Unsettling Roles: Facilitating Passage Toward Indigenous Knowledge From Mexico

• In Event: Beyond National Boundaries: Transnational Ways of Knowing and Belonging in Mexico

Abstract

Objectives: Many non-indigenous people are coming to recognize the need to engage and foster indigenous knowledge in the world toward both supporting indigenous communities (Four Arrows, 2016) and toward decolonizing an increasingly transnational world (Author 4, 2016). This was the impetus for a 2019 pilot program of ten Southwestern U.S. public school teachers who spent four weeks in Mexico. During two of the weeks in Totonocapan, Veracruz, participants learned from and with indigenous elders. This article uses auto-ethnographic perspectives of the four faculty to theorize unsettling roles between Mexicans and people from the U.S., those who are often most likely engaged in “settling” spaces for their own benefit.

Theoretical Framework: We take an indigenous knowledge framework, drawing from Totonaca and Nahua knowledge systems of Veracruz, Mexico. Authors 1 and 3 are from these communities. We also draw from decolonization (Smith, 2013) toward recognizing interdependence among all living things (Cajete, 2000), reconsidering what we know to be alive and how we consider who constructs and owns knowledge and saberes, the situated knowledges of indigenous communities (Bonfil Batalla, 2007; Urrieta, 2013).

Methods and Data Sources: Our work is critically auto-ethnographic (Boylorn & Orbe, 2013), drawing from our lived experiences and collective reflections while considering how our work might be able to be even more oriented toward righting injustices and decolonization, toward reciprocal relationships rooted in spreading transnational webs of interconnectedness.

Results: We theorize the process of how we shifted roles from the white U.S. faculty who are so often considered “expert” because of their white privilege, even in contexts outside the US, and how the indigenous and Mexican faculty led the processes in collaboration, compassion, and generosity. We also draw from specific incidences which left us wondering about the possible limits of this work. The participants’ diverse identity issues played into our work as much as the “first world” comforts to which they were accustomed.
The U.S.-based faculty ceded power, took risks, and acknowledged to the ten U.S.-based teachers that at times they did not know what to expect as outcomes of the activities. Indigenous knowledge in Totonacapan is deeply grounded in the Earth, gratitude to divinities, and the four elements of earth, wind, fire, and water, but it is also allowed to emerge spontaneously in carefully cultivated learning situations (as well as situations that are improvisational), similar to the findings Rogoff and others demonstrate among the Maya (Correa-Chávez & Rogoff, 2009; López, Correa-Chávez, & Rogoff, 2010). For instance, the U.S.-based faculty agreed with the Mexican faculty to center reciprocity in their efforts before engaging the work—a process we achieved but which also left us wondering about improving. We also engage how paradigm shifts among participants created opportunities and additional challenges.

Scholarly Significance: The findings can allow points of departure for cross-cultural dialog, challenges to consider, and toward decolonization in additional work. We provide suggestions for how to consider going about building lasting relationships across disparate communities in efforts to decolonize transnational collaborations.

Authors

• Sara Itzel Barreira Arcos, Universidad Veracruzana Intercultural, Espinal

• Garrett Delavan, Georgia State University

• Angela Hernandez, Universidad Veracruzana Intercultural, Espinal

• G. Sue Kasun, Georgia State University