“Knowing How to Communicate”: Approaches to «Indigenous Communication» and Good living from the Pijao People (Tolima, Colombia)

Abstract

The ecosophy of "good living" has had a significant influence on Latin American social, political, cultural, and environmental debates in recent decades. The field of communication has also been influenced. Since the beginning of the 21st century, an analytical approach called “communication for good living” has taken shape. This approach offers an alternative to Western communication, including perspectives such as “communication for development” and “communication for social change.” This article examines the role that indigenous communication plays in contemporary debates and its distinctive contributions in contrast to Western communication and to communication for development and social change. Based on a documentary review and collaborative ethnographic work carried out with the group Tejiendo Pensamiento Pijao (Tolima, Colombia), Pijao indigenous communication is characterized as an expression of communication for good living. To empirically examine this experience, an analytical framework titled “Knowing How to Communicate” is applied. This framework explores four core principles of the philosophy of good living as applied to the communicative field: knowing how to listen, knowing how to live in harmony and complementarity, knowing how to share, and knowing how to dream. The study concludes that there is a direct relationship between indigenous communication and the cosmogonies that shape the cultural identities of Indigenous peoples. It also establishes that indigenous communication is based on an alternative communicative ecology to that of Western communication and communication for social change, offering unique symbolic and interpretive elements to Indigenous struggles against (neo)coloniality.