Indigenous Knowledge and Information and Communication Technologies: An Opportunity to strengthen the Development Process in Indigenous Communities

Rodrigo Garrido [BIO] | Macarena Vivent [BIO] | Manuel Morales [BIO] (Universidad de La Frontera, Chile)

Email: rgarrido@iie.ufro.cl | mmorales@iie.ufro.cl | mvivent@iie.ufro.cl

 

ABSTRACT:

Usually the projects that tackle ICT and indigenous people, describe initiatives in which these technologies emerge as tools useful to protect and rescue the indigenous heritage of a possible culture disappearance. A well-being approach what has allowed us to get to know indigenous traditions.

However, this approach has contributed to stress the conception of “museimized” indigenous knowledge, reducing their cosmovisions, beliefs and practices to mere stereotypes.

Although this approach seems to be the mainstream, there are others in which ICT are accepted as resources useful to strengthen indigenous communities, on the basis of bottom–up designed models of technological appropriation in which transformational action, empowerment and emancipation are essentials concepts.

Thus, the aim of this paper is to illustrate the design and implementation of an informational literacy process through which a group of indigenous leaders are able to integrate their traditional knowledge with ICT in order to revitalize their knowledge and use it as a way to achieve local development, besides increasing their technological appropriation and improving their capabilities as community leaders.

This paper rests on two theoretical approaches, firstly, “The Sociology of Absences and Sociology of Emergences” (De Sousa Santos), which enlightened our notion about the role of indigenous beliefs in the current society, and secondly, “Cognitive Justice” (Van der Velden and De Sousa Santos), both essential approaches for the foundation of an authentic Knowledge Society.