From Indigenous Literatures to Native American and Indigenous Theorists: The Makings of a Grassroots Decoloniality

Arturo Arias

doi:10.25222/larr.181

Abstract

From the coloniality of power to the decolonial swerve, US-centered decolonial academics concur with the foundational points introduced by Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano. Nevertheless, they seldom cite Latin American Indigenous or Native American intellectuals’ decolonial perspectives, or examine specific bodies of critical thinking emerging in hemispheric Indigenous communities. In turn, a diversity of Indigenous paradigms and methods are appearing in the Americas, either as literary texts or critical works. Indigenous or Native American writers and theorists are often political actors, working within their respective grassroots movements, or writing to advance specific goals of their own communities. This article will emphasize Native American and Indigenous decolonial issues framed from a critique of contemporary Indigenous narratives. Their views both enrich and complicate Western decolonial theorists’ assumptions. Examining their production provides continuity to the political and epistemological searches of both, while also contributing to breaking down those invisible walls separating them.

Highlights

Grotesque descriptions were employed by Spanish clerics to discredit the metaphysical concepts of Mayas, Mexicas (Aztecs), and other native peoples of the Americas
Dominican missionary Domingo de Betanzos, who participated in the so-called Spiritual Conquest, evangelizing Indigenous subjects throughout New Spain, charged in 1533 that Indians were beasts destined for extinction
These outrageous fabrications led to a bonfire in the Yucatecan town of Máani’, where the infamous Franciscan friar Diego de Landa (1524–1579) burned Maya codices and approximately twenty thousand cult images in his auto-da-fé of July 12, 1562, damaging Maya culture forever

Summary

Introduction

Grotesque descriptions were employed by Spanish clerics to discredit the metaphysical concepts of Mayas, Mexicas (Aztecs), and other native peoples of the Americas. Indigenous and Afrodescendant knowledges, cultures, social relations, and everyday behaviors—and their literary production— could be explored from within their own perspectives, not the hauteur of the colonial gaze of Eurocentric subjects pretending to speak in their name.

Results

Conclusion