Pinto, Participatory design for resistance – The making of pictograms with indigenous youth in the Ecuadorian Amazon

Drawing on a long-term participatory design project in the Ecuadorian Amazon with indigenous youth, communities, and organizations, this work centers on the collaborative making of pictograms for identity representation and collective knowledge-building. These pictograms—sets of images expressing indigenous epistemologies, concepts, practices, and knowledges—serve as creative theoretical and material tools for learning from and supporting alternative ways of being, knowing, and doing design research otherwise. Rooted in relationships and territories with indigenous peoples, the study traces a journey of knowing-through-making in which pictograms, conceived as living visual devices rather than standardized symbols of dominant “modern” design, are mobilized for education, communication, and political action within communities’ ongoing resistance processes. By contributing critical and plural perspectives to socially engaged, decolonizing, and participatory design, this work advances a framework that provides practical and conceptual tools to reimagine design research as a territorialized, communal practice that confronts extractive traditions.