Being Amerindian Today: Livelihoods, Technology, and Dynamic Indigenous Knowledges

Technological change and new products and ideas have long spread within Indigenous communities (Agrawal 1995), as part of a process of adaptation that is not necessarily the result of a hegemonic tendency toward modernity, globalization, and the loss of cultural identity (Briggs 2005; Belton 2010). Nevertheless, we are so used to conceptualizing the Indigenous as “traditional” that the presence of technology in Indigenous people’s lives somehow looks “out of place”: instead, ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) are an integral part of Indigenous communities’ practices, as the pictures will show. This visual essay explores the diffusion of technologies and new commodities within the Indigenous communities living in the Amazon forest of Guyana, South America: the Makushi people who inhabit the northern area of the Rupununi river region, and the Wapishana people who live in the southern area.