Indigenous youth subcultures and new media in Latin America

The UN estimates that around 50% of Indigenous people in Latin America have Internet access, compared to 67% for the continent as a whole. But on both sides of this connectivity gap, young people are by far the largest user group. In the past 20 years, Indigenous organisations in Latin America have developed multiple digital communication platforms through which they actively participate in local, national and international agendas. Nevertheless, racism, discrimination and poverty remain endemic. This project explores how some of the most vulnerable populations in Latin America - young Mapuche and Kichwa Indigenous people in Argentina, Chile and Ecuador - combine art, social media and new technology as tools of self-expression, resistance, and interaction with the wider world.

The transformative impact of digital technology and the Internet on youth culture is undeniable. So too is the importance of cultural creation and consumption as a means of self-expression and community formation for young people. However, in the Global South, research still tends to focus on development indicators like connectivity in relation to education and employment. This neglects the obvious question: "What do young Indigenous people actually do with digital technology?" In the 1990s, analogue technologies like community radios and fanzines were vital in shaping and expressing a modern urban Indigenous identity and forging new links between politics and the arts. For young Indigenous people today, this role is filled by the Internet, digital media and content-sharing platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, all of which have had a fundamental impact on how culture is created, disseminated and consumed. This makes studying online cultures, and the social interactions and communities they generate, vital in order to understand the systemic racism and social disadvantage faced by Indigenous youth and the strategies they use to address them. In doing so, this project challenges homogenised understandings of Indigenous cultures that inadvertently reinforce intersecting inequalities and marginalise Indigenous young people within and outside their communities.

This interdisciplinary project combines ethnographic case studies of, and collaborations with, young Mapuche and Andean Kichwa creators and community members. Online ethnography will map online youth cultures across different social media platforms. Given the enduring importance of territory, local communities and face-to-face interaction for both Indigenous and subcultural life, we will also carry out face-to-face ethnography to understand the symbiotic relationship between online and offline culture and communities. We will combine these approaches with a hermeneutic reading of cultural products produced by young Indigenous creators - music, video, animation, photography, etc. - to better understand the specific discourses, meanings and communities they facilitate.

A collaboration between researchers in the UK, Argentina and Ecuador, the project will produce a series of academic articles of benefit to scholars interested in Indigenous peoples, youth cultures and digital media in Latin America and beyond. A website, online exhibition and public events in the UK and Latin America will showcase cultural products by young Indigenous creators and facilitate discussions about the challenges they face. All of these materials will contribute to a report on young Indigenous people's use of new media in cultural production and consumption, to be circulated among state agencies, Indigenous organisations and national and international NGOs. This will aim to make a contribution to existing programmes that focus on social inclusion and providing support to young Indigenous artists. Finally, this work can also provide insights into the future of Indigenous movements and communities more broadly, and feed into wider discussions about the decolonisation of social media.