What counts as authenticity? Who decides?
Plot Twist: There is no answer.
No, but really, there is no simple way to answer this question.
These ethnotourists that go seeking this “authentic” experience and the researchers that pursue authentic traditional practices and peoples are, more often than not, pursuing a constructed, idealistic version of indigeneity, tradition, and culture. And the more people pursue it, the more it becomes wound up in this complex web of commodification of authenticity as a means to attempt to benefit the community involved. The locals adopt the perception of the outsider in this commercial relationship and, ironically, in many ways, risk stripping so-called authenticity right out of the equation. It becomes manufactured and modified in this sweeping process of globalization, colonialism, and the unavoidable shift of ideas, beliefs, and perceptions.
It comes up again with regards to religion, because you get this competing idea of authentic faith, and the language used to participate in it. On the one hand, you have the Catholic Church promoting indigenous language use, which supposedly helps lead a more authentic life. Then, on the other, you have those claiming that being Catholic is fundamentally in opposition to what it means to be an authentic Mazatec. Enter Mazatec Indigenous Church. And then finally, you have the Catholic Church saying that participating in the Catholic Faith in an indigenous language is not being an authentic Catholic.
Likewise, in the world of indigenous authorship, authenticity becomes wound up in this elitist world, where indigenous authors are seen as authentic on the regional, national and global stage, but often as inauthentic by the communities from which they hail (because they’ve been trained and funded by these colonial institutions).
One might argue that authenticity is in the eye of the beholder, and that at the end of the day, there is no right answer. It’s really just an ambiguous, manufactured and extremely abstract idea imparted on the lives and realities of groups of indigenous people who have their own definitions of what makes something authentic - whether that be tradition, cultural backing, heritage, religion, their social world, and so on. Whatever the case, the question of authenticity embeds itself into every aspect of the Mazatec people’s social world and will likely remain unanswered.