Here is an essay I recently wrote to be included within a catalog for an upcoming exhibition being held at the Newberry Library in Chicago this Fall (September 8, 2023). You can purchase the book it’s published within here.
Note From the Field 1: “Touching each book”: Demystifying Special Collections in Community
A few favorite sections:
Original text: “En la primaria me obligaron a memorizar los nombres de los ríos y capitales de Europa y me obligaron a olvidar los nombres de los ríos y nombres de mi pueblo. Algo así pasa con nuestras lenguas. Que si ya no hablas ninguna lengua más que el español u otra de los blancos; no es porque hayas entrado en la categoría de mestizo, sino porque a tus abuelos los obligaron a olvidar su lengua y su historia y lo nombraron mestizo.” – Victorino Torres Nave (Nahua, Kwentepec, Morelos)
English: “In elementary school they forced me to memorize the names of the rivers and capitals of Europe and they forced me to forget the names of the rivers and the names of my town. Something like that happens with our languages. That if you no longer speak any language other than Spanish or another of the whites, it is not because you have entered the category of mestizo but because your grandparents were forced to forget their language and their history, they were named mestizo.” – Victorino Torres Nave (Nahua, Kwentepec, Morelos)
*the English version was prioritized for the essay through the publisher since the catalog is geared towards mostly English speakers but if it were up to me I would have prioritized the original text as it was expressed in Spanish
Another favorite: Although many archives, libraries, museums, cultural institutions, and the academy as a whole have diversified over the years, this does not mean they have “decolonized.” Indigenous people need to have control over their own knowledge, histories, stories, and resources because no matter how experienced a non-Native person thinks they are, they cannot and will not have the lived experience. To me, decolonizing means enough with capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism. We must respect the self-determination and sovereignty of Indigenous communities worldwide. As Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang wrote in their essay “Decolonization is not a Metaphor”:
Decolonization brings about the repatriation of Indigenous land and life; it is not a metaphor for other things we want to do to improve our societies and schools. The easy adoption of decolonizing discourse by educational advocacy and scholarship, evidenced by the increasing number of calls to “decolonize our schools,” or use “decolonizing methods,” or, “decolonize student thinking”, turns decolonization into a metaphor.[18]
Hiring Native people and tossing in land acknowledgements alone is not decolonization either. To me, representation alone will not solve the centuries of structural racism, violence, indoctrination, assimilation policies, and continued imperialism Indigenous people are still subjected to. Representation and individuals being involved in processes that historically were created without Indigenous people involved is the minimum starting point.
If you haven’t read Jones Brayboy and Bryan McKinley’s, Toward a Tribal Critical Race Theory in Education, do yourself a favor and click on it, download it, and read it!
They point out: “The primary tenet of TribalCrit is the notion that colonization is endemic to society. By colonization, I mean that European American thought, knowledge, and power structures dominate present-day society in the United States.”
Photo: Nahua youth from the Kwentepek community viewing the facsimile copy of a 1524 map of Tenochtitlan, Cuentepec, Morelos, Mexico, 2022 (Photo: Victorino Torres Nava (Nahua)
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