Indigenous Maya Families From Yucatán at a K–5 School: Hemispheric Mobility and Pedagogies of Diaspora

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session 19
  In Roundtable Session: Indigenous Ways of Knowing in the Classroom

Abstract

The growing presence of indigenous Maya students from Yucatan, Mexico, in K-12 schools represents a noticeable demographic change in California. I draw from my linguistic and educational anthropological study at a K-5 elementary school in northern California with a student body representing regions across Mexico and Central America and where 25% of the population is from Yucatan. I advance a framework for rethinking the immigration of indigenous groups as a deliberate movement across geopolitical borders in response to practices of continued settler colonialism. I conclude the paper with an in-depth analysis of parent-child interactions at a school-led workshop to illustrate how immigrant families develop and use pedagogies of migration that they consider beneficial for their children to witness and learn.

Author

• Patricia Baquedano-Lopez, University of California - Berkeley