“Plenary on women in the Indigenous Communications during the II Continental Summit of Indigenous Communication. (PHOTO BY ORSETTA BELLANI)
On October 13, 2013 the Second Continental Summit of Indigenous Communication came to a conclusion. The meeting took place in the town of Santa Maria Tlahuitoltepec (Oaxaca, Mexico), and was an opportunity to think about the challenges that communicators in the Americas face: broadcasters, photographers, filmmakers, writers and journalists working in Indian television channels. They are adults, seniors, youths and even children who feel the urgent need to talk about the changing continent they live in. Some have just started small community projects, while others represent stable outlets in their countries, such as Canal 22 Nicaragua, which has the highest ratings in the area where it operates.
“Our traditional way of communicating has been orally, it´s the way we convey our indigenous languages. We need to rescue and strengthen communication without neglecting modern media,” says José Luis Matias Alonzo, documentary maker from the Nahua people in Guerrero, Mexico. The Indian media must learn how to combine tradition and modernity, and rescue their image given by state and commercial, which show them as folkloric, drunk and terrorists.”
The right of indigenous communication is recognized by various international conventions, but in many countries governments and de facto powers that do not allow its exercise.” In Honduras, the Lenca and Garifuna peoples work fully on community radio stations, and are strongly repressed by the authoritarian government”, says Wilma Calderon, from the Masta Miskito people organization. “The government is afraid because the radios broadcast information about what is actually happening in the country, for example about the hydroelectric concessions that are affecting the Lenca people.”
According to participants at Summit, the aim of community media is to report to the outside, while still communicating to the domestic market, through the use of the indigenous language that reflects the worldview of indigenous peoples. These media should enhance organizational processes, cohesion and indigenous identity, promoting a good life quality and the elimination of colonialism, racism and patriarchy.
According to Colombian misak Liliana Pachana Moila, who works on the creation of educational content for radios, “Indigenous media are a concern for governments, and even more in international fora like this. The Second Continental Summit of Indigenous Communication is very important because it allows us to strengthen our network of mutual support, so we can generate international leverage.”
People from different parts of the continent were excited to meet in order to share experiences, debate and strengthen their communities in this cold town at Sierra Norte of Oaxaca. The summit’s closing statement called on national governments to respect the rights of indigenous communication and to make the necessary legislative reforms, in order to recognize their autonomy and the electromagnetic spectrum as a common good, as well as to ensure the allocation to indigenous media of frequencies derived from the digital transition.
A number of proposals came out of the summit, such as the establishment of a Multimedia Indigenous Communication Platform Abya Yala as a tool for articulating indigenous communication processes and as a space of socialization.
Another important proposal was building a mobile school for indigenous communication that would allow the training of politically trained communicators: communicators as political leaders use the media as a forum to denounce the abuses suffered by indigenous peoples, autonomous from the government and the boards of their own organizations.
The word “autonomy” was often heard during the event, and there are different views on how it can be applied. Some believe that the state has to provide financing to community media without affecting their autonomy, those who think that by accepting money from the government, autonomy is not possible, and those who believe that they do have to accept public financing, but not by all levels of the government and only under certain conditions. In fact, many media boycotted the summit just because it received funding from the Secretariat of Communications and Transportation, which harasses numerous Mexican community radios.
In addition, defections were caused by the invitation to President Enrique Peña Nieto, considered responsible for human rights violations against indigenous peoples.
