Research in Latin American Indigenous Cultures

Research in Latin American Indigenous Cultures

by Anais Fernandez Castro - Third-year undergraduate Political Science and Spanish major, and Morril Scholar

This October I will be joining Michelle Wibbelsman, Associate Professor of Latin American Indigenous Cultures, Ethnographic Studies and Ethnomusicology in the Depart ment of Spanish and Portuguese, Amanda Tobin Ripley, doctoral student in the Arts Ad ministration, Education, and Policy department in attending the 26th Curriculum and Pedagogy Conference in Pennsylvania. All three of us are a part of the Kawsay Ukhunchay: Andean and Amazonian Indigenous Art and Cultural Artifacts Research Collection. During this conference, we will host a panel/roundtable to showcase methods that grow out of an Andean-inspired pukllay pampa or “playing ground” of ideas and practices as a pedagogical alternative to insti tutionalized Western approaches to education, knowledge, and research.

We will be sharing our experiences of decolonial pedagogies and alternative methods as informed by Andean and Amazonian Indigenous epistemologies that have been cultivated from our experiences as curators/researchers within the research collection. Our theme will center on the space (this sort of Open Classroom), time (Ethics of Pace), and relationality (Relationships-based Research) found within this alternative approach to institutionalized Western-based education, knowledge, and research.

The Pukllay Pampa space breaks away from the traditional often binary, causal, deterministic models of research and post-secondary education to a radically liberating experience redefining education as creative, imaginative, and affective, embracing uncertainty and unpredictability as essential elements of decolonial epistemologies and breaking with deterministic pedagogies of order, answers, and guarantees. Time and relationality within the Kawsay Ukhunchay transcends the traditional parameters of a semester based on learning, discovering, and teaching. It models a long-term engagement attentive to in-depth research but also lasting relationships supported by effective lived experiences that enable us to imagine and rehearse other ways of being together. Kawsay Ukhunchay brings participants together in horizontal and peer-to-peer mentoring opportunities.

In my case, I will be sharing about the individu al and group experiences I have undertaken through the Kawsay Ukhunchay. For example, this could include the experience of relearning how information can be mistranslated through out different mediums until it gets to us (the curators) since our proximity to the artifacts (and the Andeans) is lengthed through langua ge, physical distance, etc. Going into this conference, I come wanting to share the value of indigenous knowledge systems/practices and how they can reshape the educational spaces of today.