Los Con Voz (Those With Voice)

Popular representations of the world’s indigenous groups are highly biased, rooted in colonial stereotypes, and perpetuated by a lack of understanding of indigenous life. Even today we remain satisfied with the noble savages and bloodthirsty warriors of Merian Cooper, Walt Disney, and Mel Gibson.
Anthropologists and other social scientists have historically had a dirty hand in this satisfaction, scientifically justifying colonialism and making their careers on (mis) representing entire populations of people.
As an anthropology student, I started to feel the weight of this history very early on in my studies. In class discussions I often would come out in opposition to the methods used by the researchers that we studied. In 2005 I interned for an organization called The Chiapas Media Project in Southern Mexico and began to learn about what had been dubbed “indigenous media” by the social scientists studying it. I met a number of anthropologists in Mexico that were engaging in what has been called activist anthropology or public anthropology. Essentially, they were using the discipline to directly benefit those that they studied. One interesting way anthropologists have begun to do this is to teach video/film making skills and let people present themselves instead of representing for them. Furthermore, videos allow communities or individuals to distribute information to large numbers of people rather than highly focused and insular groups of academics. Images and sounds are much more consumable to a wider population than texts.
Los Con Voz highlights efforts intended to counteract the negative effects of bad social science and postcolonial subjugation through the creation of “indigenous media”. Through interviews with indigenous filmmakers, media activists and anthropologists; as well as watching indigenous videos and discussing current projects and efforts, we follow the emergence of a new movement of cooperation and hope in which academics and indigenous groups can work together in revitalizing each others’ cultures.