“Communication can help raise awareness about our cause as the Mapuche Nation and People”

The Reframed Stories Project asks people to respond to dominant themes and issues that appear in news coverage about their communities. These stories are reflections by people who are frequently represented by others in the media. Word clouds are created using the Media Cloud platform, a data analysis tool which examines a collection of media outlets over a specific period of time, allowing participants to analyze and discuss the preliminary insights into how they might be represented in the media. The project refrains from making conclusive pronouncements about the data, and instead is a starting point that creates space for discussion about how they can help shape their own media representation through digital media.

Alen Colipan Cid is a member of Witxalen, a collective of indigenous youth advocating for the issue of territory and indigenous rights in southern Chile. The following is a transcript of the video about Alen's analysis of the word cloud for the term, “Mapuches,” an indigenous people of southern Chile and Argentina.

Dominant words from 1,985 articles published between May 2017 and May 2018 mentioning “Mapuches” within two Media Cloud collections of Chile’s Spanish-language media outlets. (view larger image)

Hoy día nos tocó trabajar con una nube que bueno a mí me tocó ‘Mapuche, que a mi parecer, las palabras que señalan no son las principales. Porque se ve como ‘comuneros’, ‘huelga de hambre’, ‘gobierno’, ‘político’, ‘conflicto’, ‘ley’, ‘terrorismo’, ‘operación’, ‘chilenos’, ‘acusados’ y yo creo que lo principal como pueblo son otros elementos que nosotros tenemos ‘conocimiento’, tenemos ‘cultura’,’Newen’ es decir ‘territorio’, ‘espiritual’, ‘espiritualidad’, ‘cosmovisión’, ‘sociedad’, tenemos ‘autonomía’, ‘idioma’ somos una nación, entonces la idea es que en la nube puedan señalar lo que somos como mapuches y lo que queremos que sepan los otros de nosotros en los medios. Que no se tergiverse la idea de que somos sino que lo que nosotros queremos que vean de nosotros.

Today we are working with the word cloud for “Mapuches.” In my opinion, the words that appear are not the main ones because one can see the word ‘comuneros (community residents),’ ‘hunger strike,’ ‘government,’ ‘political,’ ‘conflict,’ ‘law,’ ‘terrorism,’ ‘operation,’ ‘Chileans,’ and ‘accused.’ I think the main words of the [Mapuche] people are other elements such as ‘culture,’ ‘Newen,’ or land, ‘spiritual,’ ‘spirituality,’ ‘worldview,’ ‘society,’ as well as ‘autonomy,’ and ‘language’ since we are a nation. So I think the idea for the word cloud is that it can show what it means to be Mapuche and what we want others to know about us through the media. That what we are is not distorted, rather how we want others to see us.

Esta es una buena instancia para poder demostrar lo que queremos que sepan de nosotros como un pueblo y para poder mostrar las demandas que tenemos como Nación, en este momento. Ya que este medio de comunicación puede servir para poder visibilizar nuestra causa y nuestras legítimas luchas como pueblo nación mapuche.

This is a good moment to demonstrate what we want others to know about us as a People and to show our Nation’s current demands. This means of communication can help raise awareness about our cause and our legitimate struggle as the Mapuche Nation and People.

This is part of a Rising Frames series developed as part of an activity organized by Fernando Carías. He helped organize a workshop held on May 26, 2018 in Osorno, Chile that brought together representatives from various collectives and groups to examine how they or issues they care about are represented in a Chilean media collection and created stories in response to that representation.

Mónica Bonilla assisted with the transcription and translation, which was edited for clarity and length.

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