Key Issues and Texts: Culture and Indigeneity

Key Issues and Texts

Seminar 1: Being ‘Indio’ in colonial Latin America (Jimena Lobo Guerrero Arenas)

This session introduces ‘being indio’ in colonial Latin America. It will examine the specificities of how indigeneity was imagined and shaped by Europeans and Indigenous communities alike throughout the colonial period. It will also explore colonial violence and indigenous resistance to colonialism and rebellion as well as the impact of Christianity, mestizaje, and race on colonial body politics. The last 30 minutes of the seminar will delve into a discussion on the use of material culture to voice Indigenous communities in colonial Latin America.

Key issues

‘Indios/as’ in colonial Latin America

Indigenous resistance and rebellions

Colonial mestizaje and body politics

Required texts

Bonet, Natalia García. (2019) 3 The Indian Within: Negotiating Indigenous Identity among Dominant Images of Indigeneity in Venezuela. Bulletin of Latin American Research 38.1: 57-75.
Gänger, Stefanie. (2020) A Thing of the Past. Transnational Perspectives on the Conquest and Colonization of Latin America. 1st ed. Routledge. 114-25
Mangan, J.E. (2025) ‘Object, Room, Dwelling: Material Culture and the Indigenous City in the Colonial Andes’, The Hispanic American historical review, 105(1), pp. 35–63. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1215/00182168-11543239.

Discussion: Indigenous Agency through Material Culture

The objects below, belonging to the collections of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA), are related to indigenous peoples in Latin America. Pick one and familiarise yourself with it:

1924.282; Z 1294; 1947.460; 1992.116; 1939.224 B; 2022.23; 1953.473; Z 43314; 1949.336; 1988.324; 1934.617

What is it? Who made it? How was it made? Who used it? When was this type of object firstly produced? Is the object still in use today? What type of information can we get from analysing the object, e.g., resistance, creativity, hybridity? What does it tell us about Indigenous agency?

If you have any trouble with the link for each object, alternatively you can access the museum's online database here (https://collections.maa.cam.ac.uk/objects/) and enter the accession number manually.

Please be ready to discuss it for a few minutes so we can compare and contrast different objects and their significance in studying the concept of 'being indio' in Latin America.

Note: This session will take place at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA). It will include a handling session and discussion around objects.

Bibliography

Seminar 2: Race, nation-building, and the politics of dispossession (Jimena Lobo Guerrero Arenas)

The nineteenth century saw the rise of the ‘scientific’ philosophy of race and the development of modern Anthropology, Ethnography, and Archaeology, where perceptions of morality, intelligence, and civilization were deeply intertwined with ideas of race. This period was crucial for Latin American political elites, who needed to build modern nation-states after gaining independence from Spain. In doing so, they faced entrenched social hierarchies, legacies of Spanish colonization, and slavery. How did notions of race become entangled with post-independence nation-building? What were the consequences for Indigenous and Afro-Indigenous communities in Latin America? What were the different forms of cultural dispossession experienced by Indigenous peoples in the 19th and early 20th centuries? This seminar will explore these questions by examining case studies from the independence era to the present. The final 45 minutes of the seminar will be dedicated to a two-group discussion on two specific modes of Indigenous dispossession: cultural heritage and biopiracy.

Key issues

Race, mestizaje, and indigeneity

Latin America’s 19th-century nation-building/indigenista project

Legacies of 19th-century cultural indigenous dispossession

Required texts

Jofré, I.C. (2014). The mark of the Indian still inhabits our body. On ethics and disciplining in South American archaeology. In A. Haber and N. Shepherd (eds.), After Ethics: Ancestral Voices and Post-disciplinary Worlds in Archaeology. New York: Springer, pp. 55-78.

Earle, R. (2002). 'Padres de la Patria’ and the Ancestral Past: Commemorations of Independence in Nineteenth-Century Spanish America. Journal of Latin American Studies 34(4): 775-805.

Diaz Arias, David. (2007) Entre la guerra de castas y la ladinización.
La imagen del indígena en la centroamérica
liberal, 1870-1944 Revista De Estudios Sociales (Bogotá, Colombia) 26: 58-72.

Required Viewings:

La Buena Vida - https://pragda.docuseek2.com/pr-glife
Bajo Sospecha - https://pragda.docuseek2.com/pr-zokun
Vicuña: Illicit Trade Ep. 03 - https://pragda.docuseek2.com/pr-trade3

Discussion: Modes of indigenous dispossession:

Materials:

* ON SUSPICION: ZOKUNENTU (BAJO SOSPECHA: ZOKUNENTU)
DANIEL DÍAZ OYARZÚN / CHILE / 2020 / 67 MIN

* THE GOOD LIFE (LA BUENA VIDA) JENS SCHANZE / GERMANY, SWITZERLAND / 2015 / 97 MIN

* ILICIT TRADE, Ep. 03 – VICUNA / 52 MIN

Access to these films is through the institutional login. You will find the link in Leganto.

Please be prepared to present ONE SLIDE to the group that compares and contrasts TWO different modes of cultural dispossession depicted in the films, and discusses their significance for the study of indigeneity in Latin America.

Bibliography

Seminar 3: Reclaiming the City: Urban Indigeneities in Latin America (Natalia Buitron)

In popular imaginaries and the majority of studies on indigenous peoples, authentic Indigeneity is confined to remote forested and rural areas. This seminar instead explores long-standing forms of Indigenous urbanism, the dynamic co-creation of forest and city, and the growing political relevance and vibrant experiences of urban Indigenous peoples and spaces.

Key issues

Pre-historic and contemporary urbanism: the case of ancient Amazonian cities
Indigenous mobilities and urbanisation in the 20^th century
Hybrid spaces and performances: markets/housing, protest and performance

Required texts: pick and read at least two readings from the below list of required texts

Ikemura Amaral, H., Horn, P. & Poets, D. 2022. Introduction: Indigenous urbanisation in Latin America. Bulletin of Latin American Research 41(1):1-3. (IDiscover and open access)
Horn, P. (2019). Urban Indigeneity as lived experience. In Indigenous Rights to the City. Routledge. Chapter 5, pp. xx. (IDiscover but computer access)
Peluso, D. M. (2015) ‘Circulating between Rural and Urban Communities: Multi-sited dwellings in Amazonian frontiers’, The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology. Wiley, pp. 57-79. (IDiscover and open access)
McNelly, A. (2022). Baroque Modernity in Latin America: Situating Indigeneity, Urban Indigeneity and the Popular Economy. Bulletin of Latin American Research 41(1): 37-52. (IDiscover and online)

AND pick one of the texts from ONE of the sub-themes below:

Subtheme 1: Ancient and Contemporary Images of Amazonian Urbanism

Heckenberger, M. J. (2009) Lost Cities of the Amazon. The Amazon tropical forest is not as wild as it looks. Scientific American 64-71
Film Unnatural Histories: Amazon. 2011. BBC
Peluso, D. (2023) The Politics of Ese Eja Indigenous Urbanite Images in Distinct Nation States. The Bolivian and Peruvian Amazon. In Urban Indigeneities. University of Arizona Press. Chapter 6, pp xx-xx. (soon on IDiscover and I’ve got the proofs).

Subtheme 2: Cholo Markets and the Struggle for Housing

Tassi, N. 2010. The ‘Postulate of Abundance’. Cholo Market and Religion in La Paz, Bolivia. Social Anthropology 18(2): 191-209 (soon on IDiscover).
Ikemura Amaral, A. (2023). Making Money and Ends Meet. Racialization, Work, and Gender among Bolivian Market Vendors. In Urban Indigeneities. University of Arizona Press. Chapter 3, pp. xx-xx. (soon on IDiscover and I’ve got the proofs).
Bianet Castellanos, M. (2020). Introduction + Eviction: Invoking Indigenous Resistance. In Indigenous Dispossession: Housing and Maya Indebtedness. Stanford University Press. Introduction, pp 1-25 and Chapter 5, pp, 100-118. (on IDiscover).

Subtheme 3: Urban Mapuche/ Reclaiming Santiago de Chile

Seminar 4: Indigenous Sovereignties and Resurgence: Contemporary Struggles for Life, Knowledge, and Autonomy (Natalia Buitron)

Indigeneity has historically been imagined as a pre-political stage prior to the civil state. By contrast, this seminar shows how Indigenous projects of governance delimit state power. Some Latin American indigenous collectives fight for inclusivity and constitutional collective rights but others go beyond in seeking territorial autonomy and self-determination. In both cases Indigenous collectives, and especially women activists, are engaged in a battle over the very meaning of life.

Key issues

The mutual construction of sovereign state and Indigeneity
Identity Politics and the struggle for collective rights
Buen Vivir, the struggle for territory, and the politics of autonomy
The Rise of Indigenous women activism

Required texts: pick and read at least two readings from the below list of required texts

Canessa, A. (2017) Hobbes’ Border Guards or Evo’s Originary Citizens? New Diversities, 19(2): 69-84 (open access).
Kepa Artaraz, M., Trueba, M. L. (2021). Introduction: Vivir bien/Buen vivir and Post-Neoliberal Development Paths in Latin America: Scope, Strategies and the Realities of Implementation. Latin American Perspectives 48(3) (IDiscover)
Erazo, Juliet. 2013. Governing Indigenous Territories: Enacting Sovereignty in the Ecuadorian Amazon. [Read Introduction and one of the chapters, of your choice] (IDiscover)
Sieder, Rachel, ed. (2017) Introduction Demanding Justice and Security: Indigenous Women and Legal Pluralities in Latin America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Introduction, pp 1-25. (IDiscover)

AND pick one of the texts from ONE of the sub-themes below:

Subtheme 1: Does Buen Vivir go beyond Identity Politics? / What are the meanings and challenges of Indigenous autonomy? (Pick 2 papers)

Subtheme 2: Is Indigenous women activism a vehicle or challenge to Indigenous autonomy? And how does it reframe state sovereignty?

R. Aída Hernández Castillo. (2018). Multiple Dialogues and Struggles for Justice. Political Genealogies of indigenous Women in Mexico, Guatemala, and Colombia. In Multiple InJustices: Indigenous Women, Law and Political Struggles in Latin America. University of Arizona Press. Chapter 2, pp 67-122.
Picq M. L. (2018) Sovereignties within. In Vernacular Sovereignties: Indigenous Women Challenging World Politics. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Chapter 5, pp. 157-179. (soon on IDiscover)
Figueroa Romero, Dolores and Laura Hernández Pérez. Autonomy, Intersectionality and Gender Justice: From the “Double Gaze” of the Women Elders to the Violence We Do Not Know How to Name. IWGIA publication. (Open access).

Seminar 5: Shamanism, mimesis and alterity: spaces of transformation and blurred identities in Latin American popular culture (Françoise Barbira-Freedman)

Shamanism is perhaps the main generic social and cultural process that has created the contours of indigeneity in Latin America through time. In this seminar, it is presented as a set of practices that carry a distinctive indigenous label but at the same time have been defined through dialectical relations between Indigenous people and the dominant society since colonial times. Themes include the relationship between Christianity and Amerindian cosmologies, shamanic knowledge and its use in mediating racial conflicts, shamanism as popular medicine and popular culture in mixed rural and urban populations and the blurred identities of present-day shamans as they claim and/or ‘perform indigeneity’. Materials range from the colonial period to the rubber boom, up to the global expansion of Ayahuasca shamanism, the emergence of women shamans in the Amazon region. Mapuche shamans in Chile exemplify the complex gendered identities of shamans throughout Latin America.

Key Issues:

The transition of curanderos and brujos to shamans and neo-shamans with the emergence of indigeneity
Indigeneity as performed through shamanic practice
Relational politics and the historical remodelling of counter-hegemony

Required texts:

Taussig, M. (1987). Shamanism, Colonialism and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing. Chicago University Press. Chapters 6 to 12 and 23 to 25. (Moodle)
Gow, P. (1994). ‘River People: Shamanism and History in Western Amazonia’. In C. Humphrey and N. Thomas (eds), Shamanism, History and the State. University of Michigan Press. (Moodle)
Barbira Freedman, F. (2014). ‘Shamans’ Networks in Western Amazonia: the Iquitos-Nauta Road’. In B.C. Labate and N. Clavnar (eds.), Ayahuasca Shamanism in the Amazon and Beyond. Oxford University Press, pp. 130-158. (Moodle)
Bacigalupo, A.M. (2007). Shamans of the Foye Tree: Gender, Power and Healing among Chilean Mapuche. University of Texas Press. Introduction and Chapters 2, 3 and 9. (Moodle)

Discussion:

1. How can we explain that what we call shamanism, in its many different forms, continues to re-invent itself in time throughout Latin America as a live counter-hegemonic cultural heritage, in contra-opposition to state and religious authorities?

Focused readings:

Langdon, Esther Jean. 2016. The Revitalization of Yajé Shamanism among the Siona: Strategies of Survival in Historical Context. Anthropology of Consciousness Volume27, Issue2 Special Issue: Ayahuasca, Plant‐Based Spirituality, and the Future of Amazonia, Pages 180-203.
Bacigapulo, A.M. (2016). Thunder Shaman: Making History with Mapuche Spirits in Chile and Patagonia. University of Texas Press. (CLAS library)

Select and present the life and work of a shaman of your choice as portrayed in the anthropology literature or in the media.

2. What does shamanism tell us about indigeneity as relational politics in which people labelled or self-ascribing as Indigenous are both socially and economically disadvantaged and yet are attributed powers sought by non-indigenous people on local and international scales?

Focused readings:

Fotiou, Evgenia. 2020. Shamanic Tourism in the Peruvian Lowlands: Critical and Ethical Considerations. Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology. Vol 5(3):374-396.
Menezes, Débora. 2020. Shamans in the city: Brazil clinic offers traditional treatments. Mongabay

Watch the documentary The Last Shaman, by Raz Degan, 2017 (Netflix)

Seminar 6: Growing up Indigenous in Latin America: Discourse and Practice of Interculturality in Education and Healthcare (Françoise Barbira-Freedman)

In contrast with the culture of shamanism in which race relations are virtually inverted in the Latin American popular imaginary, this second seminar addresses the relational dimension of indigeneity as experienced in education and healthcare. The seminar explores how indigeneity is constituted as a social category during childhood through the institutionalised discourse of interculturality, while at the grassroots, Amerindian tropes of sociality and personhood have been revitalised in current trends of re-indigenisation. Bureaucratised schools and health posts are ambivalent spaces where parents and children negotiate Indigenous citizenship. Despite greater access of Indigenous youths to tertiary education, growing up Indigenous in Latin America is stigmatised by poverty. How are tensions between embodied, oral, and implicit cultural forms of Indigenous socialisation and the discourse of interculturality reconciled in practice? Are there shared features of Indigenous childhood in Latin American countries? How do the politics of place and/or territory contribute to positive affirmations of Indigeneity in peri-urban neighbourhoods?

Key issues:

Intercultural education and health care

Nurture as shared ethos of indigenous upbringing

From indigenismo to Indigeneity: policies and grassroots perspectives

Strategies for integrating Indigenous ontologies in education and health care (particularly maternity care).

Required texts:

Cortina, Regina 2019. Indigenous Education Policy, Equity, and Intercultural Understanding in Latin America.

Nemogá-Soto, Gabriel R. 2018. Indigenous and Intercultural Education in Latin America: Assimilation or Transformation of Colonial Relations in Colombia. Journal of Intercultural Studies Vol 39(1): 1-19.

McCallum, C. (2001). Gender and Sociality in Amazonia: How Real People are Made. Oxford: Berg.  Chapters 1, 2, 3.

Rahman, E., F Barbira Freedman, F. Garcia Rivera F and M.Castro Rios. 2023 ‘You Teach Who You are’: Lessons with FORMABIAP’s educative community.  número especial "Pedagogía y aprendizaje y conocimiento indígena" 
https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/core20/current

De la Cadena, M. (2010) ‘Indigenous Cosmopolitics in the Andes. Conceptual Reflections beyond “Politics”. Cultural Anthropology 25(2): 334-370.

Discussion:

Are intercultural education and health care possible?  Schools and health posts are valued in Indigenous communities, both rural and urban, across Latin America, but Indigenous ontologies and practices remain part of a contested popular culture.

Focused reading:

Rival, Laura. 2023. Pedagogies for the future: ethnographic reflections on two Latin American learning journeys. " 
https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/core20/current

Click to follow link.">Oxford Review of Education: Vol 49, No 4 (Current issue)pp.554-568 (tandfonline.com)

Rahman, E. and F. Barbira Freedman. 2024. ”It takes a village”. Anthropological Perspectives on Global Challenges. Routledge (pp.35-63)

Anthony-Stevens, Vanessa and E. Gallegos Buitron. 2023. Indigenous Mexican Teachers and Decolonial Thinking: Enacting Pedagogies of Reclamation. Anthropology & Education Quarterly Vol 54(2): 144-164,

2. To what extent multicultural governance can make space for Indigenous cosmopolitics? Based on examples, how do non-Indigenous and Indigenous authors/filmmakers perceive issues?  is dialogue possible?

Focused reading:

Cortina, Regina and Amanda Earl. 2020. Embracing interculturality and Indigenous knowledge in Latin American higher education. Compare 51(60):1-18. (ResearchGate)

Carpena-Mendez, Fina and K. Pirjo Virtanen. 2022. Indigenous Pedagogies in a Global World and Sustainable Futures. Anthropology & Education Quarterly 53(4):308-320

Llamas A, Mayhew S. 2018."Five hundred years of medicine gone to waste"? Negotiating the implementation of an intercultural health policy in the Ecuadorian Andes. BMC Public Health. 2018 Vol.18(1):686

Film. D’Argenio, Maria-Chiara. 2022. Indigenous Plots in Twenty-First Century Latin American Cinema. Chapter 6: pp. 225-245. Coevalness, Indigenous Modernity and Indigenization: El sueño del mara’akame (2016).