Voices of ancestors and the land support indigenous Brazilians to preserve their culture and natureIn this Brazilian study, researchers collaborated with indigenous university students on a Photovoice project. They guided students to represent their experiences with climate change visually and to integrate photographs and narratives to share their perspectives through arts-based media. Thirty participants (age 18-30) produced photovoice projects organized around two research questions: How do I feel/see the impacts of climate change in my daily life and community? What adaptations are necessary to address these impacts? The goal was for these Photovoice projects to gather indigenous students’ insights into potential community-driven strategies to address the impacts of climate change.
The study utilized an arts-based participatory method to involve indigenous college students in data collection and data analysis. They collaborated with researchers to identify the photographs that best represented their perspectives and to identify thematic patterns in their narratives and photographs.
Based on this participatory research process, the authors identified three major themes: (1) <em>Protection of indigenous lands: tensions between demarcated territory and indigenous land</em>, such as the significance of territory to indigenous peoples and the economic pressure to lease their land for survival; (2) <em>People’s actions and the voice of nature</em>—that is, climate change compromising people’s drinking water and food sovereignty as nature calls out for help; (3) <em>Ancestral protection, knowledge, and resistance of Indigenous culture</em>: spiritual webs linking past, present, and future ancestors provided strength to preserve their culture and ancestral territories from the threats of consumerism, urbanization, and climate change.
The study concluded that the Photovoice methodology facilitated these university students to advocate for their communities and for nature conservation. The participants’ photographs and narratives illustrated their connections to the land as well as interrelationships between identity, culture, and the environment. Likewise, they captured the challenges posed by climate change, environmental degradation, and agribusiness. The project points to a pronounced need to protect indigenous lands for their cultural and physical survival. Likewise, the study points to the importance of intergenerational knowledge and indigenous ways of knowing and their roles in the contemporary environmental movement. Specifically, the authors call for environmental policy frameworks to integrate indigenous knowledge and for advocacy efforts to protect indigenous territory from exploitation.
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