How to Listen to Pachamama’s Testimonio: Lessons from Indigenous Voices

Abstract

This article analyzes the collective, open-access, and modifiable publication El Vivir Bien como respuesta a la Crisis Global as a posthumanist testimonio or ecotestimonio intending to give voice to the biotic community of the Andes. Written by Quechua and Aymara people and presented to the United Nations by the Plurinational State of Bolivia, this document targets the global ecological, financial, and social crises from the perspective of Indigenous knowledges. This document also exemplifies the worldwide reemergence of Indigenous voices that are confronting the global ecological crisis and its environmental injustices through the revitalization of Indigenous worldviews and practices. This ecotestimonio conveys, among many timely lessons, the Indigenous teaching that humans must listen carefully to the non-human world to learn from Pachamama how to interrelate as humans and with non-humans to collaborate in ensuring the continuing vitality of the community of life. If we listen carefully to Pachamama's testimony, as Indigenous voices urge, doubt must be cast upon the viability of ideas celebrated by hegemonic Western modern discourses like "development," "progress," or '"economic growth." Instead, these voices invite us to rethink the place, functions, and responsibilities of humans as members of the web of life.

Future direction in HRD: the potential of testimonio as an approach to perturb the dominant practices in the workplace

“…As an example, Fort Worth Independent School District in Texas, USA (FWISD Equity, 2020) used a Zoom call to convene a focus group of staff and students, eliciting testimonios about the racialized experiences of their students of color and then posted it publicly on YouTube. Delgado Bernal et al (2012) explain that by using testimonios, we shift away from a Eurocentric analytical approach in an inquiry that still carries with it the social and political context of colonial oppression and dominance towards an approach that is more inclusive of indigenous, oppressed and marginalized voices (Pr adanos and Figueroa Helland, 2015). The strength of this research methodology, in comparison to other narrative approaches, is that it empowers narrators by allowing them to share their stories from their own perspectives with minimal filtering, as "the holder of knowledge thereby disrupting traditional academic ideals of who might be considered a producer of knowledge" (Delgado Bernal et al, 2012, p. 365).…”