities, both altruistic and selfish commitments need to be exercised fairly. Our networks’ policy goals were ecosystem integrity, sustainable use, just governance and caring stewardship, again at spatial levels of ecogenic organization from local to global. With ethical discourse, we engaged in adaptive co-management initiatives with iterative participation by scientific researchers, experts in computing, traditional knowledge stewards, resource harvesters, environmental users, governmental administrators, informed activists and econumenistic care-givers. Done carefully and transparently, this pragmatic kind of collaborative ‘science’ provides reliable insight that is relatively impervious to pseudo-scientific attacks from deniers promoting contrary agendas.