Indigenous peoples are part of the solution

Community care alternatives in the face of the health crisis

Abstract

The coronavirus pandemic illustrates the model of society that began to be imposed globally since the 17th century (de Souza Santos 2010). One of the essential characteristics of this model is the violent and devastating appropriation of nature, of the "common goods" of "our common home", of "our mother earth", in terms of indigenous peoples, whose value systems/cosmovision’s/ontologies orient relations toward human and non-human otherness in terms of reciprocity/gift/protection rather than production and predatory appropriation. This is why the expression "indigenous peoples are part of the solution" appears, to show that their collective-community practices and knowledge constitute alternative ways of life that can contribute to the reduction of phenomena such as global warming, loss of biodiversity, the increasingly frequent occurrence of extreme climate events, and the outbreak of epidemics and pandemics such as that caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This situation, which shocks the entire world, calls on us to join forces to face the new challenges it poses and the old problems it exacerbates.

In the case of the indigenous peoples of Argentina, the effects of the pandemic have exacerbated the complex situations that these groups have been facing in the areas of health, education, environment, food, work, access to information, judicialization, criminalization, and racism. This raises the need to deepen the knowledge of the ways in which pre-existing inequalities have been aggravated, in order to propose concrete measures for their attention. At the same time, indigenous communities are making a great effort to comply with the measure of Preventive and Obligatory Social Isolation (ASPO, Spanish initials) established by Decree 297/2020, mobilizing and deploying collective-community knowledge and practices in order to adapt their socio-cultural dynamics to the requirements of this decree.   We developed the project "Indigenous Knowledge and Practices in a Health Emergency Context: Contributions to Health, Education and the Environment in the Framework of Planning Strategies for the Control, Prevention and Monitoring of Covid-19", with the aim of deepening knowledge and evaluating the impact of ASPO on indigenous peoples, but also and fundamentally, to recognize and record knowledge and practices that - based on gift and reciprocity - can constitute, in this state of things, a contribution to the resolution of emerging problems and the design and implementation of social programs that involve them. To this end, we have proposed a methodology that prioritizes respect and commitment to the subjects with whom we build knowledge and, given the known conditions that so far restrict the movement and gathering of people throughout the national territory, the implementation of techniques characteristic of a "digital ethnography" that will allow us to achieve the proposed objectives while respecting preventive measures: observation and interviews "at a distance" mediated by various technologies (video conference platforms, telephone and instant messaging services, emails, social networks, among others.)

Indigenous peoples must be part of the planning of strategies for control, prevention and monitoring of COVID-19. The value of their practices and knowledge cannot and should not be underestimated, as they are of singular importance in this health emergency situation, representing other possible ways of "taking care of each other". In this sense, they are also essential for finding future solutions, that is, for thinking about other post-pandemic emergencies.