The indigenous communities in Latin America within audiovisual products are, in many cases, seen as strangers with foreign and exotic traditions that must be portrayed. This has left these communities without a voice, so the podcast is a golden opportunity for native peoples to create their own spaces or those interested in this issue to do so in a respectful manner.
Mariana Vaccarodirector and editor of Podcasterswho led the project together with the Gabo Foundation “Latin America sounds”, a virtual podcast production workshop for indigenous communicators, offered eight tips for narrating and working on stories of native populations.
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8 tips for narrating and working with indigenous communities in a podcast
1. Approach the subject with respect:
Vaccaro advises studying, reading manuals and guides to address the indigenous issue with a “correct and respectful treatment”, but without forgetting that “the fact of deciding which are indigenous issues and which are not, is already an act of power.”
“I think that those of us who are communicators and journalists must have the commitment: on the one hand, to study, to train ourselves: there are manuals and guides to make a correct and respectful treatment of “indigenous issues”. And about this I make a clarification, I write it in quotation marks because the fact of deciding which are indigenous issues and which are not, is already an act of power. (And on this an interesting debate can be opened) ”, recalls the journalist.
2. Indigenous peoples must be part of the team:
It is common for productions that address indigenous issues to only use them as part of the story, but not as active members of the teams or “sources of information”.
It is also necessary that the original peoples have their own resources to tell their own stories.
3. Use the correct language:
It is still common to hear people talk about “Indian” or “savages”, even in podcast productions, so it is urgent to “talk about native American peoples” and disassociate ourselves from “Eurocentric” and “colonialist” terms, recalls Vaccaro.
4. Think about the orality of the communities:
Most of the indigenous communities are oral, so it is necessary “Going to find the word of the protagonists is essential. It is to authorize their voices and give them central roles to narrate themselves ”, he points out.
5. Count on indigenous organizations as allies:
It is necessary, talking with indigenous or community-related organizations is a necessary step.
6. Record “in situ”
It is important that the sound resources that we use in the podcast project that we are doing are, first of all, “record the voices of the protagonists, indigenous voices. This implies that their own way of narrating is respected, which does not necessarily fit the narrative arc (beginning, middle and end)”. In addition, it is necessary not to use sound banks to illustrate the environment, it is necessary to record the real elements of the environment, because “not all environments have the same species of birds, nature does not sound the same everywhere,” he recalls.
7. Think of podcasts with different languages and dialects:
The podcast is an important tool that allows multilingual productions to be carried out, allowing the integration of Spanish and other languages, since “the form is also the message, so it makes sense that it not only sounds in Spanish,” he suggests.
8. Listen:
It is important to keep the indigenous communities silent, especially if the person working on the project is not part of the population, in order to ensure that “there is time and space to listen.”
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