Event Description
Indigenous populations from the land now known as Mexico have had a historical relationship with forced migration and the negotiation of their connection to the territory that transcends the borders imposed by nation-states. This work opens a dialogue on Indigenous belonging and returns for diasporic populations in urban spaces in the U.S. in the face of dispossession and removal. It centers the situated interventions of contemporary Indigenous activists and migrants arriving to occupied Native American land in California and New Jersey, as we collectively witness and endure the expansion of the commodification of bodies, both human and non-human. Within these struggles, the collaboration between Indigenous activists and artists create spaces to rearticulate ties to Indigeneity on multiple fronts, ones that range from the reemergence of relationships to territory in the face of disposition and detention for migrant Indigenous populations who relocate, to a recognition of Mesoamerican textualities (pictographs, stelae, textiles), violently disrupted by colonization, that predate the arrival of the Latin alphabet. In addition, the talk advances the need to reconceive static notions of Indigeneity and territory, by asking to reconsider such categories through the movement of the Zapotec diaspora.
Speaker
Paulina Pineda is an educator, researcher, and translator belonging to the Binnizá (Zapotec) diaspora, who was born in Mexico City. Her research focuses on twentieth and twenty-first century Indigenous literary and visual production in Abya Yala (the Americas), with an emphasis on the intersections between environmental, linguistic, and literary studies. Her book project, Insisting on Life: Unfolding Zapotec Multiplicity through Bene Xhon and Binnizá Artistic Creation, approaches the relation between language and territories, proposing “endangered” Indigenous languages as sites for the re-emergence of ecological awareness and other forms of relating to environmentally devastated spaces. Though her work looks at language revitalization projects widely, she is especially connected to efforts that relate to the language Diidxazá, also known as Zapotec from the Isthmus in Oaxaca, Mexico, the language spoken by her father’s family. She has been recognized with honors including a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship and being named a McNair Scholar. In 2023, she co-founded the community collective Proyecto Naguchi in Juchitán, Oaxaca, dedicated to working with children and youth in various communities on the importance of local bodies of water through art.
Co-Sponsorship
Co-sponsored by the Department of Comparative Literature and Associate Professor Tom McEnaney.