Against Erasure: Indigenous Sites of Possibility in Multilingual Practices across the Maya Diaspora Yucatan-California

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 9:45 am - Gold 2
  In Roundtable Session: Navigating Identity, Culture and Heritage Languages in Diverse Contexts

Abstract

I begin this paper with an introductory overview of the historical and present underpinnings of cultural and linguistic erasure of Indigenous Maya immigrant families from Yucatan (Mexico) through school bureaucracies in California and in Yucatan. The paper draws from two ethnographic projects attending to cultural and linguistic experiences stemming from the contradiction between Indigenous displacements and transnational sovereignty. I examine practices that engaged Indigenous worldviews expressed through actions and practices that affirmed Indigenous knowledge. This paper expresses a commitment to language analysis as a window into understanding how cultural and linguistic resources are employed to counter logics of Indigenous erasure in schools and society. The author concludes introducing a model for sustaining Indigenous language with specific policy recommendations is discussed.

Author

• Patricia Baquedano-Lopez, University of California - Berkeley