Understanding Indigenous Cultural Practices as Learning Communities: The Case of an Intergenerational Zapotec-Origin Band

• In Event: Creating Equitable Learning Contexts for Indigenous Mexican Communities: Cultural Knowledge, Networks, Practices, and Empowerment

Abstract

Objective
This study explores how a Oaxacan philharmonic band creates a cultural learning community by recreating and sustaining important Indigenous cultural traditions.

Theoretical framework.
Indigenous communities and families provide learning experiences to their youth by incorporating their beliefs and values into their everyday cultural practices (Author 2016a; Rogoff, 2014; Urrieta, 2013;). These everyday cultural practices can manifest into cultural learning communities, yet, these forms of knowledge are overlooked by institutions such as schools. The study builds on diasporic community knowledge, saberes (knowings) and smartness developed in relation to familial and communal life that originated in native pueblos and transcend borders (Urrieta, 2016). Banda Oaxaqueña is examined as a learning community that socializes youth in ancestral knowledge systems through an intergenerational and transnational approach not found in their schools. In addition, Critical Latinx Indigeneities (CLI) is used as it situates the lived experiences of Indigenous people in multiple colonial contexts (Blackwell, Lopez, & Urrieta, 2017), and thus highlighting Banda Oaxaqueña as a multilingual learning community that enacts the critical culturally relevant pedagogies (Ladson-Billings, 1995) educators aim to provide to youth.

Data and Methods
For two years, I conducted observations, wrote field notes (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 2011) and video-recorded rehearsals and performance sessions to explore the youth’s experiences in the band. Demographic surveys were collected while 35 semi-structured interviews explored the educational and developmental experiences of youth.

Results
As a result of teaching and practicing cultural traditions, Banda Oaxaqueña provides youth with diasporic community knowledge and assets. Observations found the band organizes itself in an inclusive manner that promotes agency and intergenerational collaboration. In this approach, band leaders use music to teach culturally relevant knowledge and history, including Oaxacan, Mexican, and U.S.-origin content, while encouraging youth to actively contribute, such as peer learning or suggesting songs for performances.
Interviews with youth revealed that this transnational and cultural pedagogy offers them assets, including transferable skills and positive developmental outcomes. For instance, language is an asset that Banda Oaxaqueña uses through translanguaging, a process by which speakers engage in complex discursive practices to communicate in multilingual environments (García & Sylvan, 2011). Zapoteco, Spanish, and English are used during rehearsals and performances to teach musical content and socialize. These languages allow youth to engage practices that contribute to a strong Oaxacan identity and a sense of belonging in the band and Oaxacan community.

Scholarly significance.
Banda Oaxaqueña is a remarkable example of culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogies (Ladson-Billings, 1995; Paris & Alim, 2017) and cultural ways of learning (Gutierrez & Rogoff, 2003). The band offers musical content from Mexico and the U.S., multilingual instruction, and agency to youth, along with peers and older adults to form a transnational and intergenerational learning community. For decades, scholars have advocated for the inclusion of cultural knowledge from homes and communities into the classroom (Ladson-Billings, 1995; Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992). Despite multiple colonial contexts, Indigenous Mexicans in the United States continue to preserve their knowledge systems and cultural practices by recreating learning communities with their youth.

Author

• Melissa Mesinas, Scripps College