Lessons Learned & Emerging Challenges

360° Video footage of Jorge and Megan facilitating a community presentation of the participants’ immersive films in the Dicaro school library in October 2021. Explore by clicking and dragging your mouse around the scene.
Produced by: Jorge Castillo Castro

Karewa Tocari uses a HMD to watch the 360° film he produced.
Photo Credit: Megan Westervelt

RQ1: Traditional Storytelling & Natural Resources

Key findings:

  • Natural resource use/conservation is intrinsically involved in traditional storytelling.
  • Main themes include teaching children to hunt, fish, and build houses.
Karewa Tocari explains the story he drew during the workshop facilitated by Jorge Castillo Castro and Diana Troya, designed by Megan Westervelt.
The drawing included depictions of jaguars, fish in a river, trees, and a traditional Waorani home with a palm-leaf roof.
Photo Credit: Jorge Castillo Castro

RQ2: Digital Storytelling & Biocultural Conservation

Key findings:

  • Digital storytelling links traditional cultural practices with new community priorities and documents age-old customs.
  • Most participants expressed that their primary storytelling goal was to increase tourism in the community or preserve stories for their children.


The following screenshots from several of the participant films have been thematically analyzed in order to better understand the objectives of the filmmakers and the interaction between digital media production and biocultural conservation.

Enjoying time in the jungle and in the river

Given the amount of time that the filmmakers dedicated to showing this waterfall, it was clearly their final destination and primary focus.
The filmmakers were not concerned with including their image in the scene as they wanted to invite the audience to join them on the walk through the jungle.

Dicaro: Sports and Culture

The filmmakers focused primarily on people in this story rather than the environment or natural resources around them.
Various modes of transportation were a key element of this film, indicating that the filmmakers also spend a great deal of time focused on traveling around.

Venturing into the jungle and observations

This shot demonstrates the filmmaker's interest in the environment and how his culture depends on natural resources for hunting.
In this moment, we see that a large area of jungle has been cut down to create cropland for their family to grow produce.
In this scene, we see the filmmaker's family together preparing food under the roof of their make-shift shelter in their cropland.
Outside of the family's shelter, the filmmaker stops to capture the processing of wild boar meat, which will sustain his family for several days or more.

Cultural conservation in Yasuní jungle

The filmmaker focuses this shot on his mother cutting firewood so that she can boil yucca to make their traditional chicha drink.
In this scene, the filmmaker includes the intergenerational interactions of grandmother and grandchildren gathering firewood together.
Vine-swinging and children's laughter dominate this shot as the filmmaker directs attention to the children's intimate relationship with nature.
In this moment, we come to understand the challenging physical demands that living in a tropical jungle environment and depending on its resources requires.
Watching an experienced woman prepare chicha at home shows how a variety of natural resources become an intrinsic part of everyday living.
This shot enables the filmmaker to tie this story of intergenerational tradition together as he shares a bowl of chicha that his mother made with his son.

Everyday family fishing

The filmmakers draw our attention to the importance of palm fiber in Waorani cultural handicraft creation at the start of the film.
In this scene, we learn that the filmmakers' family depends on fishing for sustenance and that women have long ago mastered meal preparation.
Here, the filmmakers teach us that natural resources are also used for creating sleeping
spaces (hammocks) and providing heat (fire).

The path to the salt lick

Despite its lower resolution, this video demonstrated the keen interest of the filmmaker in areas
where wildlife congregates, such as this group of parakeets at a salt lick as shown.

Waorani Culture

Waorani women are shown wearing crowns and dressed in traditional skirts and chest coverings, all made of palm fiber and other natural resources.
The filmmaker focused on the community elders in this shot, giving us a glimpse of a traditional song and dance that they feel should be passed down.
Screen Shot 2022-04-05 at 11.21.04 PM
In this final image of the film, the filmmaker
clearly expresses his pride in his cultural heritage.

RQ3: The Impact of the Digital Divide

Key findings:

  • The digital divide is indeed very profound in Dicaro, but more so in terms of having unreliable or unaffordable access to internet/electricity. 
  • Usability was not an issue as participants were very tech savvy and accustomed to using smartphones and apps.
Fredy Avila installs a new dish receiver during the set-up process for wireless internet at a community member’s home in Dicaro.
Photo Credit: Jorge Castillo Castro

Challenges to Confront

To continue using storytelling tools introduced in this research project, community members will need to confront a number of challenges, including:

  • Internet connectivity problems
  • Difficulty in using/accessing the camera equipment
  • Lack of time and other obligations
  • Confusion about how to publish media productions online