Constructing a Decentered Archival Method: AILLA Recordings and Wanano/KotiriaKaya Basa‘Sad Songs’

Abstract

I consider how Sherzer's discourse‐centered approach can be extended in new ways, particularly through the use of digital archiving. My work concerns women's songs produced in Kotiria (fka Wanano/Guanano), an Eastern Tukanoan language spoken in the Upper Rio Negro. The data I use, collected by Janet Chernela, is “housed” electronically through the Archive of Indigenous Languages of Latin America (AILLA) at the University of Texas at Austin. This archive is part of Sherzer's lasting legacy—a legacy that is becoming part of indigenous peoples’ experiences of themselves as major producers of the discourses that represent them to the world. I describe howAILLAcontributes to the ability of indigenous people and anthropologists to fruitfully negotiate the collection and analysis of matters of cultural, linguistic, and musical salience. I also describe how in the Kotiria case, the existence ofAILLAhas been fundamental to geographically dispersed relations among academics working with indigenous groups in the region. In this way, indigenous voices are able to enter new flows of meaning creation on both localized and more global levels.

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