The Yurakaré people and the Wikimedia movement

For a few years now, Wikimedistas de Bolivia has been working with representatives of Indigenous nations to put together open educational resources about the different languages spoken in the country. This year, the Bolivian user group got in touch with the Institute of Language and Culture of the Yurakaré Nation (ILC-NY) and invited its members to create an illustrated alphabet of their language and upload it to Wikimedia Commons. What we’d like is for Commons to eventually have open educational resources for all of Bolivia’s languages, available for anyone to download and use freely. That said, reaching out to the institutions in charge of safeguarding Indigenous languages in the country isn’t always straightforward, and it usually takes a long time.

Fortunately, the ILC-NY was very open from the start and expressed interest not only in creating the illustrated alphabet but also in updating the images about the Yurakaré nation on Wikimedia Commons. In our first conversations, we talked about how many Wikipedia articles on Bolivia’s Indigenous nations are illustrated with black-and-white photographs taken, in most cases, over a century ago by European explorers. The Yuracaré article was no exception, and at the time of our first conversation with the ILC-NY, there wasn’t a single modern image of the Yurakaré Nation on Commons. This gap not only shows that not enough volunteers are uploading recent photos of Indigenous nations, it also creates the false impression that these communities belong to the past, with black-and-white images and information written by outsiders.

One of the biggest challenges for Wikipedia and the internet in general is self-representation. In Bolivia and across the Global South, the shortage of volunteers who can spare precious free hours to edit Wikipedia is compounded by a shortage of reliable sources to cite in articles. Bolivian tradition is largely oral, and much highly relevant knowledge isn’t well documented in what Wikipedia considers reliable sources. The truth is, we face many obstacles and we’re few, but step by step we’ve been building knowledge from Bolivia, for Bolivia. 

Well before we started working on the illustrated alphabet, we got to work with the ILC-NY and organized a series of virtual workshops so their members could learn how to upload photos to Commons and write good descriptions from their own perspective and experience. In the end, enthusiasm and the desire to update the images won out over the usual connection issues, outdated equipment, and lack of time. The sessions were virtual, and from the ILC-NY side, Germán Maldonado, Mercy Noe, Daniel Chávez, and Mónica Yaveta joined in, the first three from Chimoré (in Cochabamba) and Mónica from Trinidad (in Beni).

The photos, which now illustrate the Wikipedia article, show the Yurakaré Nation as a living, dynamic people, far from the black-and-white images of the past. The descriptions are written from the perspective of those who took them and provide valuable information. And although they didn’t upload hundreds of photos, with just one recent image we went from 0% to 100%, which to us is a huge achievement.

Next came the illustrated alphabet. The ILC-NY already has a similar document, but it doesn’t have a free license, so we agreed that basing a new alphabet on the animals of Yurakaré territory was a good way to go. A fun side note: in the Yurakaré language, there is no animal whose name starts with the letter J, so on the alphabet you can see that “J” is illustrated with a jawbone (or jaja, in Yurakaré). Nicaela León did the illustrations, continuing work she’s been doing for several years now. Nicaela is a linguist, an activist for Indigenous language revitalization, and a very active volunteer in the Bolivian community. She has been responsible for illustrating all the educational resources in Bolivia’s languages that the user group has managed.

On the coordination side of illustrating these alphabets, besides putting together a list of all the animal names according to the Yurakaré alphabet, there was an exchange of reference images, and Mercy —who was directly in charge of the alphabet— made very precise corrections to the anatomy of certain animals. For example, Nicaela had to adjust the color of the ant and the size of its mandible, since the first version didn’t accurately represent the insect the ILC-NY wanted to show in the alphabet.

The illustrated alphabet of the Yurakaré language, along with other alphabets in Bolivia’s languages are available here. 

The next step is to print the alphabets on durable, portable material and take them to dozens of Yurakaré communities, where —to use the ILC-NY members’ own words— they will be useful not only for the children who live there, but also for the teachers who instruct them, since these educators often come from other parts of the country and need to learn Yurakaré as well.

In Mercy Noe’s words:

For me and for the entire technical team of the Institute of Language and Culture of the Yurakaré Nation, this has been a very satisfying and meaningful experience, because it allowed us to learn, share knowledge, and contribute to creating content that helps make our language and culture more visible and stronger. The creation of the alphabet with animal names in Yurakaré, which is now finished and ready for printing, represents an important outcome of this joint work. As the technical team of the ILC-NY, we feel motivated to keep contributing to the revitalization of our language and culture, moving toward new challenges. Bilabantubëla Tabuybu Yurújare achaya nish talatuwicha (let’s keep revitalizing our Yurakaré language so it doesn’t die).

We believe this is only the beginning of a very enriching partnership, and we hope to keep carrying out new activities with the ILC of the Yurakaré Nation so that Bolivia’s Indigenous nations are well represented on Wikipedia and the internet in general, always from a local perspective. In fact, we already have a discussion planned on how Indigenous communities are using artificial intelligence and how that connects with the Wikimedia projects. We hope to bring you more news on that soon.