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Paper short abstract:

Using digital media, an anthropologist and Visual Arts and Animation students from Mexico and Italy, have engaged through videocalls with a group of cocopah people living in Baja California, Mexico, in order to co-create a digital archive of the cocopah intangible cultural heritage.

Paper long abstract:

Cocopah people living in Baja California face a number of challenges for cultural survival, including their struggle to continue fishing in their historic territory, even if environmental laws render their presence ilegal in their fishing camps. They are also looking for ways to revitalise their highly endagered language as the last cocopah speakers are old and sick: they fear their language -and the knowledge it expresses- will die with its last speakers. Drawing on the panel’s invitation to explore the opportunities and challenges emerging from digital environments for the actualisation of indigenous projects, in this paper I reflect on the collaborative work developed for the past two years, that aims to produce transmedia storytelling about the issues that matter to the cocopah. Using digital media, an anthropologist and Visual Arts and Animation students from Mexico and Italy, have engaged through videocalls with a group of cocopah people living in Baja California, Mexico, in order to co-create a digital archive of the cocopah intangible cultural heritage. In this process, a group of young cocopah, alongside their elders and fellow activists, may become co-researchers and co-producers of a digital archive of their own culture. How could this process help them to critically analyze their present and to create the aliances and visions to help them produce the futures they want for the cocopah people?