Reminder: Critical Latin@ Indigeneities Symposium—Constructing and Theorizing between Fields Thursday March 26th, 2015 8:30 AM—6:00 PM

Critical Latin@ Indigeneities Symposium—Constructing and Theorizing between Fields

Thursday March 26^th, 2015

8:30 AM—6:00 PM

2^nd Floor Conference Room, Benson Latin American Collection, SRH Unit I

University of Texas at Austin

The global political economy has resulted in the mass migration of indigenous people from Latin America and an increasingly large indigenous diaspora continues to shift and complicate the categories of race and ethnicity in the U.S., raising questions about transnational meanings of race, place, and indigeneity. In an effort to better understand how the experiences of indigenous migrants reshape and grapple with U.S. racial and political formations, the Critical Latin@ Indigeneities Symposium will focus on the experiences of the Latin American indigenous diaspora in the U.S., the increasing presence of second generation, U.S.-born youth from indigenous migrant experiences, and will build on how indigenous Latin@ communities mobilize particular forms of activism and scholarship that pushes the boundaries of U.S. Latin@ Studies, Latin American Studies, and Native American Studies. Symposium participants will describe and complicate how indigeneitity is transforming U.S. notions of Latinidad and how Latinidad is transforming historic conceptions of Indianness. Participants will highlight the important forms of activism around language, epistemology, transnationalism and youth cultural practice that are taken on in order to ensure the survival of distinct indigenous peoples who confront displacement and migration with creative forms of cultural cohesion. This symposium seeks to enable conversations that will help unpack how the experiences of indigenous migrants in the U.S. reflect how multiple indigeneities are defined and constructed across multiple countries and how the process of migration to the U.S. and then return migration of later generations to the communities of origin all create a textured notion of what it means to be indigenous in our contemporary moment. Importantly, participants also draw from Critical Native American and Indigenous studies to re/think about how processes of mobility and migration contribute to settler colonial projects of elimination.

The symposium will be guided by the following questions:

·      How will the meanings of indigeneity be negotiated as U.S. state-defined categories of belonging conflict with Latin American state definitions and indigenous community definitions?  

·      How is mobility, traditionally understood as a cause of cultural loss, producing new forms of indigenous consciousness?

·      Will these new forms of consciousness conflict with existing indigenous groups or create new possibilities for solidarity?   

·      How will indigenous migrants fit into racial orders within the Latin@ community and U.S. society at large? 

·      How do more newly arrived indigenous groups relate to indigenous peoples of the lands they now live and work in?

·      How will these new indigenous migrants and later generations grapple with settler colonial structures and the multiple colonialities now at play?

Symposium Tentative Schedule:

Thursday March 26^th

8:30- 9:00 AM            Coffee & Pastries

9:00- 9:05 AM            LLILAS Welcome, Luis Urrieta, Chair, Mexico Center Faculty Committee

9:05- 9:15 AM            Goals and Purpose of the CLI Symposium

Co-organizers: Maylei Blackwell & Floridalma Boj Lopez 

9:15- 9:25 AM            Opening Remarks: Domino Pérez, Department of English & CMAS Director, University of Texas at Austin

9:30-10:30 AM           Opening Plenary

When is an Indian not an Indian? Garífuna Mothers and Children Across Borders

Maria Josefina Saldaña-Portillo, Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University    

10:30- 12:00 AM        Panel I: Trans/national Genders, Indigeneities & Migrations

Remapping Los Angeles: Indigenous Migrant Women, Geographies of the Sacred, and New Spaces of Belonging

Maylei Blackwell, Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies, University of California—Los Angeles

Writing Against an Universal Migration Narrative: Indigeneity and Latinidad in Maya Women’s Migration Stories

Bianet Castellanos, Department of American Studies, University of Minnesota

Transnational Generations: Mixtec Migrants in Oxnard, California

Noé López, Department of Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin

Discussant:  Domino Perez, MALS & CMAS, University of Texas, Austin

                                   

12:00- 1:00 PM          Lunch

1:15- 3:00 PM            Panel II: (Meso)Americans?: Indigenous/Latino(a) Critical Intersections

Coming Out as “Indian”: Indigenous Latina/os Disrupting the Logics of US Race & Ethnicity

Lourdes Alberto, Department of English, University of Utah

Political Movements from the South and Chicano Texts

Gloria Chacón, Department of Literature, University of California—San Diego

Ixil Migration to the United States

Giovanni Batz, Department of Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin

Mediating Alterity: Latina-Indigeneity and Technologies of Alternative Medicine

Rico Kleinstein Chenyek, Department of Communication and Media Studies, University of Illinois—Urbana Champaign

Discussant:  Luis Cárcamo-Huechante, Department of Spanish & Portuguese, University of Texas at Austin

3:00- 3:15 PM                        Break  

3:15- 5:00 PM            Panel III (1:00-2:20 PM): Generations, Indigenous Youth, Organizing & Identities

Building La Comunidad Ixim: Youth Organizing in the Maya Diaspora

Floridalma Boj Lopez, Department of American Studies and Ethnicity, University of Southern California

Reclamando lo que es nuestro: Identity Formation among Zapoteco Youth in Los Angeles

Brenda Nicolás, Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies, University of California, Los Angeles

Speaking for Ourselves: Community Organizing, the Academy, and the Legacies of the 2006 Social Movement in Oaxaca

Luis Sanchez-Lopez, Department of History, University of California, San Diego

Identity, Violence, and Authenticity: Challenges to Static Conceptions of Indigeneity

Luis Urrieta, Department of Curriculum & Instruction, University of Texas at Austin

Discussant: Shannon Speed, Department of Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin

5:00- 6:00 PM            Reflection on the Day and Open Discussion: Shannon Speed & Domino Perez, University of Texas at Austin

This event is being hosted by the Mexican Center of LLILAS and co-sponsored by the Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies & the Center for Mexican American Studies, the Native American & Indigenous Studies Program, the Department of Curriculum & Instruction, and the Graduate School. Symposium organizing committee: Maylei Blackwell, Floridalma Boj Lopez & Luis Urrieta