61 minute read
inDigenouS KnowleDge
dEcoLonizing cULTURE
And ExpERiEncing THE fULLnEss of LifE
above: girls from the loctoc village School in Santiago chimaltenango, receive food support from pop no’j.
photo by fredy sitaví, pop no’j.
inSet: girls participate in the Danzamos por la vida (we Dance for life) Festival.
photo by fredy sitaví, pop no’j.
unitarian universalist Service committee
asociación Pop No’j is a nonprofit grassroots association in Guatemala that facilitates education, organizing, advocacy, and sustainable development among Indigenous Maya communities in the northeastern department of Huehuetenango. Through their women’s, youth, and migration programs, they work directly with families and communities across a range of projects providing resources, accompaniment, and technical expertise. So far this year, they have supported families in building and maintaining household gardens, held educational workshops with children and youth to prevent sexual abuse and violence, and broadcast their monthly radio program designed to reach local residents with information and conversations of particular interest to Maya communities. The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee recently spoke with members of Asociación Pop No’j about their work to maintain and revitalize Maya cultures.
uuSc: could you tell us the history of the association and the work it does?
asociación pop no’j: In 2005, Pop No’j was established with an Indigenous Peoples’ approach to interacting with the world. In the history, identity, and culture of Indigenous Peoples, we see great potential in building other ways of living. We base our work on the ancestral Maya worldview: their unique way of seeing, understanding, feeling, and being in the world. We accompany Maya leaders and organizations, particularly in the department of Huehuetenango, contributing to the defense of their rights through processes of training, organization, participation, advocacy, and communication. In 2010, seeing that forced migration was affecting Indigenous people and communities, we incorporated it into our work. Because of our approach, we could not disregard migration since the majority of Guatemalan migrants are Maya and the greatest effects of migration are being experienced in Indigenous communities.
uuSc: at pop no’j, what is your perspective on decolonization? how does it manifest?
apn: The Spanish invasion and colonization of Abya Yala began more than 500 years ago and initiated the military, political, economic, and ideological oppression of Indigenous Peoples. Although Guatemala formally achieved its independence in 1821, this did not mean freedom for Indigenous Peoples or other impoverished sectors of the population. We continue to live under new forms of colonialism. This imposition is supported by a racist ideology, which shows contempt for the culture and ancestral knowledge of Indigenous Peoples, as well as the intention to annihilate Native communities. However, Indigenous Peoples have a history and culture that are rich in knowledge and practices that are alternatives to the dominant system. They have managed to survive, stay, and resist as peoples. For Indigenous Peoples, the challenge is to eliminate colonial domination and exercise their right to autonomy, which means decolonization in feeling, thinking, and acting.
At Pop No’j we support the strengthening of identities and the recovery of ancestral knowledge. We promote the use of
native languages, spiritual practices, and strengthening the forms of self-organization. We work towards a holistic vision that corresponds to the Maya worldview.
uuSc: can you explain Buen Vivir (good living) and why it is important?
apn: From the ancestral Maya worldview, we understand that human beings belong to Mother Earth; the Earth does not belong to humanity. In nature, everything—animals, plants, soil, air, water, light—is important. Everything has life; each part, from the micro to the macro, contains the whole. Everything that exists has energy, feels, and reacts; it has dignity and deserves respect. But humanity is exploiting, destroying, and polluting nature in an effort to accumulate wealth. There are those who feel that they own everything that exists, even the lives of other human beings whom they oppress, exploit, marginalize, and deprive of all kinds of rights.
The Buen Vivir proposed by Indigenous Peoples is based on the principles of diversity and complementarity, of balance and harmony. It seeks to maintain the life of the Earth for the future and the continuity of human beings on it. Buen Vivir is not only individual, but collective; it is not limited to the material, but also includes spiritual wellbeing. It seeks to create conditions for all of us to live fully in co-responsibility. Our relationship with people, plants, animals, and the cosmos must be harmonious and balanced.
uuSc: how is maya culture threatened in the regions where you work?
apn: The cultures of Indigenous Peoples have been stigmatized, considered inferior, denied, and persecuted. Their languages are not recognized and are said to be dialects; their spiritual practices are not valued and are said to be witchcraft. Other ways of understanding the world are not recognized and are said to be superstitions and magical thinking. This is done in the schools, the churches, the media, and in society, eventually reaching the families themselves.
New communications technologies increase the threat against the cultures of Native Peoples since they lead to a globalized culture. Let us bear in mind that the dominant capitalist system places consumption as a priority in life. It is more important to have than to be. The consequences are that, frequently, people refuse to identify as Indigenous. They stop speaking their language and wearing their traditional clothing so as not to be discriminated against, and they adopt consumer practices that are not typical of their culture.
uuSc: what are some examples of the practice of buen vivir?
apn: A demonstration of the strength of Indigenous Peoples and their cultures is that they have managed to resist domination for more than 500 years. An example of this is the vitality that the Maya culture maintains in Guatemala. At Pop No’j, we contribute to the recovery of ancestral knowledge with principles, values, and practices that allow our coexistence and harmonious interrelation with plants, animals, and the diversity of humanity to feel and become one together with the Universe.
We promote several initiatives for the defense of Indigenous Peoples’ rights and the construction of Buen Vivir. For example, we are supporting families in productive processes of sustainable organic agriculture, which recovers ancestral knowledge and helps counteract the impacts of climate change [through] soil and water conservation, crop diversification, and eliminating the use of agrochemicals that pollute the environment.
The youth program accompanies economic initiatives that are also aimed at fulfilling needs in the communities by establishing economic networks that promote collaboration. Likewise, young people are trained for social and political participation. In the women’s program, we accompany Maya leaders in their processes of empowerment and organization to defend their rights and help them and their communities live free from violence.
uuSc: how does pop no’j support the reintegration of young people who have returned to guatemala?
apn: Every year, thousands of young people return. We coordinate with organizations in the United States, such as Kids in Need of Defense, who refer girls and boys returning to Guatemala. With this information, we contact their families and guide them toward the moment of reunification. We then provide comprehensive psychosocial support for an average of one year, in which we attend to the physical and emotional health of the children, their reintegration into the school system and other educational alternatives, legal support as needed, and the search for economic alternatives. We do all of this in coordination with different organizations and institutions.
uuSc: how do you see the relationship among migration, decolonization, and buen vivir?
apn: Migration has structural causes that are the product of the violent history of colonialism and its continuity under other forms. Colonialism left us with a patriarchal, oligarchic, racist, and discriminatory country whose economic foundation is an unfair distribution of land and its resources with the heirs to the colony holding the largest and best lands that grow monoculture crops for exportation (coffee, sugar cane, and palm oil). The neoliberal capitalist model is now betting on extractive industries and mega-projects that continue to cause the dispossession of Indigenous communities and their forced displacement.
As a result, it is the Indigenous Peoples who are in greater poverty and marginalization, without opportunities or hope, which in turn forces them to migrate. So that people are not forced to migrate and for this to instead be a truly voluntary option, the root causes of migration must be addressed. For Indigenous Peoples, this means recognizing the right that peoples and communities have over their territories and facilitating decent living conditions for everyone—that is Buen Vivir.
Indigenous Peoples represent life options not only for themselves, but for all of humanity. Therefore, we must shift our mindset to recognize their knowledge and wisdom. We must seek more horizontal relationships of equality in which all of us learn from each other. As Australian Aboriginal leader Lilla Watson put it, “If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
decolonizing History
and Mother earth’s story
edson Krenak naknanuk (Krenak, CS Staff)
When the European colonial powers ruled our territories of Abya Yala, they implemented policies of oppression by ransacking, dispossessing, and enslaving mainly Black and Indigenous populations. In the last five centuries those policies were driven fundamentally by racism. Colonialism created a bureaucratic, institutional, and political process to discriminate and subjugate different ethnic groups. Centuries of colonial policies produced not only economic and social disadvantages, but also spiritual and emotional traumas for generations.
Colonial trauma, and therefore our liberation, affects all spheres of our lives: our being (who am I, and who is “the other?” How do I feel in relation to the other?); our power (who commands and who obeys? Who occupies the places of power? Who decides? Who leads?); our knowing (which knowledge is most valid? Who seems to have more authority when speaking?); and our doing (who has access to education, to the creation of valid knowledge, etc.? Who produces or co-creates? What is the impact of the making on the environment? Who benefits from the making?)
Colonization as a systematic source for structural racism, prejudice, and inequality persists because Western society constantly fails to recognize and acknowledge it. Decolonizing is a process that starts with identifying and analyzing the unequal power relations. When the subject matter is history, we must see it as a discourse, an ideological object that has an owner.
Decolonizing history is an exercise that we must start by questioning the story that is told, who tells it, and which voices have been silenced that still exist and live among us. Indigenous Peoples point out that the history of mankind is inseparable from the history of the other species, and is deeply connected with the planet (the Pachamama for some relatives of Abya Yala), Mother Earth.
the history of mother earth has not yet been told
I have the privilege of being a teacher and working in an international school with students from many countries. The question I hear most from my 12- to 17-year-old students is, “who are Indigenous Peoples?” Because of the incredible diversity and various perspectives of Indigenous Peoples, a clear definition is hard to provide. Colonial powers diminish us and oppress us and have always labeled us. In Brazil, “Índio;” whereas in some places “Aboriginal” is used to describe Indigenous Peoples. Even “Indigenous Peoples” is not well accepted by many, as we are very different and diverse.
However, there are some common aspects that unite us under this provisional term. We are the survivors of the violent processes of colonization in our territories. We have a deep relationship with the Earth, which includes our responsibilities and original instructions to our environments. And we seek balance for all beings: humans, trees, rivers, and animals. This is demonstrated through the ancestral knowledge passed down from generation to generation in our communities, traditional knowledge that has sustained us through the centuries.
With my students, I discuss the differences between the stories told in books and the stories told by our ancestors: where we came from, who we are, what is our role in the natural world. Unfortunately, the stories of the didactic books are focused on the great achievements of the winners and powerful societies of mankind, rather than resilient and resistant populations.
One of the greatest acts of violence was the silencing of Mother Earth’s story. History, geography, and social studies books are deposits of Western monocultural knowledge, propagators of a system of values, a box of ideology that overpriortizes humans. Mother Earth is described as Terra Nullis, an
“empty” and unexplored space, ready to be conquered. They were blind to the very being that feeds us all.
That is why uncountable numbers of species inhabitants of the planet have been vilified and massacred to the point of extinction. This crime has a name: ecocide. The same industrial logic of massacre was used on Indigenous Peoples, whose ontologies have always respected the planet as a living organism and an essential part of our relationships of kinship and life. Countless Indigenous Peoples have suffered a genocide for being different and for defending Mother Earth.
But, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Since some scientists started to live and learn with us, this contact has opened the eyes of many in the West, sensitizing them to Indigenous worldviews. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the vulnerability of Indigenous Peoples and people of color has been escalated and exposed with the disproportionate deaths of those populations due to lack of healthcare conditions and inadequate education response, among other factors.
In the view of the Indigenous Amazonian Peoples, we need to “suspend the sky,” which is to broaden the horizons towards all, not just humans. We have a forgotten memory, a cultural heritage of the time when our ancestors were so harmonized with the rhythm of nature that they only needed to work a few hours of the day to provide everything that was needed to live. “And all the rest of the time you could sing, dance, dream: everyday life was an extension of the dream,” Davi Kopenawa (Yanomami) writes in “The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman.”
edson Krenak naknanuk giving a lecture on brazilian history from an indigenous perspective.
photo courtesy of edson Krenak naknanuk.
We need another dialogue in the educational field. We need an education that values other ontologies, other species as subjects of history and law, other languages, traditions, ancestry, spiritualities, and knowledge that are in the trees, which tell us the rivers, the Elders, the midwives, healers, activists, pajés (spiritual leaders), and shamans. They are holders of fundamental knowledge that should be in school in dialogue with sciences. Global society needs a new history, as well as new sciences, new laws, new justice, new societies whose narrative of what history is embodies multiple voices, a polyphonic knowledge that sees the planet and her realities with respect.
how to Start Decolonizing
We can start decolonizing in the classroom, at home, and basically anywhere by positioning ourselves not as individuals, but as part of a community. I regularly talk to my relatives in Brazil about ways to decolonize the academy, school, and institutions, seeking advice and directions. When I do my work, I do not do it alone. I need them; they watch over me. We take care of each other, we grow together. Relationality must also be at the heart of our work. Every day we learn from relatives, from students, from our ancestors. This gesture means that we are aware of the perceptions and feelings we have about ourselves, and how our perspectives are affected by the historical trauma of colonialism.
While working with non-Indigenous Peoples, we need to talk about the privileges, the device of amnesia that make many of the European and white people think that they don’t have anything to do with colonialism. We need to remember that problems are systemic. We approach that with a principle that our communities apply on a daily basis: relationality.
Terry Tafoya, cited by Shawn Wilson (Opaskwayak Cree), said, “Stories go in circles. They don’t go in straight lines. It helps if you listen in circles because there are stories inside and between stories, and finding your way through them is as easy and as hard as finding your way home. Part of finding is getting lost, and when you are lost you start to open up and listen.” Our students, colleagues, family, and friends should think about how to insert this content into our daily life. The decolonizing agenda belongs to everyone.
five Ways to Decolonize History and Listen to Mother Earth
1. Focus on community relationships
Descendants of Indigenous communities living in urban areas develop a strong and healthy identity when they have a strong relationship with the wider community, including humans, plants, and animals. Connect to the Indigenous communities in your region, meet local Indigenous leaders and movements, climate activists, and environmentalists. Attending Indigenous events in the city can help you feel strong culturally and increase your sense of belonging to a diverse and multicultural world.
2. explore the power of images
Show and display photos and images of Indigenous Peoples from various continents, and caption them with important historical events of these peoples not only within schools or institutions, but also at home.
3. create space and time for storytelling, ceremonies, rituals, and celebrations
Learn about traditional rituals and ceremonies from your own and different cultures. Learn the spiritual and cultural values of food, dances, chants, and clothing, for example.
4. talk about indigenous words among the lexica of english, portuguese, and Spanish, and value the learning of indigenous languages
There are numerous words in Portuguese and English with Indigenous origin, such as chocolate, pipoca (popcorn), tapioca, etc. Learn more about these and teach about them as they hold traditional knowledge which is connected to the true history of Mother Earth.
5. have a decolonial agenda for the day to day
Discuss big topics. Encourage good and respectful discussions on decolonizing on a regular basis with the people in your circle. Talk about racism and discrimination, forms of bullying, and how to tackle them. Show young generations that activism for justice and equality is a matter for people of all ages, not only adults and people with money.
model rebecca Jo acero wearing aconav, styled by niya Degroat for Indigene magazine.
photo by Justin Villalobos.
modern indigeneity photoshoot styled by niya Degroat, featuring model bianca mead.
photo by roberto cordero Jr.
model raquel huerta wearing aconav, styled by niya Degroat.
photo by Justin Villalobos.
bianca mead wearing an aconav cocktail dress, styled by niya
Degroat. photo by roberto cordero Jr.
decolonizing Fashion, one runway at a tiMe
niya Degroat (Diné)
ientered the fashion industry at the age of 30, what the industry considers “later in life.” Prior to that, I was working in visual media from filmmaking to photography. I really don’t consider myself stylish or fashionable, but I do have an eye for it. My first introduction to the fashion world began at the tender age of two when I would watch my grandmother, Hazel, develop her own textiles using sheep wool and natural dyes to create intricately woven Navajo rugs. I assisted her by hand carding the wool so that niya Degroat it could be spun into yarn. Her step-by-step process allowed me to develop a better understanding of color, texture, and form. Sadly, my time with her was short lived, as she lost her battle with cancer a year later. Throughout my childhood, I continued to have an interest in fashion but I never acted on it, mostly because I naively equated fashion with femininity—so I avoided it all together to protect myself from being “outed” as gay and as Two-Spirit.
Whenever my friends or cousins would play with their dolls,
I could only observe from afar, wishing I was them. Instead,
I immersed myself in the imaginative world of books. Living on a farm, isolated from the world, there wasn’t much for me to do except to use my imagination by running around in capes with a wooden stick, pretending to be a sorcerer. Years later, in the summer of 1995, the costume designs in the hit comedy, “Clueless,” invigorated my love for fashion even more. The seed was planted, but still I continued to ignore it. The film would further inspire my love of filmmaking, which prompted me to get my first bachelor’s degree in film studies, with minors in music and theatre, from the University of New Mexico. The highlight of my studies was producing my own documentary, “Trapped In Images,” a student short that explores the misrepresentation of Native Americans in pop culture from Hollywood movies to Indian-themed mascots.
After graduation, I moved to Flagstaff, Arizona to work briefly as a Sears Portrait team member before enrolling at Northern Arizona University to study photography. As a newly out queer student, I became enamored with fashion magazines. I told myself repeatedly that one day my images would end up in the pages of Vogue, Elle, or GQ. To the amusement of my friends, when perusing fashion magazines, I could name drop high end designers easily without having to take a second look. My photography degree landed me my first dream job as a studio managing photographer for Kim Jew Portraits in Albuquerque, New Mexico. After two years, I moved on from that position and returned to Flagstaff to be with family and to help raise my nieces and nephew.
In 2012, while working as a freelance photographer, I answered a Craigslist ad from a local emerging designer seeking interns to assist with her participation in Phoenix Fashion Week’s three-month designer bootcamp. With little experience, I jumped right in. I purchased my first iPhone, downloaded the necessary social media apps, and became a self-taught content creator. The needs of the internship certainly aligned with my visual communication skills. Three years later, I joined the Phoenix Fashion Week team as an event planning intern to assist with their year round fashion events, including its four-day fashion week, which takes place every October. Within months I rose through the ranks, beginning as Social Media and Branding Manager to becoming Director of Multimedia during my six years with the company.
In my first year with the company, I vividly remember an epiphany I had during the first night of Phoenix Fashion Week, which takes place at Talking Stick Resort, a Tribal casino owned by the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian community in Scottsdale, Arizona. That first day, after taking in the glamour and spectacle of the show, I took a step back and realized that I was the only Indigenous person around. I explored the entire resort searching for people who looked like me, but aside from a few custodians, servers, and housekeepers, Native visibility in the resort was far and few between. After all, the casino caters to a non-Native clientele from the bordering metropolitan area of Phoenix.
It wasn’t until I was heading up to my hotel room that I stumbled upon a small room located next to the elevators called “Cultural Display.” In this space, I saw several Nativemade artifacts encapsulated within display cases or mounted on the wall. I remember thinking to myself, “Oh, there we are! We are the remnants of the past collecting dust. We are the taxidermies on the wall.” This corner nook served as a reminder that in America, Indigenous Peoples are out of sight, out of mind. Up to this point in my life, I had gotten used to the idea that I was always going to be the only Native person present in white spaces, be it a classroom, a concert performance, a theater production, and now, a fashion show.
Fed up, I knew instantly I had to be the changemaker. So, in preparation for the next season, I assisted in the search for local Indigenous designers. This led to the recruitment of two brands: ACONAV, a fashion label owned by Phoenix designer Loren Aragon (Acoma Pueblo), and Marisa Mike (Diné), a designer from Tonalea, Arizona. Being able to mentor these designers and to see their designs on the runway of Phoenix Fashion Week—and more importantly, for us to collectively and rightfully Indigenize the fashion space that was already taking place on Native land—was one of the many highlights of my career. A year later, Loren Aragon took home the coveted title of Couture Designer of the Year 2017, a first in Phoenix Fashion Week history.
Over the years, we recruited more Native designers to take part in our bootcamps, including Orlando Dugi (Diné), Alicia Vasquez (Yaqui/Apache) of Dotlizhi, Sage Mountainflower (Ohkay Owingeh/Taos/Diné), and Calandra R. Etsitty (Diné) of Winston Paul. My work with these designers inspired me to get a master’s degree in fashion journalism from the Academy of Art University’s online program, because I noticed a void in the industry when it came to talking about the emerging field of Indigenous fashion. According to a 2018 News Leaders Association survey, Native American journalists make up less than one percent of newsroom employment in the United States. For fashion journalists, it’s even less. Prior to studying fashion journalism, I was aware of only two working Indigenous journalists who wrote about fashion: Kelly Holmes (Cheyenne River Lakota), who created the first Native American fashion magazine in 2012 called Native Max, and Christian Allaire (Ojibwe), a contributing writer for Vogue.
Not surprisingly, like most educational institutions in the U.S., the curriculum at the Academy of Art University is mostly Eurocentric and focuses predominantly on the Western fashion system. This worked in my favor, though, because as the only Indigenous student, it allowed me to not only bring awareness to Native fashion but make it the focus of my thesis project, which was to produce my own magazine from cover to cover. With the backing of my advisors, plus taking additional courses in fashion styling, magazine publishing, and art direction, Indigene magazine was born. The magazine celebrates and highlights the ever changing tapestry of Indigenous fashion by sharing and presenting Native stories and cultures authentically through forward thinking perspectives and unique storytelling.
Throughout my various careers, I have always put my Indigeneity at the forefront of my work. Sometimes it’s easier said than done, especially when it comes to Native fashion— not everyone gets it. For the mainstream audience, modern Indigenous designs are not fashion forward enough, and for the Native audience, the designs are no longer Indigenous due to the contemporary elements. The beauty of Native fashion is that it is rich and complex. Unlike Western fashion, there isn’t a Native-authored book readily available for me to study how my tribe used to dress throughout history, let alone the unique clothing of the other 573 Indigenous nations living in the United States, and the countless others existing outside of the Americas.
Furthermore, when it comes to our regalia, this type of clothing is not for public view, or to be used to make a fashion statement. Traditional clothing is worn primarily for spiritual purposes, which the outside world likes to appropriate and fetishize. But, it is not my responsibility to make sense of contemporary Native fashion; I can only shed light on it. And even though I haven’t landed in the pages of Vogue just yet (and it’s okay if I never do), I will continue to Indigenize the industry one story, one photoshoot, one runway, at a time.
phoenix Fashion week native runway.
photo by James almanza.
— Niya DeGroat (Diné) is a fashion journalist and multidisciplinary creative committed to elevating the discussion around the emerging field of Indigenous fashion and storytelling in the Americas and beyond. He is a citizen of the Diné Nation from Mariano Lake, New Mexico.
dEcoLonizing oUR commUnicATion
the magical forest of tsa'ajx'äm (coscomate), Santa maria yacochi, municipio de Santa maría tlahuitoltepec mixe, oaxaca, méxico.
Sócrates vásquez garcía (Ayuujk Jääy, CS Staff)
too often, discussions about Indigenous communication have been reduced to an analysis of the use of communications technology. It is important to approach Indigenous communication beyond just technology use and explain it from Indigenous points of view. In our towns and communities, we affirm, with increasing force, that we existed long before the arrival of the European colonizers. Our social organization is collective in nature and is rooted in a relationship with Mother Earth. This statement seems simple and is easy to repeat today, but it represents years of resistance, struggle, transformation, and the contradictions that continue among Peoples in Abya Yala (Latin America).
These forms of collective organization rooted in relationships with nature are being revitalized and transformed. After five centuries of domination in military, economic, political, philosophical, and religious spheres, it is clear that colonization has not ended. We must name it and denounce it. We also have to talk about the “myth of modernity” in its purest expression, which is developmentalism. This idea has its origin in the medieval cities of Europe and was reaffirmed through the “discoveries” of other lands, which amounted to controlling, forcing, and stripping Native peoples of their livelihoods. This process, which is called “discovery,” is, in reality, a suppression of the other. This suppression represents centuries of resistance, adaptation, and sometimes adoption of the ways imposed by the colonizing power.
In this context, Pedro Garzón López (Chinanteco), lawyer, and researcher from Oaxaca, states in his book, “Indigenous Citizenship: From Multi-culturalism to the Coloniality of Power,” “it is evident that Indigenous Peoples were the first colonized entities in all senses of the word ‘domination.’ This means that rethinking Indigenous oppression from the substantial content of the ‘colonial difference’ implies going back to 1492, when the European colonial expansion in the Abya Yala continent was inaugurated....” And so, we must understand that we continue under a process of colonization in three main aspects: power, knowledge, and being—essential aspects for the integral flourishing of life in society.
Although colonial domination existed and devastated Peoples and civilizations, those of us who survive have also internalized domination as a form of resistance. This is very clear in the way in which the Catholic religion imposed itself on the Mesoamerican Peoples through festivities, baptisms, weddings, and other Catholic holidays. However, the practices of offerings to beings and deities, understood as air, earth, fire, lightning, water, and mountains, and with whom we cohabit in our world, the givers of life, are still being practiced.
Colonization has passed down to us a culture of division in societies of superior and inferior, but not an understanding of societies as different from one another. The cultural practices that the conqueror-colonizer found were deemed inferior, thereby justifying one’s right over the other and watering the seeds of the colonization of power. The colonization of knowledge justified our actions and thoughts. While we may not realize it, we are reproducing patterns of colonial thought because we were imposed upon with a new way of understanding our world, one that was thought for the big metropolises at the time. The norms of colonization that now seem normal continue to oppress us. We have adopted habits that
elder pascual cortéz on air at radio Jënpoj, an ayuujk community radio station in Santa maria tlahuitoltepec mixe, oaxaca, mexico.
are not questioned, but have become part of our customs.
The colonization of being is the most invisible, especially in our Indigenous communities. It is in our subconscious, part of our identity, and sometimes it even makes us feel proud. In this sense, colonization has changed the way we see ourselves. Some see speaking an Indigenous language as something that makes you less worthy. While our Peoples and communities consider themselves as part of nature, not so different from other forms of life, the “scientists” consider us inferior. They view us as incapable of producing knowledge, and so everything that did not resemble Europe was deemed inferior.
We want to highlight the relationship that exists between the land and communication from Indigenous perspectives. Without territory and land understood as a social construct of human and non-human relationships, there is no community. We are born, live, learn, and die in the land. For our Peoples, land is memory, time, and space for cultural reproduction, and therefore communication. We believe that Indigenous communication, or communication from our Peoples, can give us new insights and broaden the discussion about how we are understanding communication.
The experience of the Ayuujk Peoples of Tlahuitoltepec illustrates this point. Communication begins with ääw-ayuujk, the use of the mouth to name things. Ayuujk is the construct and the way we name everything that surrounds us; the ayuujk describes what we want and think. It is through ääw-ayuujk that we have communicated and transmitted information from generation to generation. Thus, we Ayuujk Peoples communicate when we use the ääw-ayuujk, but this cannot be understood if it does not go through the kaapxymatsyäky (dialogue) to reach jäkyukë (the balance of thought), and that finally gives us a horizon, a path, which is the wi’inmänyë. Communication is not only from a sender to a receiver, but is built and reaffirmed in dialogue.
From our worldview, ground-level communication— Ja Tunk Pë’k—(work to receive), is directly related to the daily environment and is classified as closest to the Jëën tëjk (living) space. We communicate when we exchange codes or signs with chickens, dogs, bulls, cows, sheep, goats, birds, as well as with seeds, plants, cornfields, etc. Pujx mëtunën-kajp mëtunën (working for the people and with the people), is the sharing of service to the community. For example, in community positions, communication is broader because people participate in community assemblies. In this sense, communication is developed when the person is obliged to communicate its activities before community assemblies. It also includes people who are not in office communicating with the authorities, depending on the age of the person who performs it. If it is a person who does not yet have experience in the position, they may need an intermediary; since experience is needed to establish contact with the authorities, they would have to reach out through someone with a lot of experience or someone from the family.
Ja ët näwinyët (Earth/territory) is the communication in prayers, thanks, and requests to the wind, rain, earth, sun, moon, stones, and lightning, but above all to Konk and Tajëëw, the male and female parts of the Ayuujk deities. Ja tsuj kumä’yë (dreamtime and night) is linked to the part that is not visible through the senses. This is the communication between energetic entities and certain people with specific characteristics. We refer to tsuuj kumaa’yë, the oneiric nature in the territory. Tsuuj is the beginning of the night, the ideal space to envision the encounter with other dimensions of life in the territory. Kumää’yë is understood as dreaming, that moment of sleep that initiates communication with other energetic beings in the territory.
These various experiences that are still maintained in Indigenous territories show us other ways of communicating between people, nature, and with our ancestors. Communication is a fundamental tool to solve problems, but it has lost importance in our communities because it is no longer given priority. We need to return to our pre-colonial ways of living, knowing, being, and communicating.
TELLing UnToLd sToRiEs in soUTH AfRicA THRoUgH AnimATion
Diedre Jantjies
Shaldon Ferris (Khoisan, CS Staff)
south Africa has had its fair share of colonization over the last 500 years. The first Europeans to reach the southern tip were led by Bartholomew Diaz in 1488. Not long after that, in 1510, the battle of Salt River saw the Aboriginal Khoikhoi emerge as victors after Francisco D’Almeida, also from Portugal, and his crew, attempted to kidnap Khoikhoi children and steal cattle. In 1652, South Africa was officially colonized, this time by the Dutch. Shortly after this, a pidgin, or creole, language started developing, as communication was necessary between master and slave. Afrikaans was born, and Indigenous languages started to disappear. South Africa was later ruled by the British and eventually gained independence on May 31, 1969. The apartheid regime continued until 1994, giving birth to a new era of democracy and a rainbow nation with a liberal constitution.
Having had so much European influence over hundreds of years, South Africa and its people are still caught up in a country where decolonization will be a lengthy process. Although much is being done to ensure that education is offered in many of its 11 official languages, there remain several areas where radical change needs to happen to recognize and utilize all Indigenous languages in South Africa. There are no signs of Khoekhoegowab appearing as a standard feature on restaurant menus or road signs, for example, even though this language, spoken by the Nama people, is older than all of the official languages. More and more courses are being offered in vernacular languages, and schools in South Africa are rising to the occasion by offering more subjects in languages that are now slowly becoming mainstream. Learners in some schools now can now choose official languages such as isiZulu or Sesotho as a second language, for instance. In contrast, very few efforts are underway to formalize the teaching of Khoekhoegowab in schools and universities.
Deidre Jantjies (Khoisan), a film producer, is doing her part to ensure that more of South Africa’s 35 Indigenous languages are showcased, normalized, and revitalized. She has produced a web series entitled “Stories in die Wind” (Stories of the Wind), in which she tells stories of Nama Peoples in Afrikaans with Nama subtitles. “Stories in die Wind” is a passion project from Jantjies, which tells the story of a young Nama girl born with a gift to communicate with the rain, animals, and plants, who is on a mission to find her destiny. The animated series gives a glimpse into traditional Nama life, the importance of dreaming, finding counsel in our Elders, and pursuing our destiny. Cultural Survival recently spoke to Deidre Jantjies.
cultural Survival: please tell us about you and your work.
Deidre Jantjies: I am a storyteller and filmmaker. I’m an Indigenous cultural activist. I represent Indigenous stories of our First Nation Peoples in Southern Africa. I also used to be a flamenco dancer; that is when I sort of started understanding artistry. I’m very passionate about telling untold stories. I am originally from Oudtshoorn, which means that I come from the Outenikwa clan, but I have many other Indigenous subtribe background histories in my DNA and I am very proud to represent my Indigenous heritage. I direct documentaries, animation films, short films, and feature length films. I recently started with animation, and I’m really starting to enjoy it.
cS: why did you choose animation as your medium for “Stories in die wind?”
DJ: I wrote the story in 2018, and as a story it really sat with me. I initially thought that the story was going to be a theater production, but when I spoke to a friend of mine, he advised me that this is not a theater production, this is an animation. I started working on this project in 2019. I guess I specifically wrote the story because I wanted to see myself being represented. You automatically speak for a lot of voices that have not seen themselves in animation. So, “Stories in die Wind” was me tapping into a deeper sense of representation. And as time went by and I started directing, everything sort of started
making sense. It became an intergenerational conversation between the older and the young people in my community and also other communities.
With regards to representation on the networks, we still have a very long way to go. It does seem that the government is starting to represent brown skinned Indigenous people and ‘coloured’ people a bit more. It is taking quite a long time. But because Indigenous people and the San are standing up and asking to be recognized, the government is starting to understand that it is important for brown skinned people to see themselves. The reason why we didn’t see much of ourselves is because we were not we were not placed into certain places and spaces. But there is a group of filmmakers and storytellers that are very serious about seeing themselves and representing their history and their cultural and traditional heritage.
cS: most productions use english subtitles. yours make use of nama subtitles. why did you make this choice?
DJ: It was an intentional decision that I had to make. When you read it, it goes by so quickly that I want people to go back and really actually engage in the dialogue of the characters. How can you introduce a language like Nama? It is in a subtle way, not too forceful, not too heavy.
cS: how do we go forward, building on efforts of indigenous representation and making them sustainable?
DJ: We have to tell more stories. We need to make more stories and events. We need to place them into certain spaces and places. We need to become cultural in the way our work speaks for us. We need to go to these government spaces where we show our work and we talk about ourselves through our work, and show them that this is how we actually want it to be done, this is the kind of language that we want. This is the structure that we put in place for our work to be done so that the community sees this as an example. This is an example of people that are doing things the right way.
I was not prepared for “Stories in die Wind” to be created last year, so when I pitched it to Programme for Innovation in Artform Development, which is a collaboration with the Free State Festival and the University of Free State, I pitched it as a web series. They accepted it and they gave me a budget, and I made the most out of that budget so that the work can speak for itself. As soon as the work was created, it became so much easier for me to ask for funding. I got funding from the National Arts Council afterwards so that we could finalize the shortfall that we had.
It’s been overwhelming to know that people are interested in this kind of content, which is the first of its kind. It means that we really want to see ourselves. A lot of people really enjoy watching “Stories in die Wind” because it’s different. It’s simple, it’s subtle, it’s real. It’s not filtered; it’s true. And it’s been doing very well. There have been a couple of articles written on it, I have done a couple of interviews, and many other people still want to continue having conversations about it, which I’m very excited and thankful for. Last month, it played in New Zealand at the Wairoa Māori International Film Festival, which is an Indigenous film festival in New Zealand that presents Indigenous stories. If Aboriginal people from the other side of the world can see the worth in our stories, then our stories are important to spread across the world. In the international version, we will put English subtitles so that the people abroad can have a conversation about the Nama people, about Indigenous Peoples in Southern Africa.
below: Stills from "Stories in die wind" featuring young girl protagonist !hûni //ga –res (the rain Flower) who was born with a gift to communicate with the rain, animals, and plants. cS: what is next for you, after the success of this animation series?
DJ: I’m working on a lot of things. I am very serious about creating feature length films and also other short films, and I am quite busy currently working on a documentary. I like this momentum. I’d like for “Stories in die Wind’’ to carry on doing well internationally and being internationally recognized. I’m also trying to figure out how we can keep the conversation going by telling more stories like “Stories in die Wind.”
The things that I received that came my way are because I prayed hard and I understood why I should be telling our stories. I understood that I had to become an activist. I had to become a storyteller because I didn’t see people like myself anywhere on television or on the internet. I also constantly heard the voice of the ancestral connection. You have to keep on believing in yourself. You have to keep speaking positive things throughout your life. You need to constantly occupy and be aware of who you surround yourself with. You need to believe in your stories and make sure that you align yourself with the right people so that they can assist you with the right direction of your story and make sure that you always know that everything that happens is for the best version of you.
chenae bullock walking among eelgrass. eelgrass provides many important ecosystem functions, including foraging areas and shelter to young fish and invertebrates and food for migratory waterfowl and sea turtles.
dEcoLonizing oUR RELATionsHips WiTH EAcH oTHER And moTHER EARTH
chenae bullock (Shinnecock)
My given name is Sagkompanau Mishoon Netooeusqau, which translates to “I lead canoe I am Butterflywoman” in the Shinnecock and Montauk language. I am a member of the Shinnecock Nation and a descendant of the Montauk people of Long Island, New York. The foundation of my work has been based on the resurgence of the traditional canoe culture of the Northeast coastal Algonquin communities. Not only have I worked with Indigenous communities globally, I have worked to create stewardship between these communities and non-Indigenous communities. I have organized historically sacred paddles in the ancient waterways of the Northeastern seaboard to spread awareness of the roles Indigenous communities contribute to ocean sustainability internationally and at places like the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, the Earth Institute at Columbia Law School, and International Treaty Commission at the United Nations, and I have assessed many sites for signs of submerged cultural history for Atlantic Shores Cultural Core Analysis. I have dedicated my life for the betterment of not only my community, but for our Earth. I have invested energy in reviving and sustaining our traditional lifeways.
In the fall of 2016, I dedicated six months of my life to help the people at the Oceti Sakowin camp at Standing Rock prepare their camps for the winter. The Elders came to my campsite after standing on the banks of Cannonball River and emotionally watching cross-deputized authorities from non-Indigenous police departments show a presence on a sacred site to the Hunkpapa Peoples. They asked me to paddle around to see how these non-Indigenous police officers were getting to the sacred site. Using a donated canoe and paddles they had made with a 4x4 piece of wood, two other water protectors and I paddled in the Cannonball River as the Elders asked. While I was paddling, I looked into the faces of the Oceti Sakowin Peoples on the river banks. I witnessed a few swim with their horses as far as they could, but the water was too muddy and deep to make it across. I prayed that what was taking place that day somehow would bring them back to their ancient canoe ways. At that moment, I realized there was more to do than prepare camps for the winter for the Oceti Sakowin while being there.
No matter where I am in the world, near a pond, a lake, a bay, a river, an ocean, or even in the shower, I stop and give thanks for having access to clean water. I do not take it for granted. It is who I am as a Shinnecock woman, a woman of the stoney shores. We are now living in a world where it has become so scarce to have clean water. Since childhood, I have had a known respect for the elements of our Earth. I rode on the back of my mother while she swam far from the Shinnecock shorelines to the sandbars she had known to be there all of her life. As I grew older, I stood on the shores and watched her swim to where those sandbars once were. I watched my mother swim around looking for them, diving down to see how deep they could be, until she realized they were no longer there due to climate change and consistent dredging of the land underneath the water.
When I visit our waterways or hear about climate change, dredging in our ancient waterways, or Tribes fighting for access to their waterways, I think back to my mother swimming to the sandbars. Since that day, we have had more whales beach themselves on the shores. In our culture we believe that when whales beach themselves, they are
trying to communicate with us as they have known we are in need of ancient wisdom. These experiences have inspired me to help my people have a stronger presence in the water.
The word for medicine in my traditional language is “Moskehtu.” When I started my cultural and heritage consulting firm, Moskehtu Consulting, I wanted to name it something that would represent providing medicine to the Earth and to the people who are stewards of the Earth. I envisioned it being able to provide unique services to many clients who will take the medicine shared and pass it along throughout their organization or company, or even reposition themselves on how they see our Earth.
During the pandemic, I wrote an eBook titled “50 Plant Medicines: Indigenous Oral History and Perspective.” The intention of this book is to share my personal relationship with plants to inspire my readers to have their own personal relationships with the Indigenous plants where they live. After writing the book, I partnered with the Brooklyn Botanic Garden to curate an audio tour titled “Ohkehteau (Plants of the Earth): A Shinnecock Oral History.” This audio tour can be listened to along the walk at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. It includes 15 of the native plants throughout their garden. The exhibition opened June 24 and will go through November 7. My goal for this exhibit is to help people connect to the Earth in a personal way. Our plants are in need of us to reconnect. With my personal oral history and perspective, it helps to give the plants a voice.
Recently, I partnered with the brand Teva as an Indigenous influencer for a panel called “Rematriate the Land: An Indigenous Perspective.” The other panelists included Angel Tadytin (Navajo), who is the founder of Adventurous Natives; Jolie Varela (Nuumu and Yokuts), who is the founder of Indigenous Women Hike; and Kari Rowe (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe, Oglala Lakota, Fort Peck), who is an Indigenous Visual Director and photographer. We provided our perspective on how we are reshaping conversations about Indigenous rights, identity, and the complexity of the Indigenous Peoples’ experience. It was such an honor to be alongside other women who are pioneering in the ecotourism space.
To further help people reconnect to the Earth, Moskehtu Consulting holds ecotourism events. As an Indigenous-owned and operated business, this helps to reclaim many of our traditional sites that we have been removed from for far too long. Indigenous history is so interconnected and rich throughout our waterways, and today, more than ever before, people are interested in learning not only more about our history, but our continued existence. Our perspectives and voices are vital for the survival of this Earth and to share our role with others in the environment. From plant walk tours to traditional pre-colonial outdoor living experiences, to canoe tours along our traditional waterways, there is no better way to experience this journey than being guided by Indigenous Peoples of these waterways and cultural landscapes.
Moskehtu Consulting’s ecotourism events are sustainable economic development frameworks that are uniquely suited for Indigenous communities. They are also a very simple way for people to invest into Indigenous communities, not only by supporting Indigenous Peoples, but by learning about how Indigenous Peoples hold tenure over a large percentage of the global biodiversity. The philosophy at Moskehtu Consulting is to help the land, water, and the connection people have to one another and the Earth. It’s been an awesome journey following this philosophy, and I hope to continue to partner with organizations, other businesses, and brands to reach all of humanity.
The interconnectedness that we have to the water and the land should always remind us of our top priority, which is to preserve and protect Mother Earth. I am aware that I will most likely always struggle in this world having been traditionally raised being connected to our Earth, specifically the geographical location of my DNA. In big cities in the United States like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., and Atlanta, so many people are focused on how much money can be obtained to develop more destruction rather than strategically planning ways to combat climate change. There are so many places not too far from these cities that are still preserved. These cities sit on what is known as our homelands, just not with square boxes on them.
We need non-Indigenous peoples and institutions to go beyond land acknowledgement, to go beyond those square boxes, and learn about the traditions of the Peoples whose lands you are visiting and living on. There are so many ways to begin this journey. Our lands have trees who are as old as our Earth, and they have preserved so much wisdom. Their underground roots are interconnected through the entire world. Make connections with the local Indigenous people of your area and learn about the land from their oral history and perspective. Learn from those who carry this oral history and are still interconnected to our Earth.
chenae bullock at the edge of the atlantic ocean on the shores of Shinnecock territory in Southampton long island, new york.
photo by malachi mcdonald (sinti chitto/mississippi choctaw).
—Chenae Bullock, an enrolled Shinnecock Indian Nation Tribal member and descendant of the Montauk Tribe in Long Island, New York, is a community leader, water protector, cultural preservationist, Indigenous perspective historian, and humanitarian.
Changing mindsets, Returning to our Roots
leFt: traditional pinuyumayan worship ritual.
right: traditional annual harvest ceremony, ‘amiyan.
Jocelyn Ting-Hui Hung Chien’s Indigenous name is Tuhi, which she inherited from her maternal great-great-grandmother. The name of her ancestral worship house is Martukaw. She hails from the Kasavakan Community of the Pinuyumayan Peoples in Taiwan. Tuhi previously worked for Taiwan Indigenous TV and now is a Ph.D. student in Communications studies at Shih Hsin University. Cultural Survival’s Dev Kumar Sunuwar (Koĩts-Sunuwar) recently spoke with Tuhi about her work to decolonize in her community.
cultural Survival: what is the history of colonization in taiwan?
tuhi: In Taiwan, we have an Indigenous population of a bit more than half a million that accounts for 2.3 percent of the total population. We have 16 Indigenous Peoples who are officially recognized by the government, but of course we have more Indigenous Nations than that. Because of some political ideology or some restrictions, they are not yet recognized by the government.
When we talk about a colonial era, usually we start from the 17th century when the Dutch and Spanish first came to Taiwan; after the Dutch and Spanish came the Chinese dynasties. At that time, most of the population in Taiwan was Indigenous, and to the Chinese settlers, we were the “savage” or “backwards” Peoples. The ruling of the Chinese Ming and Qing Dynasties were passive at the beginning. It wasn’t until the 19th century when Japan started to show interest in Taiwan that they realized Taiwan has a lot of natural resources and its geographical location was strategic. After the First Sino-Japanese War, Taiwan was taken by Japan as a trophy. This started 50 years of Japanese colonization, all the way until the end of the Second World War in 1945. Then, the Republic of China took over Taiwan. After the civil war between the Nationalist Party and the Chinese Communist Party, the defeated Nationalist Party retreated to Taiwan while the Chinese Communist Party established the Peoples’ Republic of China. Taiwan has been under the colonization of different regimes: the Dutch, Spanish, Chinese dynasties, Japanese, and then the Republic of China. All of these different colonizers had different ideologies and ways of thinking, especially towards Indigenous Peoples and our natural resources.
cS: how are indigenous peoples in taiwan working to decolonize?
tuhi: It is an ongoing process. Indigenous Peoples are still being marginalized and we’re still receiving education that is not our own education; we are still learning the history of other people’s perspective instead of Indigenous Peoples’ perspective. However, a lot of people, including Indigenous Peoples, don’t recognize that we are still in colonization. That’s something we really have to break through and remind people of. If we cannot realize or acknowledge this fact, then it will be very difficult for us to start the process of decolonization among ourselves.
When the colonizers came, the first thing they did was to take our languages away; they took our kids away. It doesn’t matter if it’s physically taking the children away from their families or taking the children away from their cultures by education. And they took away our own ways of decisionmaking. I grew up in Taipei. I was one of the taken away children, because I was far from my own culture and from my own community. In recent decades, I’ve gone back to work with the youth and reconnect with my roots. The thing we tried to do first was take back our own way of decision-making by recalling the memories of our Elders and about how we were making decisions in the past.
When I first came back to live in my community more than 10 years ago, most of the decisions were taken by voting because that’s the “democratic” way that has been instilled by mainstream society. But for us, actually, voting is very violent, because you are denying the people with different views. We tried to come back to our history and dig up all the documents we could from that time to remind our Elders about it, because they were still practicing the traditional way of decision making only about 50 to 60 years ago. We also conducted several different trainings and workshops for the youth in the community.
Traditionally in my community, decisions are made not by voting, but by consensus. We have a traditional age ranking
system within the community and traditional organizations that amount to different social statuses. Young adults will be one rank and teenagers will be one rank. Married men, married women, and Elders have different traditional groups. When we are making decisions, we have different social status groups to make decisions among themselves. Then the leaders of different social groups come together and discuss. These include our traditional inherited chiefs; they would discuss and finally come up with the final decision. We respect the Elders and also the traditional chiefs’ opinions the most, but that doesn’t mean we are going to deny the other people. The other groups’ opinions are just taking a different percentage into consideration. We’re creating a space for people of different ages, of different social groups and statuses to communicate and exchange with each other, for every generation. We apply this way of making decisions to different public affairs within the community.
Also in Taiwan, we have a government program called Community Cultural Health Care Station for Indigenous communities to take care of our Elders in a more traditional and culturally appropriate way. With this health care center we rebuild cross-generation trust in the community, and that helps us with the decision-making process and communication among community members. In the past, the whole community would take care of the Elders, the children, the people who need help, the people with disabilities. So, we not only applied the Elder care system, but we also came up with a program on child care to provide the education and also the caretaking system between different generations. We are making our own decisions on how we want to take care of our Elders and children, and how we educate our next generations. In my community, we have more closeness to our cultural and ideological way of decision-making processes now. Also, young people now are more united with stronger solidarity to assert our rights.
cS: what are some of the obstacles you are facing in the process of decolonization?
tuhi: The first obstacle is to change the mindset that has been deeply influenced by the whole environment for the past 50 to 60 years. In Taiwan, we have been through 38 years of martial law. This political oppression is still in the memory and experiences of our people. My parents’ generation, they are still very much oppressed and still very much afraid of authority. They admire the occupations of being a teacher, government official, policeman, or joining the army, because for them, those are [positions of] high social status. Even for myself, sometimes I have to think again, ‘what I have just said is very colonized.’ We really need to have this capacity to reflect and realize the small details of colonial legacy in our daily lives.
The second one is the government setting. Lots of policies or legislation that are in the name of protecting our rights in fact restrict how we are going to enforce, practice, or implement our rights. For example, there’s a policy on how we can gather for community meetings to make decisions that affect us. Within the rules of this policy, they have this restriction on age. Only people who are over 18 and who are registered within the community registration system can be part of these meetings. These rules deny our self-determination on deciding who is a member of our community and who is eligible to be part of the decision-making process.
cS: how can non-indigenous people support indigenous peoples in this decolonization process?
tuhi: The first very important thing, and for Indigenous Peoples as well, is to be sensitive toward our daily lives, to see and realize, to notice, to observe the colonial legacy that is still haunting in our daily lives. It’s very important for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people to have awareness of that. Our education, especially when we are talking about history, is from a very colonialist perspective. The language we use in daily life reflects this. Now we use Mandarin Chinese, but we had a lot of different languages spoken on the island in the past. The Nationalist Party forced everyone to speak only Mandarin Chinese and used this language to make different social classes. That’s still affecting us. For a lot of people, we cannot speak our own mother tongues anymore.
We also have to pay attention to gender, because the inequality of gender is also based on colonization. When the inequality of gender adds to the inequality of ethnicity, we have this double or triple injustice. When we are talking about decolonization, we need to have this crosscutting mindset to look at different perspectives for not only gender equality, but also for how we are treating our natural resources. Our attitude toward the environment is oftentimes very colonial. In the past, Indigenous Peoples were not treated as human beings, and that’s the same mindset that we often have toward nature. We need to consider different perspectives and take different elements of our daily lives into account when we’re talking about decolonization.
leFt: a family gathering of different ancestral worship houses to confirm ancestral genealogy and bring together members of different generations.
right: processing traditional pinuyumayan crops with community elders.
zapatista communities in mexico have maintained their ancestral forms of government and have been living in resistance against pressures from the mexican State since 1994. zapatista radio stations were established in 2009 as part of a larger autonomy process to denounce social injustices in their communities.
deColonizing PoWeR
RetuRning to indigenous ColleCtive goveRnanCe in mexiCo
bia’ni madsa’ Juárez lópez (Ayuuk/Binnizá, CS STAFF)
the path to achieving political autonomy in local government has been very complicated for Indigenous Peoples in Mexico. Many barriers have been placed in the way of exercising their rights. Political and social violence, long processes for those who seek recognition from the State, and the invisibility of those who already exercise autonomy under the shadow of State power, are just some of the problems faced. The national recognition of the historical, so-called “Indigenous normative systems” and others that are emerging in various states, has yet to be realized.
Many Indigenous communities have maintained their forms of community organization rooted in resistance against the pressures from the State. This almost always includes a collective and rotating form of governance, as well as the administration and collective ownership of land. In these communities, family representatives make up the community assembly, the most important body of power in the community. In assembly meetings, key decisions are made for the community, such as the election of government representatives, approval of the use of the community budget, the performance of community works, and the appointment of authorities. The positions are considered service and have a relatively short duration, generally between one to three years.
Although several communities in Mexico have managed to maintain this collective form of governance, many times they live in the shadows; at the local level they maintain their collective forms of governance, but they must also participate in the political party system, which implies accepting the installation of polling stations and political propaganda in their communities and voting in municipal, state, and federal elections. Participating in a political party system has kept communities in constant political and social crisis due to power disputes between those parties. In many cases, chiefdoms and political monopolies have been established in the communities.
According to activist Yasnaya Aguilar (Ayuujk), “modern States have generally shown great resistance to recognizing the autonomy and the right to self-determination of Indigenous Peoples. The Mexican State in particular has preferred to confine the Indigenous Nations in cultural categories and not in political categories. Despite the fact that the Mexican Constitution grants them autonomy, it was only in 1995 that the local legislature—only in the state of Oaxaca—recognized these practices [of governance].” This constitutional achievement was partially the result of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, a movement made up of Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Tojolabal, Zoque, and Ch’ol Mayan Peoples. This movement was a watershed in the right to self-organization and the struggle for selfdetermination of Indigenous Peoples in Mexico. In 1994, in an exercise of autonomy, the organization of 29 communities decided to remain independent from the State rather than become a recognized political entity.
In other more recent cases, there have been multiple threats to Indigenous communities, such as concessions granted on their territories for extractive megaprojects without due consultation. Supported by the dominant democratic system and in clear violation of Indigenous Peoples’ right to self-
determination, several communities have been moved to analyze their political organization and have decided to decolonize their forms of governance, thus moving from a system of political parties to a collective form of power and governance.
In the south of Mexico in 2015, the Tzeltal Peoples from the municipalities of Chilón and Sitalá in Chiapas began their process of autonomy with the main objective of building what they call lekil cuxlejal (community harmony), which includes working with the land, conflict resolution, and community communication, in addition to the appointment of positions. However, the transition to Indigenous self-government has been difficult. In 2018, the communities reported intimidation, harassment, threats, and attacks against their members and the communities that form their social base. In 2020, two colleagues were arrested and imprisoned, “but with our ways of governance we managed to get them out, although they are still undergoing a [legal] process,” one of the councilors told Avispa Midia magazine.
Despite the fact that in 2019 the legal process began in the Institute of Elections and Citizen Participation for the transition to an internal regulatory system, no IEPC officials have been able to go to Indigenous territory, Pascuala Vázquez, the community government spokesperson, says, noting that COVID-19 has been used as a pretext: the pandemic did not stop the electoral campaigns, but has completely halted the legal process. Still, the communities persevered, and in May 2021 the assembly of the communities met to elect the Councilors of the Community Government in a full exercise of their autonomy.
Decolonization of the power structure is happening elsewhere in Mexico. The State of Guerrero has been plagued by constant violence for decades. As Pablo Ferri states in his article in El Pais, “many residents easily remember the El Charco massacre, an army counterinsurgency operation that killed 11 people in 1998; or the rape and torture committed by the military against a neighbor, Inés Fernández, in 2002; or the harassment by the state government against the first self defense groups in 2013 and 2014, which led some of their members to jail for years.”
In 2018, thousands of Na savi, Me’phaa, mestizos, and Afro-Mexicans decided in assembly to exercise their right to autonomy and reject the political party system by establishing an Indigenous Electoral Normative System. Of the 265 people elected to represent their communities, half were women and half men. The effort to get the communities to agree to change the way they had been governed took months, even years. “This exercise of Indigenous democracy was legitimately pushed by people who welcome the search and development of forms of government that call for inclusion,” journalist Sergio Ferrer wrote in La Jornada Guerrero.
In 2011 in the State of Michoacán, the P’urhépecha women of the Cherán K’eri municipality called on the population to defend their territory, closed access to the community, and established permanent camps where they gathered to exercise their political autonomy. In a collective and organized way, they established an autonomous government endorsed by the Electoral Tribunal of the Federal Judicial Branch, with which they managed to expel organized crime that had been illegally exploiting their forests for several years and creating a climate of insecurity and violence in the area.
Cherán’s 10-year path of resistance has been complex, but it has served as an example for other communities in the same region and in other parts of the country. In 2021, several communities decided to go further and not participate in the political system at higher levels, successfully resisting the installation of 92 polling places from the previous election for local deputies and state governor. This was done by 23 P’urhépecha communities, plus 10 Mazahua and Otomi communities from the eastern region of Michoacán.
Other communities have taken steps toward collective autonomy within the same framework of the political party system. Ahuehuetitla is one of the most impoverished municipalities in the Mixteca region in Puebla and has a rate of high migration. In the last elections, some 372 voters from more than 2,000 citizens decided not to choose any of the seven candidate options offered by the political parties. Instead, they elected Adán Seth Calixto Guerra, who won by majority even after 70 votes were annulled. Calixto Guerra did not register as a candidate for any political party or as an independent candidate, which means that he did not have a budget allocated for an electoral campaign. Now he faces a legal battle to recognize his victory.
All political autonomies, whether historically recognized (as in the State of Oaxaca), newly recognized (such as Cherán and Ayutla de los Libres), or those who have chosen to forego the recognition of the State altogether (like the Zapatista Autonomous Communities), have faced attacks by the State in their fight for and respect of self-determination. In their perseverance, they are paving the way for other communities, who, with slow but sure steps, are reclaiming collective forms of government as a way to defend their Indigenous territories and lifeways.
