Incomindios-Lippuner and UN scholar Jermani Ojeda-Ludena talks about his experience at day 2 at the UNPFII in New York.
Jermani Ojeda-Ludena, day 2:
I have attended the event "Creating an enabling environment for free and independent Indigenous Community Media." This UNPFII23 side event was intended to reflect and share experiences of Indigenous people on media. The main take away of this event was knowing Indigenous brothers and sisters who are working on big media projects in New Zealand, Canada and Nepal.
As a Quechua broadcaster and scholar, I consider it very important to contribute to helping my community to gain more access to media and most importantly to have control of the media as part of getting our self-determination. Independent Indigenous media is part of the process of gaining Indigenous territorial self-determination. In my country we have just some experiences of independent Indigenous Community Media, mainly in the Andean region but with a short range. In the Peruvian mainstream media, we just have very limited access, and they are very marginal in time and space. The experiences of the Māori, Native American, and Nepali Indigenous Television and Radio shared in the event, are very inspiring and helpful for my future projects as an Indigenous activist.
UN Scholar María Tzuc Dzib talks about her experience at day 4 of the UNPFII in New York.
María Tzuc Dzib, day 4:
We are on day 4 of the Permanent Forum of Indigenous Peoples, a time in which we have heard different denunciations, petitions and manifestos from the diverse Indigenous peoples that exist in the world.
It is difficult to listen to each of the experiences lived in the Indigenous territories because they all share dispossession, extractivism, deforestation, destruction and contamination of rivers that are sources of life. Each intervention in the forum is the reconfirmation of a crisis that affects the physical health of Indigenous peoples, but also sickens our beliefs and our spirit.
What is really being done to heal mother earth? In this forum, we are people from different generations, young and old, who also come to denounce the criminalization of our movement for the protection of our territories.
There are advances in the recognition of Indigenous peoples as free to make decisions in their territories, but it is not enough a recognition on paper, it is necessary immediate action and implementation of the recommendations of respect for the dynamics of life of Indigenous Peoples.
Jermani talks about his experience at day 4 of the UNPFII in New York.
Jermani Ojeda-Ludena, day 4:
I have attended the “Right to access to media and challenges faced by Indigenous Peoples” event at the Indigenous Media Zone of the UN headquarters. Since I work with fellow Quechua broadcasters this event helped me to know indigenous journalists from different parts of the world who are at the frontline producing and disseminating news about our communities. It helped me to understand what we understand about indigenous journalism. This is news producing and disseminating but by indigenous peoples. This counteracts big and corporate media narratives about indigenous people by putting on the public domain news from and produced by indigenous struggles. This kind of journalism means activism.
However indigenous journalists around the world in most of the experiences are targeted by political and economic powers because they disseminate news about indigenous struggles territories against dominant political and economic powers. At the end of the event, we agreed in strengthening the indigenous media caucus and create a network of indigenous journalists to collaboratively work and support each other with the help of the United Nations.
Author: Lowri Harris