The Shuar communities require tools that promote their critical thinking to recognize and value the set of practices, expressions, imagination, and knowledge within their own culture beyond the unfortunate historical Western narrative that often reduces them to simply a “warlike tribe” or focusses on the long discontinued practice of the taking of heads in battle and shrinking them to “tzantza” (in their native tongue). Their culture is so much richer than a few stereotypes.
With this in mind, Step Forward has designed a programme aimed at local leaders, cultural managers, teachers, youth and communicators from the Shuar communities interested in investigating, producing and circulating stories about their culture and territory. In this programme, participants are invited to learn the languages of radio and photography so that through them they can propose stories based on their way of understanding the world.
The project invites a process of reflection, training and production of stories by and about the Shuar people that encourages its participants to produce photographic and sound content about their culture and territory. The respective radio and photographic reports will circulate through regional and national analog and digital platforms / media.
The objectives of this project consist of:
- Promoting diversity, respect for different cultures and intercultural dialogue.
- Defining quality standards for rigorous research and content management, creativity of the proposal and precision in technical application.
- Providing content that contributes to raising the level of knowledge and information for the public leading to a better understanding of the Shuar reality.
- Promoting the narrative and technical empowerment of the attendees so that they are the ones who propose, build and circulate the stories about themselves, their territory and their culture.
