Bordering Indigeneity

Being indigenous in and across 21st Century Nation-States

Join us for the screening of Urukurenda: en búsqueda de la Tierra Sin Mal (Ĩwĩ Maraëï) and a conversation about indigeneity, displacement, migration, and new beginnings with Penelope Anthias (human geographer and filmmaker, Durham University – UK) and Gloria Tadii Ángeles Cruz (founder of Rebeldía Radio – La Voz Migrante de Nueva York).

The end of Spanish colonial rule in Latin America did not significantly change the second-class status and displacement of indigenous people within independent nation states. Today, migration, both within and across borders, serves as a tool to defy deeply entrenched marginalization. As migrant and displaced indigenous people detach themselves from their land and disengage from oppressive conditions, their efforts to relocate to new lands and social spaces often clash with mounting legal and bureaucratic obstacles created by modern nation states. Despite the growing recognition of indigenous rights, there is still a need for these rights to reflect the cultural logics of indigenous peoples, their strategies, and aspirations to truly transcend the legacies of historical marginalization.

In Urukurenda: en búsqueda de la Tierra Sin Mal (Ĩwĩ Maraëï), Penelope Anthias portrays the experiences of the residents of a Guaraní community from Southeast Bolivia. Theirs is a story about the “struggle for land access and legal recognition against a backdrop of debt peonage, state abandonment, and the development of important new gas fields.” Theirs is also a story about the legacy of colonialism, how indigenous people became disempowered through legal and administrative mechanisms that displaced them physically and socially into subservient spaces, and their continued efforts to overcome marginalization.