Critical Latinx Indigeneities: A Framework to Study the Educational Experiences of Indigenous Latinx Families

• In Event: Indigenous Mexican Families and U.S. Schools

Abstract

Background
Research studies and media coverage have for years heightened attention to the growing Latino population in the US, including of children in schools. But, by simply noting the increase in population size, they rarely recognize the growth in Latinx diversity. Indigenous Latinxs for better or worse often become engulfed in the larger regulatory narratives of experience such as Hispanic or Latino, that attempt to disappear and assimilate. However, even within these larger entrapments, intra-Latinx racism continues to position Indigenous Latinx families and children, as the invisible or inferior Other. Racism and prejudice against Indigenous Latinxs by mestizos and Ladinos is exemplified by the recent anti-hate speech campaigns aimed at Latino youth for bullying their Oaxacan (Indigenous) peers (Barillas-Chon, 2010).

Purpose
This paper proposes that Critical Latinx Indigeneities (CLI), an interdisciplinary analytic frame, be used to explore the experiences of Indigenous Latinx families and education. CLI emphasizes the lived experiences and struggles of Indigenous Latinxs and should be used to engage with the growing body of work in education that focuses on Indigenous Latinx families’ experiences with US schooling.

Analytic Frame
CLI is a lens for understanding the ways gender, sexuality, ethnicity, race, class and other oppressions intersect with indigeneity and are produced over multiple contexts, including within schools. CLI recognizes that Indigenous communities and families organize around language, epistemology, transnationalism and youth cultural practice to ensure the survival of their collectives as distinct Indigenous peoples who confront displacement and migration with creative forms of cultural cohesion (Urrieta, 2016). CLI also uses the experiences and epistemes of Indigenous Latinx families and communities to push the boundaries of regulatory categories. CLI thus creates room for the multilayered discourses and ideologies of local, national, and transnational social and cultural flows both in Latin America and in diaspora.

Significance
Until now, there has not been a collective effort to name and theorize the various expressions of Indigenous Latinx experiences, which tend to be outside of, but also within, dominant narratives such as Latinidad. CLI fills this need by attempting to critically engage and critique enduring colonial logics and practices that operate from different localities of power as well as the physical, social, cultural, economic, and psychological violence that often targets Indigenous Latinx families and communities, including forms of state and police violence, cultural appropriation, economic exploitation, gender violence, social exclusion, and psychological abuse—including the forms of this violence inflicted in schools. CLI also makes room for the various forms of resistance, including activism, rage, healing, love, and communality that inform Latinx Indigenous experiences in the US and beyond, and that are also needed in the field of education.

Author

• Luis Urrieta, The University of Texas - Austin