Date: Wednesday, May 16th, 2018

Location: UCLA Campus, Los Angeles, CA

Situating “Latina/o” within the hemispheric and historical circumstances of multiple imperial formations and colonial entanglements, the Critical Latinx Indigeneities precoference focuses on the experience of indigenous migrants from Latin America to the United States. Participants analyze how Zapotec, Mayan, Mixtec, Quechua, and other indigenous migrants—and second generation, US-born youth—conceive of belonging based on their own epistemologies as well as the political economies, social dynamics, and cultures of the places to which they migrate. Our collective inquiry asks how indigeneity travels in relation to these conditions. We consider how conceptions of indigeneity may be transformed by movement, resettlement, and ongoing relations to places and peoples elsewhere. Participants draw on critical Native American and Indigenous studies to think about how the process of mobility and migration contributes to settler colonial projects of displacement, assimilation, and erasure. During a time when the borders of United States are becoming increasingly fortified and hostilities propagated by white nationalism are sanctioned at the highest levels of government, a research agenda that takes seriously the complexity of place, migration, and relationality for Latina/o and Indigenous identities is ever more urgent. The continued and increasing indigenous migrations from Latin America requires an analytic that considers different versions of Latinidad—not simply as a US-constructed nation-based identity—and the significance of overlapping colonial histories and present-day dynamics.

Some sessions will be based on workshopping pre-circulated papers so please contact Maylei Blackwell (maylei@chavez.ucla.edu) if you are interested in participating and she will send you details on the format and location.