Results by title
338 books match the query 'Indigenous Studies' and 4 start with v
Vernacular Sovereignties
Indigenous Women Challenging World PoliticsManuela Lavinas Picq
University of Arizona Press, 2018
In Vernacular Sovereignties, Manuela Lavinas Picq shows that Indigenous women have long been dynamic political actors who have partaken in international politics and have shaped state practices carrying different forms of resistance. Her research on Ecuador shows that although Kichwa women face overlapping oppressions from socioeconomic exclusions to sexual violence, they are achieving rights unparalleled in the world. They successfully advocated for women’s participation in the administration of Indigenous justice during the 2008 constitutional reform, creating the first constitution in Latin America to explicitly guarantee the rights of Indigenous women and the first constitution worldwide to require gender parity in the administration of justice.
Picq argues that Indigenous women are among the important forces reshaping states in Latin America. She offers empirical research that shows the significance of Indigenous women in international politics and the sophistication of their activism. Indigenous women strategically use international norms to shape legal authority locally, defying Western practices of authority as they build what the author calls vernacular sovereignties. Weaving feminist perspectives with Indigenous studies, this interdisciplinary work expands conceptual debates on state sovereignty.
Picq persuasively suggests that the invisibility of Indigenous women in high politics is more a consequence of our failure to recognize their agency than a result of their de facto absence. It is an invitation not merely to recognize their achievements but also to understand why they matter to world politics.
Violence and Indigenous Communities
Confronting the Past and Engaging the PresentEdited by Susan Sleeper-Smith, Jeffrey Ostler, and Joshua L. Reid
Northwestern University Press, 2021
In contrast to past studies that focus narrowly on war and massacre, treat Native peoples as victims, and consign violence safely to the past, this interdisciplinary collection of essays opens up important new perspectives. While recognizing the long history of genocidal violence against Indigenous peoples, the contributors emphasize the agency of individuals and communities in genocide’s aftermath and provide historical and contemporary examples of activism, resistance, identity formation, historical memory, resilience, and healing. The collection also expands the scope of violence by examining the eyewitness testimony of women and children who survived violence, the role of Indigenous self-determination and governance in inciting violence against women, and settler colonialism’s promotion of cultural erasure and environmental destruction.
By including contributions on Indigenous peoples in the United States, Canada, the Pacific, Greenland, Sápmi, and Latin America, the volume breaks down nation-state and European imperial boundaries to show the value of global Indigenous frameworks. Connecting the past to the present, this book confronts violence as an ongoing problem and identifies projects that mitigate and push back against it.
Visions of Transformation
Hegemony, Plurinationality, and Revolution in BoliviaAaron Augsburger
University of Arizona Press, 2025
On a wave of revolutionary upheaval in the early twenty-first century, Evo Morales was swept into state power as Bolivia’s first Indigenous president with a mandate to radically transform the country. The ensuing period, known simply as “el proceso de cambio” (the process of change), has been a tension-filled and contradictory process involving progressive transformations, ambiguous continuities, and outright revolutionary failures. Importantly, the contradictions have been just as much ideological as they are material.
By examining and illuminating the contrasting logics underlying opposing theories of revolutionary change, Visions of Transformation provides an analytical framework through which to understand and interpret the central conflicts and contradictions of Bolivia under Evo Morales and the Movimiento al Socialismo.
Based on nearly two years of immersive fieldwork, Visions of Transformation explores the relation between theoretical production and political practice. Through the contrasting perspectives of hegemony and plurinationality, the book analyzes three specific conjunctural moments—a proposed highway through the TIPNIS, a conflict over representation of the highland Indigenous movement organization CONAMAQ, and the struggle for Indigenous autonomy—to shed light on the primary economic, social, political, and theoretical tensions at the heart of Bolivia’s proceso de cambio.
Voices of Indigenuity
Michelle Montgomery
University Press of Colorado, 2023
Advocating for and providing an expansion of place-based Indigenized education that infuses Indigenous epistemologies for student success in both K–12 and higher education curricula, these essays explore topics such as land fragmentation, remote sensing, and outreach through the lens of TEK, demonstrating methods of fusing learning with Indigenous knowledge (IK). Contributors emphasize the need to increase the perspectives of IK within institutionalized knowledge beyond being co-opted into non-Indigenous frameworks that may be fundamentally different from Indigenous ways of thinking.
Decolonizing current harmful pedagogical curricula and research training about the natural world through an Indigenous- guided approach is an essential first step to rebuilding a healthy relationship with our environment while acknowledging that all relationships come with an ethical responsibility. Voices of Indigenuity captures the complexities of exploring the contextu- alized meanings for why TEK should be integrated into Western environmental science processes and frameworks while rooted in Indigenous studies programs.