Defining and describing bilingual societies and how their speakers build their identities, experiences, and knowledge according to their conception of self and other has always been complex. In Remaking Kichwa, Wroblewski—who started his ethnographic research in Tena, the capital of Napo Province (Ecuador) in 2008—pursues two main goals: (i) to delve into what it means to speak Kiwcha in contemporary Amazonian Ecuador, and (ii) to deepen the concept of indigeneity from an anthropological analysis of discourse.
In concrete terms, Wroblewski's starting point is that words reflect and configure worlds; hence his anthropological approach is also linguistic. But we cannot lose sight of the fact that ‘Indigenous people regularly and knowingly engage with multiple and distinct languages, knowledges, histories, and ways of experiencing the world’ (9). Thus, after reviewing previous works, Wroblewski discusses, debates, and redefines concepts such as acculturation, transculturation, pluralism, and hybridity, among others.
In order to understand the ‘remaking’ drawn by the author, it is necessary to enumerate a set of historical facts that, at the same time, help to understand the revitalization of Kichwa. For instance, there is the 2008 constitutional review in terms of multiculturalism in relation to indigenous communities (intercultural and plurinational), and the DIPEIB-N office, whose ‘leaders worked to revitalize and revalue ancestral Indigenous languages, cosmologies and values in order to achieve self-respect and harmonious coexistence’ (16).
Wroblewski bases his work on interviews with Indigenous Kichwa citizenry, recorded speech in social interaction, and public media text from Napo's Amazonian communities, all presented with very careful transcriptions in three languages. The author describes the main characteristics of this community through the voices of its protagonists, chapter after chapter; voices in Tena Kichwa, a subset of Indigenous Napo Runa, are the backbone for identity and indigeneity building, which cannot be isolated from Spanish, the other language that shapes their identity.
In chapter 1, a media text where Spanish and Tena Kichwa alternate naturally precedes a description of different Kichwa-speaking audiences (and diversity index) through Eladio's voice. By virtue of Santiago's testimony, chapter 2 focus on language revitalization, and its pitfalls, in order to understand the assimilation of the national written standard (Unified Kichwa) and its role in educational curricula. Chapter 3 delves into two Spanish phonetic variables—[r] in carro, [ʎ] in pollo, and corresponding allophones—analysed according to age, education level, residence history, and gender. Thereof, the author reflects on attitudes towards bilingualism and language contact, focusing on issues related to the perception of the indigenous accent (castellano mal hablado ‘poorly spoken Spanish’). In chapter 4, thanks to Victor's relatives, Luis and Marta, Wroblewski depicts elders’ oral histories as a ‘way to define contemporary Indigenous discourse by focusing on the intercultural, multilingual, and politically charged character of Tena Kichwas's stories of the past’ (116). Furthermore, the author places himself as a supporter of a ritual activism, a way of rescuing and revaluing language and culture. And, finally, chapter 5 focuses on intercultural media, with special attention to occasionally impossible translation processes (into Spanish).
Wroblewski offers another reflection of the complexity of constructing identity, of the multiple factors of the self, and of the cultural, geographical, political, and social context that interfere in its construction. Certainly, the multiple voices collected reflect this complexity, but they contribute to making plural experiences visible, to reinforcing the polycentric Kichwa world, and to reinforcing its remaking.
