Indigenous peoples and digital good living
Alex Potiguara’s (Alexsandro Cosmo de Mesquita’s) fellowship built on previous work on the Digital Good Network-funded INDIGENIA project, which produced a manifesto for indigenous good digital living, with and for Latin America indigenous peoples. The manifesto contains the vision of different indigenous realities on how to build digital well-being.
With support from the INDIGENIA team, the fellowship advanced this work by addressing the following problem: “how can we put into action the principles present in the manifesto created in the INDIGENIA project?” Alex engaged with people from indigenous communities in six Latin American countries who have not previously encountered the manifesto. Throughout his fellowship, Alexsandro discussed and iterated it with them, asking whether and how it would enable good digital living for them, how it needs to be adapted to meet their needs, and how we can enact the manifesto’s principles.
During the fellowship, the aims were:
- to discuss digital good living with a broader group of Indigenous People from a broader range of Latin American countries.
- to update the manifesto based on this discussion.
- to explore how to translate the manifesto’s principles into actions & create an action plan based on this discussion.
This was achieved using Dragon Dreaming, a specific participatory action research method created & inspired by Indigenous people’s lives. Through six online digital campfires with 16 Indigenous people, discussions were held around Indigenous visions of good living and digital good living. At a five-day, Physical in-person campfire, the conversation looked at revising the manifesto, what actions make the manifesto a reality, and what to include in the action plan.
The fellowship sought to identify similarities and differences amongst indigenous peoples’ understandings of digital good living and in doing so, ensure that notions of the digital good that emerge from the Digital Good Network are informed by knowledge and lived experiences from the south.
In this article for Revista do Centro de Pesquisa e Formação (Journal of the Research and Training Center), Alexsandro reflects on issues relating to indigenous peoples and artificial co-creation.
The project also lead to the creation of the IndiGenAI: Indigenous Peoples for Digital Good Living network, which is composed and managed by Indigenous researchers from Latin American countries.
Read the manifesto and action plan
English
Spanish
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