AHA Session 322
Conference on Latin American History 69
Conference on Latin American History 69
Monday, January 6, 2025: 11:00 AM-12:30 PM
Nassau East (New York Hilton, Second Floor)
Chair:
Brittany Luby, University of Guelph
Papers:
Session Abstract
As in-between spaces on the periphery of Indigenous, colonial, and national borders, borderlands represent a distinct geographic and sociopolitical space where different peoples, cultures, and ideas converge—often resulting in new formations distinct from those found at each respective center. Centering Indigenous people as important historical actors in the shaping of the borderlands of North America, “Indigenous Borderlands Across Time, Space, and Place” reflects scholarship that critically interrogates the colonial and post-colonial archive to center Indigenous social, political, and economic agency in the face of familiar narratives of annihilation, subjugation, and extinction. Drawing on sources ranging from eighteenth-century Franciscan mission records to twentieth-century Maryknoll mission archives, this panel reveals how Indigenous people strategically negotiated state violence, religion, and new sociopolitical orders to achieve some sense of stability and political sovereignty. The papers also reveal how, in some instances, Indigenous people were also able to achieve some social mobility in the process. Spanning a vast chronological timeline, as well as a vast geographic space across the North America, the panel further explores how placemaking within Indigenous societies has historically tied Indigenous people not only to their ancestral homelands, but to the new places they would come to call home while in diaspora. The panel includes scholars who exemplify the best practices of Indigenous research methodologies, including working closely with Indigenous people, taking seriously the epistemologies and ontologies of Indigenous people, co-creating oral histories with Indigenous people, and ensuring that the scholarly work is useful to the Indigenous communities at the center of the study.
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