The Latin American Studies Center’s Research Cluster “Indigenous Studies in the Americas, Narratives of Belonging and Land Reclamation” is offeringa mini-series of lectures on indigenousknowledge, symbolic territorialities and land reclamation. The goal is to bring together interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks and case studies to find commonalities and specificities that shed light on hemispheric Indigenous Studies today. Using as a point of reference Anibal Quijano's critique of the coloniality of power as asystem that devalues certain cultural knowledge, including that of Native Americans, to enforce Western racial, cultural, and male superiority, this series investigatesindigenous narratives and cultural practices of the Americasthat depict visions of territorial claim and origin. These narratives and practices are intimately linked to what Winona LaDuke has termed “struggles for the land”—which, in Latin America, have expanded over centuries alongside similarly “deterritorialized” or marginalized non-indigenous popular sectors—struggles against bothindustrial expropriation and national states.
Organized by the Research Cluster Indigenous Studies in the Americas, Narratives of Belonging and Land Reclamation” at the Latin American Studies Center, CU Boulder. Co-sponsored by Center for Native Amercian and Indigenous Studies, CU Boulder.
Monday, April 15, 2019, 6:00 PM, Humanities 135
Against Acoustic Colonialism: Indigenous Interferences and Counter-Currents from Mapuche Territories
Luis Cárcamo-Huechante
The University of Texas at Austin & Comunidad de Historia Mapuche
This talk will focus on how the invasive noises of the colonial city and hydroelectric dam projects in the Mapuche territory contribute to the long history of what I call “acoustic colonialism.” In order to offer a critical reflection on this issue, I will examine how colonial sonic forces vis-à-vis Indigenous acoustic resistance are performed in audiovisual works by contemporary Mapuche artists, such as Jeannette Paillan and Cristian Wenuvil. Their works allow me to elaborate on the ways in which colonizing sounds are deployed in the current scenario of neoliberalism in Chile, as well as to highlight the alternatives practices of sound, voicing and listening that emerge from an engagement with the Mapuche territory—its waters, its chants, its community voices— as forms of Indigenous interference and/or counter-currents to “acoustic colonialism.” This presentation is part of my ongoing theoretical and methodological research, in which I bring together approaches from Indigenous Studies and Sound Studies, drawing on Mapuche concepts of language, territory, and life relations.
Bio: Luis E. Cárcamo-Huechante is currently the Director of the Program in Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS), member of the Advisory Council of the LGBTQ Studies Program and Associate Professor of Spanish at The University of Texas at Austin. He is also a founding member of the Comunidad de Historia Mapuche, a collective of Mapuche researchers based in Temuco, southern Chile. Professor Cárcamo-Huechante has been recently elected to the Council of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA). As part of his collaborative work in the Comunidad de Historia Mapuche, he has co-edited two inter-disciplinary collection of essays: Ta iñ fijke xipa rakizuameluwün. Historia, colonialismo y resistencia desde el país Mapuche(2012), and Aküwan ka kütrankan zugu Wajmapu mew: Violencias coloniales en Wajmapu (2015). He previously published his own book on neoliberalism and culture in Chile: Tramas del mercado: imaginación económica, cultura pública y literatura en el Chile de fines del siglo veinte(Editorial Cuarto Propio, 2007). Professor Cárcamo-Huechante’s talk will be based on his book manuscript in progress tentatively titled Acoustic Colonialism, Mapuche Interferences.
Thursday April 18. 5:30 PM • Mabel Van Duzee Room, Norlin 424B
For Abiayala to Live, the Americas Must Die
Emil Keme
Romance Studies • American Indian and Indigenous Studies
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
In this talk Keme will embrace the Guna people's and Mamani's petition with the objective of proposing Abiayala as a transhemispheric Indigenous bridge. By invoking this category, I propose to develop a dialogue that could potentially lead us to develop political alliances in the formation of a new Indigenous and non-Indigenous historical bloc that opposes ideas and civilizational Eurocentric projects like "Latin America," "Latinity," or "Americas," as well as extractivist economies based on capitalism and socialism at national, continental, and intercontinental levels. believe that the moment is appropriate given the permanent threats to our cultures, languages, territories, and identities we face in every country in and out of the hemisphere, against nation-states that characterize themselves by recycling colonialist logics that continue disfavoring us. Like the struggle of the Guna people against Moody and their epistemological articulation of the category of Abiayala, we need to develop collective Indigenous strategies and knowledges in the restitution and dignification of Indigenous life and our sovereignties.
Bio: Emilio del Valle Escalante (K’iche’ maya) is originally from Guatemala. His teaching and research interest focus on contemporary Latin American literatures and cultural studies with particular emphasis on indigenous literatures and social movements, Central American literatures and cultures, and post-colonial and subaltern studies theory in the Latin American context. He has been concerned with contemporary indigenous textual production and how indigenous intellectuals challenge hegemonic traditional constructions of the indigenous world, history, the nation-state and modernity in order to not only redefine the discursive and political nature of these hegemonic narratives, but also interethnic or intercultural relations. His broader cultural and theoretical interests cluster around areas involving themes of colonialism as these relate to issues of nationhood, national identity, race/ethnicity and gender.