Cultural Identity Distance Computation through Artificial Intelligence as an Analysis Tool of the Amazon Indigenous People. A Case Study in the Waorani Community

Abstract

Cultural identity is a complex concept that includes subjective factors such as ideology, family knowledge, customs, language, and acquired skills, among others. Measuring culture involves a significant level of difficulty, since its study and scope differ from the point of view, the time and the place where the studies are carried out. In the Amazon, indigenous communities are in an accelerated process of acculturation that results in a loss of cultural identity that is not easy to quantify. This paper presents a method to measure the cultural distance between individuals or between groups of people using Artificial Intelligence techniques. The distance between individuals is calculated as the distance of the minimum path in the self-organizing map using Dijkstra’s algorithm. The experiments have been carried out to measure the cultural identity of indigenous people in the Waorani Amazon community and compares them with people living in cities who have a modern identity. The results showed that the communities are still distant in terms of identity from the westernised cities around them, although there are already factors where the distances are minimal concerning these cities. In any case, the method makes it possible to quantify the state of acculturation. This quantification can help the authorities to monitor these communities and take political decisions that will enable them to preserve their cultural identity.

The Application of Artificial Intelligence in the Dissemination of Local Culture in Hainan Province: Taking the Dissemination of Bai Yuchan’s Thoughts as an Example

“…To this end, we urgently need to use artificial intelligence technology represented by "deep learning technology" to continuously inject elements of the times into traditional culture and use the songs and dances, film, and television works that young people like to interpret the profound connotation of traditional culture and provide traditional culture. The deep inner core is wrapped in the coat of the era [13,14]. This can not only stimulate the interest of contemporary young people to deeply explore traditional culture and promote the integration and development of traditional culture and modern society but also realize the inheritance and innovation of traditional culture [15].…”

Las comunidades indígenas en el constructo de nación: una revisión teórica

“…El documento concluye que la identidad cultural del pueblo indígena Waorani Amazónico está en proceso de aculturación debido a los flujos migratorios de poblaciones occidentales que transitan constantemente. En el caso de este pueblo, son las mujeres quienes mantienen la representación cultural, puesto que se relacionan menos con otras culturas externas al estar más en su territorio cuidando de sus hijos, conservando así su identidad indígena (Espín-León et al, 2020). La cosmovisión y cultura de los pueblos indígenas, como el Secoya 46 , muestran que hay una ontología del territorio diferente a la concebida por el Estado.…”

Knowledge mapping analysis of Chinese traditional culture under the strategy of common wealth

“…Knowledge graph is a concept put forward by Google in 2012 through the influence of semantic networks and so on in order to improve the user search experience. Its essence is to store all kinds of knowledge in the world in a network-like structure, which in turn serves more downstream applications [13]. The underlying structure of the knowledge graph is represented as a triad of "entity1-relationship-entity2" to record various entities, concepts, and relationships.…”