Sanando y Atreviendo: Community-Based Learning by and for Diasporic Indigenous Youth

• In Event: Friday Roundtable Session 3:05 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Indigenous Learning Across Contexts (Table 28)

Abstract

This study centers on the testimonios of three college graduates and the creation of three community-based learning spaces: (1) a Ñuu Savi intergenerational garden, (2) a Oaxacan Indigenous youth conference, (3) and a Zapotec summer language program. Participants articulate their motivations for creating these spaces and their perspectives on fostering Ñuu Savi (Mixtec) and Bene Xhon (Zapotec) cultural identity and social belonging in the US. This study demonstrates how 1.5- and second-generation youth are taking their education into their own hands and moving outside formal educational settings to create different and innovative realities that rupture colonial discourses that uplift Indigenous collective community knowledges for younger generations in the diaspora.

Author

• Gabriela Kovats Sanchez, San Diego Mesa College