Browsing by Subject "Indigenous"
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Item Bolivian Andean textiles, commercialization and modernity(2013-05) Richardson, Natalie Lila; Speed, Shannon, 1964-In research, we frequently position “modernity” against “tradition” to explain cultural changes within the indigenous realm. Such is the case of Andean textile studies, where commercialization and modernity are frequently attributed to the decline in Andean communities’ production and donning of hand-woven textiles. By doing this, we distance ourselves from the underlying issues causing these changes: poverty, discrimination, ethnic social stratification, etc. Also, by positioning “modernity” outside and against the indigenous realm, we contribute to the notion that modernity belongs to the western world alone and can only be achieved by Western influence. In doing so, we confine Andean textiles to a static notion of identity and ignore and antagonize the creative strategies that weavers’ use, moving outside of this notion. My work questions the “tradition” versus “modernity” binary by analyzing its history and first appearance in Bolivian Andean textile scholarship, and by analyzing changes within Andean textiles between the Inca and Colonial periods. My study also sheds light on the workings of internal colonialism within Andean textiles in the Bolivian regions of Jalq’a and Tarabuco.Item Discourse forms and social categorization in Cha'palaa(2010-05) Floyd, Simeon Isaac; Epps, Patience, 1973-; Sherzer, Joel; Hale, Charles R.; Pierre, Jemima; England, NoraThis dissertation is an ethnographic study of race and other forms of social categorization as approached through the discourse of the indigenous Chachi people of northwestern lowland Ecuador and their Afro-descendant neighbors. It combines the ethnographic methods of social anthropology with the methods of descriptive linguistics, letting social questions about racial formation guide linguistic inquiry. It provides new information about the largely unstudied indigenous South American language Cha’palaa, and connects that information about linguistic form to problems of the study of race and ethnicity in Latin America. Individual descriptive chapters address how the Cha’palaa number system is based on collectivity rather than plurality according to an animacy hierarchy that codes only human and human-like social collectivities, how a nominal set of ethnonyms linked to Chachi oral history become the recipients of collective marking as human collectivities, how those collectivities are co-referentially linked to speech participants through the deployment of the pronominal system, and how the multi-modal resource of gesture adds to these rich resources supplied by the spoken language for the expression of social realities like race. The final chapters address Chachi and Afro-descendant discourses in dialogue with each other and examine naturally occurring speech data to show how the linguistic forms described in previous chapters are used in social interaction. The central argument advances a position that takes the socially constructed status of race seriously and considers that for such constructions to exist as more abstract macro-categories they must be constituted by instances of social interaction, where elements of the social order are observable at the micro-level. In this way localized articulations of social categories become vehicles for the broader circulation of discourses structured by a history of racialized social inequality, revealing the extreme depth of racialization in human social conditioning. This dissertation represents a contribution to the field of linguistic anthropology as well as to descriptive linguistics of South American languages and to critical approaches to race and ethnicity in Latin America.Item Embodied Storying, A Methodology for Chican@ Rhetorics: (Re)making Stories, (Un)mapping the Lines, And Re-membering Bodies(2012-10-19) Cobos, CasieThis dissertation privileges Chican@ rhetorics in order to challenge a single History of Rhetoric, as well as to challenge Chican@s to formulate our rhetorical practices through our own epistemologies. Chapter One works in three ways: (1) it points to how a single History of Rhetoric is implemented, (2) it begins to answer Victor Villanueva's call to "Break precedent!" from a singly History, and (3) it lays groundwork for the three-prong heuristic of "embodied storying," which acts as a lens for Chican@ rhetorics. Chapter Two uses embodied storying to look at how Chican@s are produced through History and how Chican@s produce histories. By analyzing how Spanish colonizers, contemporary scholars/publishers, and Chican@s often disembody indigenous codices, this chapter calls for rethinking how we practice codices. In order to do so, this chapter retells various stories about Malinche to show how Chican@s already privilege bodies in Chican@ stories in and beyond codices. Chapter Three looks at cartographic practices in the construction, un-construction, and deconstruction of bodies, places, and spaces in the Americas. Because indigenous peoples practice mapping by privileging bodies who inhabit/practice spaces, this chapter shows how colonial maps rely on place-based conceptions of land in order to create imperial borders and rely on space-based conceptions in order to ignore and remove indigenous peoples from their lands. Chapter Four looks at foodways as a practice of rhetoric, identity, community, and space. Using personal, familial, and community knowledge to discuss Mexican American food practices, this chapter argues that foodways are rhetorical in that they affect and are affected by Chican@ identities. In this way, food practices can challenge the conception of rhetoric as being solely attached to text and privilege the body. Finally, Chapter Five looks at how Chican@ rhetorics and embodied storying can affect the field(s) of rhetoric and writing. I ask three specific questions: (1) How can we use embodied storying in histories of rhetoric? (2) How can we use embodied storying in Chican@ rhetorics? (3) How can we use embodied storying in our pedagogy?Item In school but not of it : the making of Kuna-language education(2011-05) Price, Kayla Marie; Strong, Pauline Turner, 1953-; Sherzer, Joel; Keating, Elizabeth; Foley, Douglas; Woodbury, AnthonyThis research concerns a Kuna-Spanish bilingual elementary school in Panama City, founded for Kuna children by Kuna teachers. Based on ethnographic and linguistic fieldwork, this research investigates the socio-cultural context for the emergence of the school and the ways that students, teachers and parents, together with Kuna elders, navigate the path of indigenous schooling. The process of negotiating linguistic and cultural meanings in Kuna-language education includes both "traditionalized" Kuna forms of learning and informal education in and around the home. These various foundations of Kuna knowledge, from the use of Kuna oral history to eating Kuna food in the home, are incorporated into the curriculum in various ways, highlighting the potential of schooling as a place of knowledge production for indigenous peoples that is culturally inclusive. At the same time, the manner in which Kuna identity is indexed in the school is uneven. It is liberating in some moments while very restrictive in others, reflecting similar patterns, often in relation to state-sponsored notions of "multiculturalism" in the Kuna community and in the broader context of Panamanian society. In order to fully explore the complexities of the school and its workings, this research explores the Kuna experience in Panama City, where more than half of the Kuna population currently resides. This dissertation is a contribution to the fields of linguistic anthropology and the anthropology of education, analyzing the case of an urban Kuna school that employs both Western and indigenous pedagogy and content, with specific implications for studies of language socialization, bilingual education and educational politics for indigenous peoples.Item Language ideology and practice among Navajo college students attending Dineì College(Texas Tech University, 2006-05) Heuss, Jennifer N.; Dennis, Philip A.; Hurst, Mary J.; Marshall-Gray, Paula J.Navajo college student language ideology and practice is investigated through qualitative ethnographic methods. Students discuss the emotional, spiritual, and practical reasons they choose to speak navajo on campus. Participant observation and interviews are analyzed through grounded theory, which structured interview data around themes consisting of students' opinions and concerns with regard to speaking Navajo and English. Such themes include: participation in Navajo ceremonies, talking to elders, and maintaining a strong Navajo identity. Speaking practice was observed to determine the genres of communication in which studnets preferred speaking Navajo rather than English. These genres include joking and Navajo philosophy. Speaker familiarity emerged as one of the most important factors influencing students' language choice on campus.Item Neshnabe treaty making : (re)visionings for indigenous futurities in education(2016-05) Pochedley, Lakota Shea; Urrieta, Luis; Salinas, Cinthia; Sturm, CirceThis work questions if there is a need for a Native-controlled school in central Oklahoma and evaluates what can be done to improve educational opportunities for Native students (particularly through a Native-controlled school). This research addresses the complex, multifaceted experiences of Native peoples with and in Oklahoma public schools. Three themes, including tribal sovereignty, equality vs. equity for Native students, and the importance of rural schools in Oklahoma, are explored throughout the thesis, which lead to a final tension between the community and colonial (imposed) governments—federal, state, and tribal. Recommendations for anti- and de-colonial action are drawn on traditional forms of nishnabe treaty making as a continual process of relationship building. In addressing the ways in which settler coloniality operates in the daily lives of Native peoples, indigenizing and decolonial literature is engaged to (re)(en)vision indigenous futures and possibilities for education outside of the settler state. The project is framed within the theories of Natives studies, settler colonialism, neoliberalism, and Native anti-/de-colonial education and futures.Item The resiliency of Yoruba traditional healing : 1922-1955(2009-08) Washington-Weik, Natalie A.; Falola, Toyin; Wilson, James; Walker, Juliet; Okediji, Moyosore; Badejo, DiedreThis dissertation examines why healing among the Yoruba people remained a successful popular institution in the colonial period between 1922 and 1955. The factors that allowed the Yoruba healing system to flourish were diverse. The Yoruba’s indigenous and colonial political structures provided some outlets for continued healing practices. Additionally, the purely physical perspectives of western medical and religious competitors were unappealing to many Yoruba. Importantly, the Yoruba healers’ systematic and in-depth knowledge of medicinal remedies was attractive to patrons. Furthermore, Yoruba healers’ use of religious tools and/or the expansive use of spirituality reinforced this healing system as holistic, thus keeping the appeal of the system broad. Lastly, healers’ alliances, standards, certifications and publicity thereof bestowed greater credibility upon the system and its practitioners in an increasingly impersonal region. While changes within Yoruba healing are revealed in this study, additional objectives of this work are to: illustrate the first known history of this institution; situate Yoruba healing as a legitimate system; include female healers in this investigation of Yoruba healing; and present a normal view of an ‘alternative’ medicine. The period of 1922 to 1955 is ideal to explore because various aspects that allowed the Yoruba healing system to thrive developed during this time.Item Stoking the fire : nationhood in early twentieth century Cherokee writing(2012-05) Brown, Kirby Lynn; Cox, James H. (James Howard), 1968-; Perez, Domino R.; Gonzalez, John M.; Sturm, Circe D.; Justice, Daniel H.My research builds upon interdisciplinary trends in Native scholarship emphasizing tribal-specificity; attention to understudied periods, writers, and texts; and a political commitment to engage contemporary challenges facing Indigenous communities. My dissertation examines the persistence of nationhood in Cherokee writing between the dissolution of the Cherokee government preceding Oklahoma statehood in 1907 and political reorganization in the early 1970s. Situating writing by John Milton Oskison, Rachel Caroline Eaton, Rollie Lynn Riggs and Ruth Muskrat Bronson explicitly within the Cherokee national contexts of its emergence, I attend to the complicated ways they each remembered, imagined, narrated and enacted Cherokee nationhood in the absence of a functioning state. Often read as a transitional “dark age” in Cherokee history, this period stands instead as a rich archive of Cherokee national memory capable of informing contemporary debates in the Cherokee Nation and Native Studies today.Item The inauspicious monster inside the sacred fortress : colonial multiculturalism and indigenous politics in Colombia’s Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta(2014-05) Ward, Ricardo Tane; Speed, Shannon, 1964-; Hale, Charles R; Gordon, Edmund T; Sturm, Circe; Padilla-Rubiano, GuillermoThis dissertation is about development and multiculturalism in Colombia. My ethnographic work focuses on the Iku, an indigenous pueblo in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains in Northern Colombia (SNSM), as they work to resist development projects and wrestle with political changes brought on by multiculturalism. The Iku have traditionally resisted the state, capitalism and development. The multicultural paradigm for addressing development in indigenous territory in Colombia has been adapted from international frameworks for “special indigenous rights”. Colombia has served as a model multicultural nation, because of its progressive constitution and its practice of implementing Free, Prior and Informed Consultations about development projects for indigenous people. These changes have had profound effects on the governance of indigenous peoples, and have garnered internal cultural responses from the Iku. The reaction to development and multicultural politics has been dissonant from the state at an ontological level – that is at the basic level of understanding reality. Multiculturalism is tied to liberal state governance and industrial capitalist economies, rooted ontologically in colonial-modernity. The Iku have a relational ontology tied to their culture-territory. This dissertation does not elaborate a discursive Iku critique of capitalism or mystify readers with a re-telling of their cultural mythology. Instead, I explore ontological politics as both colonizing, in the form of extractive industries’ disregard for the natural world, and resistant, in the Iku practices of reproducing their culture-territory. This dissertation explores this political space with an eye towards building decolonial politics that respond to the challenges faced by the Iku and the multicultural state.Item Theorizing a third current of Maya politics through the San Jorge land struggle in Guatemala(2010-05) Thelen, Czarina Faith; Hale, Charles R., 1957-; Vargas, Joao C.In response to the highly exclusionary Guatemalan state and the genocide of Mayas during the 1980s, the paradigmatic currents of the Maya Movement have been engaging the state in their struggle for rights. Some have been negotiating from within the Guatemalan government by occupying bureaucratic positions within less powerful state ministries. Other Maya actors press for more favorable socioeconomic policies using social movement tactics. While most literature focuses on the above two currents as a dichotomy, I argue that a third current of Maya politics has the most political potential. One promising example emerged in the course of the land struggle of San Jorge La Laguna (1992-1999). A sector of rural Mayas (mostly poor farmers and teachers) began to look away from the state in their quest for empowerment. They became less concerned with rights granted from a distant state, and prioritized instead practices that reach towards community self-determination and ontological autonomy. This clearly represents a third current of Maya politics grounded in the social fabric of rural Maya communities and their values, social relations, and worldview. This current, which I call Tejido Social (social fabric), is also possibly present in other spaces in Guatemala and likely had existed in prior times but did not pronounce itself publicly until this period. I use Escobar’s theorization of postliberal, postcapitalist politics of relationality to analyze the significance of this third tendency of Maya politics. This study contributes to the theorization of emerging third current / Afro-indigenous movements in the Americas through an ethnographic approach which focuses on political interventions that are lived principles embedded in socio-political practice.Item Wixárika art and artists : resisting neocolonialism while crossing visible and invisible borders(2013-08) Cruz, Maria Elena, active 2013; Menchaca, MarthaMy dissertation, Wixárika Art and Artists: Resisting Neocolonialism While Crossing Visible and Invisible Borders is an ethnographic study of the Wixáritari who have lived in the region of Northern Central Mexico known as El Gran Nayar or the Sierra Madre Occidental, with a specific focus on the Wixáritari who live in Huejuquilla el Alto, Guadalajara, and Zacatecas, Mexico. This dissertation examines the legal, cultural and historical influences as well as the sociopolitical and economic circumstances that have pushed Wixárika (Huichol) art and artists out of their original homeland in Mexico. This dissertation concentrates on the historical construction of race in Mexico to illustrate that Wixáritari have been pushed outside of their territories either willingly or unwillingly. I analyze and interpret this concept through historical events and the process of colonialism through which politics, policy and laws have shaped and created hierarchies of race. Through ethnography I illustrate that the Mexican government's neoliberal policies and laws have adversely affected Wixáritari artists and non-artists in the Sierra Madre, and also those who work in the large cities where half the population now resides. Furthermore, this work illustrates that the Wixáritari are organizing against the Mexican laws and policies that served to exclude and marginalize them. Wixáritari activism is thus creating powerful social change. By using the theoretical framework ethnoexodus, I demonstrate that Wixáritari cannot be put in a box or be stereotyped as a homogenous pan-ethnic group.The second half of my dissertation is devoted to "voluntary" or involuntary im(migration) processes that take place. I specifically explore these forms of dislocation through the use of oral history, oral narratives, and testimonios. I have found that the Wixáritari have a desire to reproduce their traditions and resist modernity. They have experienced cultural changes and in the process they have been integrated into their surrounding society by forming new relationships and learning to adapt on their own terms to the capitalist system and "modern" way of life. In these spaces, I argue that their homeland and geographic space in and outside of the Sierra Madre Occidental along with their spirituality is part of their identity, which crosses many borders that are both visible and invisible.