American Indian Culture and Research Journal

In Ecuadorian Amazon, Napo Kichwa people have turned to live performances and the production of various forms of media to confront settler colonial disruption and language shift. In this article, I consider the multimodal reclamation of language and culture through a fiber called pita (Aechmea magdalenae). By remembering and reclaiming cultural practices and environmental knowledge—like the production of pita—alongside embodied language, the growth of pita in a local ecology of broadcast and performance media allow participants to reweave lifeways in the context of ongoing disruptions. Broadcast and performance media become a place-based, multimodal means to reclaim lifeways and linguistic practices.