Understanding Indigenous Identity to Advance Media Freedom

In 2015, one of the worst environmental disasters in Brazilian history unfolded in the town of Mariana. The rupture of a mining tailings dam unleashed a toxic mud avalanche the size of 700 football fields, killing 19 people and devastating over 668 kilometers of waterways along the Doce River all the way to the Atlantic Ocean.[1] I travelled to the Krenak Indigenous Land in the State of Minas Gerais to report on the disaster and document[2] its impact on the Krenak people affected by the mining company Samarco. I found some hundred people sitting on the train tracks that tear apart their territory to transport mining commodities. They were mourning the Doce River.

“This river death means the death of a relative of ours. This river is, for us, a link between the past, the present and the future”, said Daniel Krenak, one of the community leaders. In Indigenous cultures, the river, the trees, the land, and the animals have life. Not merely organic life, but a humanistic-meaning life. These elements are central to the Indigenous understanding of the world.

Sitting among them was the elder Euclides Krenak, aged 103. Standing up to address me, he recalled other times: “When I was young, it was all wilderness here. We used to fish, play in the water, take baths in the heat... I was 16 at the time. Today, we don't even have water to drink, we don't have fish, we can't bathe, we can't even wash our arms in the river anymore”.

Before I left, a Krenak delegation returned from negotiations with Samarco. The company had agreed to send them water. In exchange for a river, they got a water tank.

This illustrates how Indigenous Peoples across the world may experience development: as a project that impoverishes culture and landscape alike. Historically, Indigenous have been subjected to marginalisation and systemic violations in the name of progress. Socio-environmental impacts brought by development on Indigenous livelihoods reflect the erosion of cultural meanings, creating a vacuum where traditional knowledge and beliefs once flourished. This shapes their identities and their relationships with public institutions, including the media.

Within the broader field of international development, media development has emerged as a critical pillar that aims to ensure media freedom, access to information, pluralism, and diversity. Supported by global institutions and regional bodies, media development programmes seek to strengthen independent journalism, protect media professionals, and guarantee that diverse voices are heard in the public sphere.

Yet the same failures that have affected development at large, such as cultural imposition, racism, and the erasure of local knowledge systems, risk being reproduced in media development if its practitioners do not engage with the particularities of the communities they seek to serve. For Indigenous Peoples, this is a central concern.

How do we avoid repeating the mistakes of development in the media sphere? For those working on media development initiatives, this question demands a deeper engagement with what constitutes Indigenous identity, and what it means to represent it fairly.

Understanding Indigenous Identity: Five Approaches

Drawing on my research[3] on Indigenous identity representation in Latin America, with a focus on Brazil, I propose five analytical approaches to support media development practitioners in reflecting on their work in a global context. It is important to note, however, that Indigenous Peoples are not a homogeneous group, and differ widely across territories. In Latin America, while some communities have experienced contact with settlers for over 500 years, others have only been contacted in the past 50 years and retain many of their traditions. In countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, Indigenous Peoples operate professional broadcasting networks, whereas in parts of Africa and Asia they are more often represented through small community media. Taking these differences into account, the proposed frameworks might provide a foundation for more just and effective engagement with Indigenous media.

Acculturation

Acculturation is the process of rupturing tribal ethos and forcibly assimilating Indigenous groups into national life. The legacy of colonisation causes deep trauma, eroding traditional knowledge and values.[4] As the Indigenous scholar Ailton Krenak has written[5], acculturation inserts Indigenous groups into national life without any particularity: communities become impoverished equals who no longer know how to interface with their ecosystems and landscapes.

This dynamic is not limited to Latin America. Across the Pacific, in sub-Saharan Africa, and among First Nations communities in North America, Australia, and New Zealand, the institutional structures of education, governance, and communication have historically functioned as what Krenak calls “selection machines”[6], filtering out Indigenous knowledge and reproducing colonial epistemologies. Media development projects that import dominant media models risk functioning as new engines of acculturation.

Racism

The relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous identities is shaped by enduring regimes of racial discourse. Scholar Darcy Ribeiro identified[7] three dominant attitudes toward Indigenous Peoples in society: ethnocentric (Indigenous need to be assimilated into modern ways of life), romantic (valorising indigeneity as a museum piece of a primal past), and absentee (treating Indigenous dispossession as inevitable). These attitudes persist globally and manifest in media coverage, institutional policy, and public discourse.

As Stuart Hall observed[8], racial discourse is a regime of truth. It is a set of meanings and ideas that naturalise inequality. And media development can offer the tools for Indigenous to contest such discourses in the public sphere. When international organisations portray Indigenous Peoples as recipients of aid rather than agents of knowledge, or when editorial frameworks reduce Indigenous livelihoods to backwardness, they can potentially perpetuate racism.

Indigenous Economy

Mainstream development discourse presupposes that economic progress means integration into market systems. But Indigenous economic practices often embody different values like shared land ownership, reciprocity, cosmological limits on accumulation, and a productivity measured in collective wellbeing rather than individual output. Research on Latin American Indigenous communities[9] shows that some groups spend fewer than four hours a day on food production, sustaining community and culture with a fraction of the labour demanded by developed economies. Cosmology also influences production, where accumulation is discouraged for the maintenance of a healthy body and environment.

The imposition of external economic models creates dependency and erodes autonomy. Media development initiatives that promote commercial media models without accounting for Indigenous economic realities risk deepening this dependency, turning community media into unsustainable enterprises that must compete on terms set by others.

Territoriality

Indigenous Peoples across the globe share a foundational relationship with territory that is categorically different from property concepts. “The land does not belong to us. We belong to the land” is a formulation that I have heard from different Indigenous leaders. Territory is not a property, but an essential condition for surviving, tied with cosmology and creation myths.

Indigenous scholars such as Dagoberto Azevedo, Jaime Fernandes, and João Paulo Barreto[10] describe a cosmology in which the environment is not separated from the social world: the relations between a community and the components of its landscape are social relations, between person and person, not person and thing. This epistemological position has profound implications for media. Indigenous broadcasting, when given the freedom to operate on its own terms, often becomes a vehicle for territorial and environmental protection, inseparable from cultural survival.

Development and Indigeneity 

The dominant discourse of development produces, as its necessary by-product, enemies of progress. When Indigenous Peoples resist resource extraction, dam construction, or land dispossession, asserting rights guaranteed in law, they are framed as obstacles to national advancement. As scholars Mary Menton and Philippe Le Billon document[11], this representation, often racialised when it involves Indigenous Peoples, forms the basis of symbolic violence that enables exclusion, criminalisation, and ultimately, physical violence.

This resistance is not against development, but against cultural, economic, and environmental impoverishment, since people’s lives are not being improved. Ailton Krenak has written, “we are managing to transform the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil into the poor of Brazil”.[12] It is a poverty produced by development, not predating it. When media development intends to foster media freedom, pluralism and diversity in the sector, it has the potential to change this narrative and place Indigenous livelihoods and knowledge as central to sustainable development.

Media Development and its Transformative Potential

When development is challenged, those doing the challenging become targets, including Indigenous journalists. The safety of journalists is a cornerstone of global media freedom discussions, but the specific vulnerability of Indigenous journalists and communicators remains insufficiently addressed. Indigenous reporters and community media practitioners who cover land rights, environmental destruction, and corporate or state violence operate in some of the most dangerous conditions in the world. Global Witness reports[13] that Latin America had the highest number of recorded environmental defenders assassinated worldwide, with 166 killings overall, and that Indigenous Peoples and Afrodescendants accounted for 49% of total murders globally. Their most recent report[14] confirms the trend: 82% of documented cases took place in Latin America.

This violence is not incidental. It is structurally produced by the same developmental discourse that frames Indigenous presence as an obstacle. When an Indigenous broadcaster covers the destruction of a sacred river, or a community radio station transmits testimony against a mining concession, they are not merely reporting, they are contesting regimes of truth. The reprisals they face, from threats and legal harassment to physical attacks and murder, are the expression of the same logic that sent a water tank to the Krenak people in exchange for their river.

Media development projects for Indigenous Peoples, conducted by governments and global institutions, have demonstrated transformative potential when designed with an understanding of the specific contexts outlined above. Evidence from existing practices shows that more effective approaches move beyond training Indigenous communicators to operate within dominant media frameworks and additionally support the development of Indigenous-led media systems that produce knowledge on their own terms. This includes fostering Indigenous-language media, culturally grounded editorial standards, and institutional partnerships between Indigenous media and public service broadcasters.

Such efforts also highlight that journalism, in Indigenous contexts, often differs from conventional models. Indigenous journalists frequently operate in close connection with community priorities, including land rights, environmental protection, and traditional knowledge systems. This poses a debate on how to apply journalistic professional standards such as the principles of impartiality and detachment. As a result, risks faced by Indigenous communicators tend to be collective rather than individual, requiring safety approaches that are adapted to these realities, including legal, physical, and digital protection measures.

At the systemic level, Indigenous media governance structures illustrate the role of Indigenous-led coordination in strengthening pluralism in the sector. The World Indigenous Broadcasters Network (WIBN) is a prime example: by bringing together Indigenous broadcasters across regions and connecting them with international governance and policy conversations, WIBN creates the institutional architecture through which Indigenous media can assert its place within global democratic frameworks. Another interest example is the recently formed Indigenous Public Media.[15] These networks give Indigenous voices the organisational weight to influence the policies and standards that shape the broader media environment. Such experiences underscore that Indigenous media are not a peripheral component, but an integral part of inclusive and democratic media ecosystems.

Finally, persistent gaps between international normative frameworks and their implementation point to the importance of strengthening legal and normative awareness among Indigenous media practitioners. Familiarity with instruments such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Convention 169 of the International Labour Organisation, and relevant national provisions has proven to be an important factor in enabling Indigenous communicators to assert and defend their rights within media systems.

When the elder Euclides Krenak sat back down on the train tracks beside the dying river, he carried with him over a century of encounters between indigeneity and the forces of development. Media development is uniquely positioned to contribute to more inclusive outcomes. By engaging with the aspects that have shaped Indigenous identities, international actors, regional bodies, governments, and practitioners can design programmes that support Indigenous-led media systems in their own terms, strengthening cultural and traditional knowledge systems, contesting misrepresentation, protecting communicators, and advancing media freedom where it is needed and contested.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of any institutions with which he is or has been affiliated.

About the Author

Alan Azevedo is a journalist and international consultant. He holds a master’s degree in media, Communication and Development from the London School of Economics, where his research focused on communicating Indigenous identity. He has worked with Indigenous Peoples such as the Yanomami, Kaapor, Munduruku, Taurepang, and others, in their territories, to strengthen communication and documentation capacities in support of environmental protection.

Sources and References

[1] Carmo, F. F. do, Kamino, L. H. Y., Junior, R. T., Campos, I. C. de, Carmo, F. F. do, Silvino, G., Castro, K. de, Mauro, M. L., Rodrigues, N. U. A., Miranda, M. P. de S., & Pinto, C. E. F. (2017). Fundão tailings dam failures: the environment tragedy of the largest technological disaster of Brazilian mining in global context. Perspectives in Ecology and Conservation, 15(3), 145–151. URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/J.PECON.2017.06.002 

[2] Azevedo, A. (2015, November 17). “Esse rio é uma parte nossa que morreu.” [“This is river is a part of ourselves that died”]. Greenpeace. URL: https://www.greenpeace.org/archivebrasil/pt/Blog/esse-rio-uma-parte-nossa-que-morreu/blog/54794/

[3] Azevedo, A. (2023). The Forces of Development: Communicating Indigenous Identity in Brazil. London School Of Economics. URL: https://www.lse.ac.uk/media-and-communications/assets/documents/research/msc-dissertations/2023/Azevedo.pdf 

[4] Galeano, E. (2010). Open veins of Latin America. L&PM POCKET

Ribeiro, B. (1983). O Índio na História do Brasil. [The Indigenous in Brazil’s History]. Editora Global. URL: https://ucl.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/44UCL_INST/155jbua/alma990009573670204761 

[5] Krenak, A. (2015). Paisagens, Territórios e Pressão Colonial. [Landscapes, Territories, and Colonial Pressure]. Espaço Ameríndio, 9(3), 327–343. URL: https://doi.org/10.22456/1982-6524.61133 

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ribeiro, D. (1970). Os índios e a civilização: a integração das populações indígenas no Brasil moderno. [The indigenous and the civilisation: the integration of indigenous populations in modern Brazil]. Editora Civilização Brasileira. URL: https://encore.libraries.london.ac.uk/iii/encore/record/C__Rb1366157?suite=shl

[8] Hall, S. (2017). The fateful triangle: race, ethnicity, nation. Harvard University Press. URL: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/londonschoolecons/detail.action?docID=4987643

[9] Silva, J. A. F. (1995). Economia de subsistência e projetos de desenvolvimento econômico em áreas indígenas. [Subsistence economy and economic development projects in Indigenous areas]. In A. L. Silva & L. Grupioni (Eds.), A Temática Indígena na Escola: Novos Subsídios para Professores de 1º e 2º Graus (pp. 340–361). Ministério da Educação [Ministry of Education] & UNESCO. URL: http://pineb.ffch.ufba.br/downloads/1244392794A_Tematica_Indigena_na_Escola_Aracy.pdf 

[10] Azevedo, D. L. (2016). Forma e conteúdo do bahsese Yepamahsâ (Tukano). Fragmentos do espaço Di’ta/Nhk (terra/Floresta) [Yepamahsâ (Tukano) bahsese form and content. Fragments of the space Di’ta/Nhk (earth/Forest)], Universidade Federal do Amazonas. URL: https://tede.ufam.edu.br/handle/tede/5631 

Fernandes, J. (2018). Gaapi: Elemento fundamental de acesso aos conhecimentos sobre esse mundo e outros mundos. [Gaapi: fundamental element of access to knowledges about this world and other worlds], Universidade Federal do Amazonas. URL: https://tede.ufam.edu.br/handle/tede/8071 

Barreto, J. P. L. (2013). Wai-Mahsã: peixes e humanos. Um ensaio de Antropologia Indígena [Wai-Mahsã: fishes and humans. An essay on Indigenous Anthropology], Universidade Federal do Amazonas. URL: https://tede.ufam.edu.br/handle/tede/4629 

[11] Menton, M., & Le Billon, P. (Eds.). (2021). Environmental Defenders: Deadly Struggles for Life and Territory. United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis. URL: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003127222 

[12] Krenak, A. (2015). Paisagens, Territórios e Pressão Colonial. [Landscapes, Territories, and Colonial Pressure]. Espaço Ameríndio, 9(3), 327–343. URL: https://doi.org/10.22456/1982-6524.61133

[13] Global Witness. (2024). Missing Voices: The Violent Erasure of Land and Environmental Defenders Worldwide. London: Global Witness. URL: https://globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/land-and-environmental-defenders/missing-voices/ 

[14] Global Witness. (2025). Roots of Resistance. London: Global Witness. URL: https://globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/land-and-environmental-defenders/roots-of-resistance/ 

[15] Public Media Alliance. (2026, March 16). New collective launches to support Indigenous representation, storytelling and languages. URL: https://www.publicmediaalliance.org/new-collective-launches-to-support-indigenous-representation-storytelling-and-languages/  

This article is part of the WIBN Global Indigenous Media Leadership Series.