Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Challenges of Indigenous Research

2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 22; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13569325.2013.771628

1469-9575

Joanne Rappaport,

Latin American Cultural Politics

Abstract What constitutes indigenous research and what is its purpose? With whom should indigenous researchers negotiate? Inquiry into indigenous research tends to focus on those Native researchers who are academically trained. This article looks, instead, into how indigenous organizations set up infrastructures, both conceptual and administrative, to form grassroots researchers outside of the Academy, looking at: how they define research, what they think research is for, who constitutes the "community" toward which this research is oriented, and how these researchers use writing. The article focuses on several research initiatives taking place under the umbrella of the Consejo Regional Indígena del Cauca (Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca) in southwestern Colombia. Acknowledgements This article is the result of a continuing collaboration with the Programa de Educación Bilingue Intercultural (PEBI) and the Universidad Autónoma Indígena Intercultural (UAIIN) of the Consejo Regional Indígena del Cauca (CRIC) and with the Casa del Pensamiento of the Asociación de Cabildos Indígenas del Norte del Cauca Çxab Wala Kiwe (ACIN); the former, since 1995, and the latter, since 2011. I thank these organizations for inviting me to work with them. It was initially written for the 'Politics of Knowledge' conference, 21–22 June, 2011, University of Brasilia. A preliminary version of this article was read and commented on by members of the Casa del Pensamiento and a nonacademic version of it was published in their journal, Señas (Rappaport 2012 Rappaport, Joanne. 2012. Reflexiones sobre la investigación indígena. Señas, Revista de la Casa del Pensamiento de la Cxhab Wala Kiwe – ACIN, 2: 81–93. Santander de Quilichao [Google Scholar]); it was also presented in July 2012 at a seminar hosted by the Casa and by the Tejido de Educación, the education program of ACIN. I thank Les Field, Diana Granados, Rosalba Velasco, and the anonymous reviewer for Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies for their valuable commentaries on earlier drafts of this article. Notes 1 Cholsamaj publishes both works by Mayan and non-Mayan scholars, translations of books originally published in other languages, and classic Maya texts. See http://www.cholsamaj.org/libros_class_general.php for a list of Cholsamaj publications. Scholarly appreciations of these efforts include Stephenson (2002 Stephenson, Marcia. 2002. Forging an Indigenous Counterpublic Sphere: The Taller de Historia Oral Andina in Bolivia. Latin American Research Review, 37(2): 99–118. [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and Warren (1998 Warren, Kay B. 1998. Indigenous Movements and their Critics: Pan-Maya Activism in Guatemala, Princeton: Princeton University Press. [Google Scholar]). 2 Some of the classic publications of THOA are Condori Chura and Ticona Alejo (1992 Condori Chura, Leandro and Alejo, EstebanTicona. 1992. El escribano de los caciques apoderados, La Paz: THOA/Hisbol. [Google Scholar]) and Choque et al. (n.d. Choque, Roberto, Soria, Vitaliano, Mamani, Humberto, Ticona, Esteban and Conde, Ramón. n.d.. Educación indígena: ¿Ciudadanía o colonización?, La Paz: THOA. [Google Scholar]); among the earliest and most well known books coming out of Cholsamaj are Cojtí Cuxil (1997 Cojtí Cuxil, Demetrio. 1997. Políticas para la reivindicación de los mayas de hoy, Guatemala: Cholsamaj. [Google Scholar]) and Sam Colop (1991 Sam Colop, Enrique. 1991. Jub'aqtun omay kuchum k'aslemal: Cinco siglos de encubrimiento, Guatemala: Editorial Cholsamaj. [Google Scholar]). Most recently, a collective of Chilean Mapuche scholars working in the humanities and social sciences has made similar advances in terms of the publication of their work (Nahuelpan Moreno et al. 2011), although I am not certain about their development of a research infrastructure. 3 I will also refrain from comparative analysis, which is beyond the scope and intent of this paper. Readers seeking a broader vision of these projects should consult, among others, Mato (2009 Mato, Daniel, ed. 2009. Instituciones interculturales de educación superior en América Latina: Procesos de construcción, logros, innovaciones y desafíos, Caracas: Instituto Internacional de la Unesco para la Educación Superior en América Latina y el Caribe. [Google Scholar]). 4 CRIC is a regional indigenous organization founded in 1971 in the southwestern department of Cauca, Colombia. For a history of the organization, see Archila (2010 Archila, Mauricio. 2010. "Una historia del movimiento indígena del Cauca". In Movimiento indígena caucano: Historia y política, Edited by: Neira, Mauricio Archila and González, Nidia Catherine. 9–119. Tunja: Editorial Universidad Santo Tomás. [Google Scholar]); on its bilingual education program, see Rappaport (2005 Rappaport, Joanne. 2005. Intercultural Utopias: Public Intellectuals, Cultural Experimentation, and Ethnic Pluralism in Colombia, Durham: Duke University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). 5 The sole exception to this rule is a small number of linguists who studied in the MA in Ethnolinguistics at the Universidad de los Andes in the 1980s, although in the past decade there has been a growing number of Native students in Colombia's major regional and national universities. Some of them have chosen to work with indigenous organizations after graduation. 6 I have found virtually no discussion of this problem in the literature. 7 UAIIN also sponsors a number of non-degree programs in topics related to health and education. See Bolaños, Tattay, and Pancho (2008 Bolaños, Graciela, Tattay, Libia and Pancho, Avelina. 2008. "Universidad Autónoma, Indígena e Intercultural (UAIIN): Un proceso para fortalecer la educación propia y comunitaria en el marco de la interculturalidad". In Instituciones interculturales de educación superior en América Latina: Procesos de construcción, logros, innovaciones y desafíos, Edited by: Daniel, Mato. 155–90. Caracas: IESALC-UNESCO. [Google Scholar]) for a detailed consideration of UAIIN's objectives and its articulation with local indigenous authorities and Native schools; see also (Tattay Bolaños 2011 Tattay Bolaños, Libia. 2011. La 'educación propia' en territorios indígenas caucanos: Escenarios de hegemonía y resistencia., MA thesis in Anthropology, Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, Quito. [Google Scholar]). In cooperation with the indigenous university, Amawtay Wasi (Quito, Ecuador), and URACCAN, the Universidad de las Regiones Autónomas de la Costa Caribe Nicaragüense (Bilwi, Nicaragua), UAIIN is also building an MA in Development with Identity (Maestría en Desarrollo con Identidad); this project is supported by UNESCO. See UAIIN's web page for further information on the program: http://www.cric-colombia.org/index.php?option = com_content&view = article&id = 48&Itemid = 49. 8 Organizations like CRIC control the administration of public education in indigenous communities. 9 The complete name is Casa del Pensamiento de Çxab Wala Kiwe para el Fortalecimiento de Procesos Sociales y Comunitarios (House of Thought of Çxab Wala Kiwe for the Strengthening of Social and Community Projects). Çxab Wala Kiwe, a name in Nasa Yuwe, refers to Northern Cauca as the territory of the 'big house,' which is also a reference to Vitoncó, the distant village where Juan Tama, the Nasa culture hero and eighteenth-century hereditary lord, built his capital. CRIC is an umbrella organization for a series of zonal groups like ACIN. 10 Among the Minga's various demands: opposing free-trade agreements, rejecting legislation promoting the exploitation of natural resources without community consent, and calling for an end to the militarization of indigenous territory. An interview with Feliciano Valencia, a member of CRIC's leadership at the time and a long-time ACIN leader, highlights the movement's desire to 'search out new political processes and to unify in a diverse, multiethnic, and open agenda, into which all of us fit. Something the indigenous movement has never done before in Colombia. The Minga seeks to unite this sector, which has been historically excluded from the country, and to begin to construct a different kind of project in Colombia.' See also Sergio de Castro Sánchez, 'Buscamos una agenda en donde quepamos todos,' Kaos en la Red, 14 November 2008, http://www.kaosenlared.net/noticia/buscamos-agenda-donde-quepamos-todos. 11 ACIN's programs are organized into what they call tejidos: problem-oriented collaborative teams working in the areas of environmental economy, justice and harmony (customary law), defense of life (human rights, indigenous guard), peoplehood and culture (health, education, gender, youth), and communications. For more information, see http://www.nasaacin.org/tejids-de-vida. 12 I call this 'collaborative activist ethnography' in an effort to distinguish this approach as a subset of collaborative approaches to ethnography which, as a whole, employ collaborative methodologies but many times produce as an end result an ethnographic monograph geared to an academic readership (Lassiter 2005 Lassiter, Luke Eric. 2005. Collaborative Ethnography and Public Anthropology. Current Anthropology, 46(1): 83–97. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Xochitl Leyva and Shannon Speed (2008 Leyva Solano, Xochitl and Speed, Shannon. 2008. "Hacia la investigación descolonizada: Nuestra experiencia de co-labor". In Gobernar (en) la diversidad: Experiencias indígenas desde América Latina: Hacia la investigación de co-labor, Edited by: Leyva, Xochitl, Burguete, Araceli and Speed, Shannon. 34–59. Mexico, D.F.: CIESAS, FLACSO Ecuador, and FLACSO Guatemala. [Google Scholar]) call the activist collaborative approach 'co-labor' to distinguish it from more academically oriented collaborations by highlighting its character as a form of activist work. 13 I will examine this influence in the context of the Casa and UAIIN, but it is equally true for indigenous research institutes in other parts of Latin America, as Carmen Martínez Novo's (2011 Martínez Novo, Cármen. 2011. Modern and Indigenous Knowledges in Intercultural Bilingual Education in Ecuador, Paper Presented at the Politics of Knowledge conference, 21–22 June, 2011, University of Brasilia. [Google Scholar]) analysis of the Ecuadorian Universidad Intercultural de las Nacionalidades y Pueblos Indígenas Amauta Wasi clearly demonstrates. Pablo Stefanoni points specifically to cultural studies scholars at Duke University and at the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar as a source of this cuturalist philosophy, which he calls 'pachamamismo'; '¿Adónde nos lleva el pachamamismo?' http://www.rebelion.org/noticias/2010/4/104803.pdf. (I thank Elías Sevilla Casas for bringing this article to my attention.) See also Rivera Cusicanqui (2012 Rivera Cusicanqui, Silvia. 2012. Ch'ixinakax utxiwa: A Reflection on the Practices and Discourses of Decolonization. The South Atlantic Quarterly, 111(1): 95–109. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) for a related critique, in which the author espouses indigenous epistemologies as part of a popular indigenous and mestizo political and intellectual movement, but rejects the radical alterity approaches of northern academics. 14 This was a collaborative project, an intercultural dialogue between Nasa researcher Yeromines Valencia and a young Bogotá anthropologist, Catalina Caro. See, also, the work of Bettina Ng'weno (2007 Ng'weno, Bettina. 2007. Turf Wars: Territory and Citizenship in the Contemporary State, Stanford: Stanford University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) on disputes between Afrocolombians and mining corporations in Buenos Aires, located in northern Cauca. 15 One of these women, Aída Quilcué, was elected to the top post in CRIC (Consejera Mayor) and served in that capacity at the height of the Minga. 16 Tulpas are the three hearthstones in a traditional Nasa kitchen. I have translated the word in this context as denoting a space of reflection, as the hearth provides a place for conversation and exchange in the Nasa family. 17 The Red de Artistas, Comunicadores Comunitarios y Antropólog@s de Chiapas, a Mexican collaborative research organization, decided to begin their work with a series of team-written autobiographies that would help to break down the simplistic indigenous-white distinction that obscures other identity formations, like gender, generation, language variant, and class in Native circles (RACCACH 2010 RACCACH (Red de Artistas, Comunicadores Comunitarios y Antropólog@s de Chiapas). 2010. Sjalel kibeltik/Sts'isjel ja kechtiki'/Tejiendo nuestras raíces, http://jkopkutik.org/sjalelkibeltik/ [Google Scholar]: 263). 18 Although there are various ethnic groups under the CRIC umbrella (including the Nasa, Guambiano, Eperara-Siapidara, Totoró, Quisgüeño, and Ambalueño), the most ambitious cosmovision project was undertaken by Nasa researchers and activists. 19 In the late-1990s I introduced the concept of double consciousness (Du Bois 1989 Du Bois, W. E. B. 1989 [1903]. The Souls of Black Folk, New York: Bantam. [Google Scholar] [1903]) in a workshop I taught to Community Pedagogy students in a forerunner to UAIIN (see Rappaport 2005 Rappaport, Joanne. 2005. Intercultural Utopias: Public Intellectuals, Cultural Experimentation, and Ethnic Pluralism in Colombia, Durham: Duke University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]: 48–53). The theme was later taken up by one of the CRIC activists in an article in the magazine of CRIC's education program (Chocué Guasaquillo 2000 Chocué Guasaquillo, Ana Alicia. 2000. Nuestra doble conciencia. C'ayu'ce, 4: 14–15. Popayán [Google Scholar]). Susana's reference to double consciousness comes from that article, which was directed at a readership of bilingual teachers. 20 Much of the grassroots does not know what to do with a book: they don't know to look at the table of contents, at the introduction, or at the blurbs on the dust-jacket as a way of determining whether it is worth their while to read the publication; they are flustered by the multiple chapters they feel they must wade through and do not know that it is possible to dip into a book without reading all of it. At a workshop with bilingual teachers dedicated to the presentation of a history of CRIC's education program written by activists and published by the organization (Bolaños et al. 2004 Bolaños, Graciela, Ramos, Abelardo, Rappaport, Joanne and Miñana, Carlos. 2004. ¿Qué pasaría si la escuela…? Treinta años de construcción educativa, Popayán: Programa de Educación Bilingüe e Intercultural, Consejo Regional Indígena del Cauca. [Google Scholar]), I attempted to introduce strategies for entering into a book. I was informed, however, that this exercise was too academic for the audience.