Silenced Voices

Last week, I was thinking a lot about people without proper opportunities to have their voices heard. This was obviously perpetuated by the Day of Silence which GBN observed on Thursday rather than Friday, and was also a factor in English class in which we eco-critically looked at mainstream news articles.

The article I was looking at, about a dam being built in Brazil, had many aspects that were interesting to look at from an eco-critical perspective. The most interesting to me, however, was the article's assertion that the displacement of indigenous populations is one of the major concerns being brought up by people opposed to the dam's construction. However, the article did not include any quotes or perspective from the indigenous people themselves. As someone studying journalism, I see this is as a major fault of the author and of the New York Times. If the article claims that the indigenous people are going to be those most directly affected by the dam's construction, why put words in their mouths when the journalist could talk to the indigenous people themselves? When this was brought up in class discussion, I was made aware that this is a common fault of journalists-- indigenous people do not often receive coverage.

This article indicates that coverage of indigenous people is often stereotypical and offensive. People may have an image of how they think indigenous people live. They may think that they're very different from the norm or that they're impossible to understand. This could all be fixed if the people were simply talked to. It could be discovered that they're not very different from us at all. Either way, they deserve coverage in the media, and not negative coverage. They are people with voices, and their voices deserve to be heard.