Das raízes às redes: interfaces entre comunicação e educação em práticas de jovens indígenas da Amazônia

Abstract

Following the compulsory social isolation measures for Covid-19 prevention, Indigenous peoples of the Amazon intensified their appropriation of communication languages and techniques to inform, denounce, and claim rights through digital platforms. Youth were at the forefront of this movement, which motivated the creation of the Network of Young Indigenous Communicators of the Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon (COIAB) in 2021. The remote workshops which originated the Network were developed according to the concepts of “Educommunication”, as stated by COIAB on its website, which sparked the central inquiries of this research. Our objective is to discuss and understand the interface between Education and Communication, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, through the appropriation of communicative languages and techniques by young members of the aforementioned COIAB Network. To this end, we seek to identify the practices carried out by these youths; analyze the media materials they produced, relating them to their social, historical, political, and cultural specificities; and understand how this interface connects with the pursuit of the power of voice. The theoretical-methodological framework of this thesis articulates the Theory of Mediations (Martín-Barbero, 1997; Orozco Gómez, 2014; Consani, 2008) and Narratology (Ricoeur, 1987; Motta, 2013), alongside an empirical analysis of the power of voice (Motta, 2012, 2013) and the notion of processuality from the tentative theory of Communication (Braga, 2017), having discussions on coloniality (Quijano, 2005; Mignolo, 2017) as a background. Empirically, Indigenous narratives constitute the observable material of the investigation, accessed through narrative interviews (Jovchelovitch & Bauer, 2008) with young Indigenous communicators Jakukrei Gavião (Pará); Luene Karipuna (Amapá); Alana Manchineri (Acre); and Anderson Arapaço (Amazonas). The study also includes leadership figures Alcebias Sapará, vice-coordinator of COIAB; Concita Sompré, president of the Federation of Indigenous Peoples of the State of Pará (Fepipa); and Madson Gavião, communication leader at the Gavião Kyikatêjê Village. The apprehension of meanings is complemented by the analysis of four media materials produced by the Network: the podcasts “Amazônia Indígena” and “Vozes Indígenas da Amazônia”, the animation “Grandes Guerreiros e Guerreiras”, and the video “Autoridades do Clima”. The comprehension of this narrative body was organized into three temporal markers (“Before”, “During” and “After” the remote workshops), structured according to the definition of Generative Themes (Silva, 2004; Scaladrin, 2020) from a Freirean perspective. Our results characterize the practices led by these youths as intercontextual, reinforcing both their intercultural nature and their function as interfaces between multiple contexts, and as practices of the power of voice, contributing to the realization of digital and political villaging within the Indigenous movement. Understanding these practices enabled us to connect notions of processuality in communication and mediations with educommunicative approaches. From a referenced decolonial perspective, we recognize significant transformations in the appropriation and resignification of the educommunicative paradigm, moving away from rigid theoretical boundaries and turning toward intercontextual practices embedded in multimediations. This constitutes a rich source of learning for comprehending interface communication phenomena, such as the practices of the COIAB Network of Young Indigenous Communicators.