Movement Building

The InsightShare team have worked for over 20 years with indigenous communities to enable them to better represent themselves on critical issues.
Our work is guided by the UN Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Today we are recognised as a leading force in the global movement towards indigenous self-determination and autonomy. We do this through incubating and nurturing an global family of grassroots video hubs and participatory video collectives – an autonomous, indigenous-led video movement.

We offer support through convening international gatherings and events, offering video workshops taught by indigenous trainers, capacity strengthening and long term technical assistance. $2million has been invested through InsightShare into local community action over this time.

Living Cultures Strategy

The basis of the Living Cultures strategy was birthed during a retreat  in November 2018. Using our trademark combination of design thinking, restorative justice, visual and participatory techniques, the expertise of 15 international activists, indigenous allies and our Maasai partners was harnessed. We worked through the history of land struggles including the victories and defeats fought by Maasai leaders in the Tanzanian courts.

We also looked at the role of museums in the decolonisation process. How linking the narratives behind the artefacts, as defined by the Maasai, could lead to the exposure of their current struggles to protect lands and culture.

A public evening event in central London to an audience of 200 people was held to launch the Living Cultures strategy. Read our guest blog post for a wonderful account of the London event: Maasai Wisdom – Our Living Culture

Photos

Pan African Living Cultures Alliance (PALCA)

One of the outcomes of the retreat was the foundation of the PALCA, an international NGO led by and for Indigenous Peoples of Africa and registered in Kenya.

PALCA’s mission is to safeguard communities’ biocultural rights, support inter-generational transmission, preserve indigenous languages, promote traditional governance of natural resources, with participatory video at it’s heart.

Share this news and follow us on social-media to help us amplify these stories and increase our impact.

The United Nations declares 2019 The Year of Indigenous Languages

Language loss and the erasure of identity has long been recognised as a key issue faced by Indigenous Peoples.  But it does not stop there: cultural knowledge, historical, spiritual and ecological knowledge is transmitted through language.  And with language extinction comes the irrecoverable loss of knowledges that could be essential for the survival not only the speakers of those languages, but for human kind. It is not enough simply to preserve languages for posterity.    PV offers a collaborative approach, facilitating self-representation and reinvigorating language and cultural practices: a rights-based approach, promoting the self determination of indigenous communities as Living Cultures.

Fresh Paradigms

The profile of Indigenous Peoples as the true guardians of biodiversity and environmental security is gaining traction on a bigger stage.  The Guardian interview with Victoria Tauli-Corpus on the UN International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples : Indigenous Peoples are the Best Guardians of the World’s Biodiversity and Noam Chomsky’s piece Indigenous People are our Only Hope for Survival  are further evidence of this, as is the  proposed creation of a ‘Corridor of Life and Culture’ in the Amazon – a call by Indigenous Peoples.  By focusing on working with indigenous communities through a Pan-African approach in the first instance, we can pilot and model the Living Cultures elements through video production, to share and stimulate networking across indigenous communities globally.