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Red Alert! Saving the Planet with Indigenous Knowledge
The only Indigenous president Mexico has ever had was Benito Pablo Juárez García. He was the twenty-sixth president of Mexico and held office from 1858 until 1872.
We have all read a version of the statement “While the world’s 370 million Indigenous peoples make up less than five percent of the total human population, they manage or hold tenure over 25 percent of the world’s land surface and support about 80 percent of the global biodiversity.”20 This statement demonstrates the importance of Indigenous knowledge, kincentric ecology, and ways of being.
It is important to reemphasize that Indigenous knowledge and teachings are described as place based. This means that every Indigenous tribe, pueblo, or community has their own unique ways of thinking and managing their landscapes.
However, it is important to note that non-Indigenous and settler scholars or scientists should stop attempting to describe Indigenous knowledge or ways of being through Western knowledge frameworks and terminology as this fails to explain the complexities of our cultures. It is also oppressive to be told by settlers and non-Indigenous peoples how we actually think when in reality, we know best about our way of life and lived experiences.
Alice Wong wrote the following testimonial on why plastic straws are essential to disabled individuals in the article “The Rise and Fall of the Plastic Straw”: A plastic straw is an access tool I use for nutrition as a person with a neuromuscular disability. When sipping a latte at my favorite cafe, I use a plastic straw because I am unable to lift a drink to my mouth and it is safe for hot liquids. Plastic straws are now seen as harmful and outmoded by environmentalists who are in favor of “safer” products (e.g., compostable, biodegradable plastics made of polylactic acid, silicone).21
Wong’s testimony reveals the nuances and intersectionalities that are often dismissed within this systems thinking. The systems that came into play in this decision aimed to reduce the impacts of plastic straws, yet due to not linking the system of disability justice, they ended up causing more harm.
In Western ways of knowing, everyone also aims to reach a level of expertise in certain topics or discourses. However, I was taught by my elders that expertise is an ongoing process as we always have something to learn and, in some cases, unlearn and relearn because the way we have been taught has not always been equitable, inclusive, or understanding of non-Western ways of knowing.
Personally, knowing that my life is in constant threat when I visit my ancestral homelands makes it hard for me to wrap my mind around this desire for non-Indigenous and settler scientists to want to study us.
The number of Indigenous land defenders and leaders murdered continues to increase, and this violence, coupled with the 2020–2021 pandemic, impacted Indigenous communities severely and increased their vulnerability during these years.
Muxe is a third gender in our Zapotec culture, outside of the binary gender identities identified in Western culture, that refers to a male assigned at birth who also embodies the female spirit and duality.
In Arkansas, the Central American population has grown and continues to grow each year.14 Thus, it was no surprise that many unaccompanied minors made their final stop in Arkansas as they had family there.
When we look at the refugee crisis that is occurring through an environmental justice lens, we can further understand how we can continue to advocate for the survival of Indigenous peoples.
A muxe can choose to dress in regalia that women in the community wear or decide to dress in the traditional clothing men wear. However, a muxe that dresses in women’s regalia is ostracized by the patriarchal systems that have also been infiltrated in the Zapotec community, because patriarchy is amplified through homophobia.
What are you willing to do to help Indigenous communities across the Americas that continue to face the ecowars? What role do you play in the xenophobia, gender rights violations, and anti-Blackness that are present through the Americas?
When all men learn how to respect all women, they will also learn how to respect the most powerful of them all, Mother Earth. —MarÍa de JesÚs, my grandmother
This has been coined as the Zapatista Uprising and it brought to the forefront conversations about Indigenous sovereignty and rights in Mexico.
Comandante Ramona was the leader of EZLN and her title as commander gave her the highest ranking of all.5 She led the communities by helping organize them with secret meetings since the 1980s.
Sexism coupled with anti-Indigeneity makes our experiences as Indigenous women unique in perspective as we have to not only fight for our rights outside of our community but also within our communities.
Comandante Ramona and the other Indigenous women leaders became his shadows, and this, as mentioned before, can be due to two important interpretations: one, that they knew a mestizo man was going to gather the attention of the Mexican government and be taken seriously, or two, that they were not given the opportunity to become the representation or face of this movement because they were Indigenous women.
In the Women’s Revolutionary Law, Indigenous women had to advocate for rights that were granted to Indigenous men in their communities but were denied to them.
Our huipiles carry our environments, and the elements embedded in them are collected from our local flora, fauna, and ecological histories. For example, in the Zapotec community, flowers native to our region are embroidered onto their huipiles.
Our huipiles, made with our embroideries and weaving styles, are our culture, and we can grant this gift to each generation. When you embroider a huipil, you take hours, you dedicate part of your life, and this is done with love and care. They are artistic interpretations of our environments, and this is why Indigenous women and muxes carry a deeper connection to our environments.
It is the women-nature nexus that is very present in our communities, and this is why it is important to protect our embroideries and weaving that go into our huipiles. By protecting them, we protect our Indigenous women, our self-autonomy, our liberation, and ultimately our environments that inspire them.
As Indigenous women, we continue to fight against patriarchy, but have to also fight against the plagiarism, appropriation, and exploitation we are forced to succumb to under capitalism that values our work as cheap but says it is worth
In Guatemala we continue to witness the missionary religious trips that continue to impact our communities but the Guatemalan government allows.
Western religions, like Christianity and Catholicism, have now become important in many Indigenous communities, but we cannot forget that this was the same religion that led to the inquisition of our ancestors through manifest destiny.
We have seen the short news video from VICE News “Mayan Ruins in Guatemala Could Become a U.S.-Funded Tourist Attraction” (June 17, 2020), in which it informs us that you are leading a campaign in Guatemala and the United States to generate funding to transform the sacred El Mirador site into a tourist attraction and in that way bring “economic benefits to Guatemalans.”
Many have conflated this as a means for massive deportation, displacing everyone who is not Indigenous to these lands. However, land back means returning the autonomy and right to manage and steward our landscapes back to the Indigenous peoples and communities who were displaced from their lands due to settler colonialism.
As Indigenous peoples we should not be afterthoughts or continue to be footnotes in work, practices, and policies that govern how our natural resources are allocated and managed.
Describing our sacred sites as ancient ruins dismisses the existence of the descendants of those ancestors who were able to build these great infrastructures around Latin America. People keep forgetting that our communities that are descendants of these heavily romanticized civilizations are still living under extreme poverty, health disparities, and political turmoil in what is now known as Southern Mexico and Central America.
Continuing this conversation around ancient ruins and civilizations continues to dismiss our resistance and resilience that allows us to continue adapting to modern times and technology.
We are not myths of the past, ruins in the jungle, or zoos. We are people and we want to be respected, not to be victims of intolerance and racism.
Since December 2018, there have been at least five Maya children and one young Maya woman who have died at the United States (U.S.)-Mexico border under U.S. custody, or killed by Federal officials;
It hurts to step back and realize that Indigenous peoples are not just dying or facing violence when they protect their Indigenous lands but are also facing the same impacts when they choose to leave and flee in search of a better life.
For many this is news they get to read, but for many Central Americans, in particular Indigenous peoples from Central America, these stories are about our families who are at the border separated under the policies the United States continues to uphold that criminalize immigration.
In 2020 not only was I surviving the pandemic like everyone else, I was also mobilizing and organizing to support my people during the earthquake that occurred in Oaxaca and the hurricanes that impacted Central American countries, and supporting families who were separated at the border, including my own, and other Indigenous communities who I have close relationships and kinships with that were facing food insecurity.
we face the highest ecological debt, yet those who are responsible for what the climate change our planet is undergoing continue to profit and benefit from settler colonialism.
These immigration policies have resulted in the death of many of our Indigenous Maya children and the forced sterilization of Indigenous women.
The border crisis is a process of colonization and the imposition of borders that has been occurring for more than five hundred years. With the creation of nations and states that were violently placed on our ancestral lands through slavery, through killing, through rape, through these very violent processes that never recognized us and only saw our lands and us as commodities, we have been forced to migrate.
What that ends up meaning is that when people ask, if climate change is happening, why can’t Indigenous people start going to traditional agriculture or traditional ways? My response has been, on what land? When all of our lands have been taken from us, where are we supposed to go?
The reality is, if you ask a lot of our Indigenous peoples whether they wanted to leave their ancestral lands, they’ll say, we never wanted to leave. Home is not here. There are over five hundred years of displacement and genocide and theft that is embedded in our story and trauma.
When it comes to not being able to share if there are medical needs, or if they at risk for sexual violence and rape, or human trafficking, how are you going to get help if access to our Indigenous languages is being denied through the journey to make it to this border?
My father always told me that giving us an umbrella ethnic term like Latino was to further assimilate those of us Indigenous peoples who are displaced.
Yes, our Indigenous cultures, traditions, and practices are beautiful, but as a community, we must move past this romanticization and seek action, support, and respect through decolonization.
Healing incorporates the critical aspect of reconnecting with who we are, especially for Indigenous peoples.
I think there’s a lot of process right now in taking away the layers of self-preservation [decolonizing], where we have publicly denied our identity because we have often been killed because of our identity.
It is important to mention that colonialism introduced many layers that need to be dismantled, so in order to truly reach decolonization, all these layers must be dismantled.
Getting to the core of decolonization means that we have dismantled systems and layers that are deeply rooted in our societies. It is a long journey and oftentimes a lifelong journey.
The Indigeneity of Black people was stolen from them when they were forcefully displaced from their ancestral lands into the Americas because of slavery.
