INDIGENEITY OF THE SOUTH

This course is designed to examine the politics and conditions of indigeneity in the South, specifically Latin America and the Caribbean. We begin with conquest and indigenous erasure in the Caribbean, tracing initial stances to the indigenous Other that inform nationalist ideologies of mestizaje, state-indigenous relations, including the politics of recognition. Engaging core theorists across diverse contexts, we trace the ongoing legacies of dispossession and its shaping forces on indigenous political subjectivities, while also tending to the collective and everyday forms of indigenous resistance, reclamation, and resurgence. As such, students in this course will a) Demonstrate knowledge of key theoretical perspectives at the following levels: (1) its analytical and explanatory importance for understanding indigeneity as site of political and structural conditions produced by the project of conquest, its colonial ideologies, and the nation-building project (2) their potential contributions to current social and political dialogues and debates around political conditions and practices of indigeneity in Latin America and the Caribbean; b) provide students with an understanding of the ways in which the colonial encounter undergirds the relations between states and indigenous peoples, and how these foundational antagonisms remain central to territorial conflicts, extractive development, and the politics of recognition; c) provide students with an understanding of indigenous representation (and erasure), collective and everyday forms of resistance.