Final LAST 303 Thoughts

Final Blog Post and Wrap-Up Thoughts!

From starting with the Popol Vuh and ending with Davi Kopenawa's text, I really enjoyed exploring Latin American indigeneity through various authors, texts, time-periods, and events; I don't think I would have found/read some of these books if I hadn't taken this course, so I'm very happy that I did!

I loved learning about the cosmovisions, culture, and knowledge systems of different Latin-American indigenous groups, and about their differences but also the overarching similar themes/concepts between all of them. For the most part, I think that the similarities are that the communities are founded in/most highly value community, nature, and true knowledge; from the Maya K'iche to the Yanomami, indigeneity was tied to common group functioning both within families but also within the community as a whole. It was cool to explore this in the Popol Vuh, a pre-colonial text, where there was never a focus on the individual; Hunahpu and Xbalanque defeated Xialba together, One Batz and One Chouen were always together, and the Heart of Sky consisted of Sovereign and Quetzal Serpent to create the earth. And then to see this ideology continued in post-colonial texts like Our Word is Our Weapon, where Marcos constantly emphasizes that individuality isn't important and he is a function of the larger Zapatista community, and he included the names and stories of those other than him throughout his work. 

        For nature, it was common for the indigenous peoples to be here because of nature itself and the nature spirites/dieties, like the importance of maize and the sky in creating the Maya K'iche', and the xapiri and Amazon forest in shaping the lives of the Yanomami, but then observing the smaller differences, like how in the Popol Vuh it was emphasized that animals and plants were created and treated for the function of humans, whereas in The Falling Sky the Yanomami construct their lives around the forest and respecting it. 

        Throughout all of the texts, the importance of the truth and true knowledge was extremely important, and that the true knowledge is that which has been communicated/passed on for generations through orality. I found this especially prominent in I, Rigoberta Menchu and The Falling Sky due to the nature of the construction of the books, as they are transcribed interviews from Menchu and Kopenawa, and that they emphasized that the white people, or the Guatemalan government, don't understand the ways of knowing and knowledge systems of the indigenous peoples and therefore spread false information.

Other than learning more about different Latin American indigeneities, I really enjoyed learning how to analyze and notice the voice of a text, or how voice/voices are represented in texts about indigeneity. Ultimately, I think that all of the texts are an amalgamation of voices, even if trying not to be; the Popol Vuh was a collective voice, I think that Guaman Poma's chronicle was a mix of the Spanish christian and the Quechua indigenous perspectives even though he was the sole author and similarly with Arguedas and his bicultural identity, and then Marcos, Mechu, and Kopenawa all had editors which directly inserts themselves into the narrative. After this course, surrounding indigenous texts, I feel like I will pick up on who the real audience of the text is, and the ways in which indigenous voice is possibly diluted in the text, which is an important skill to have when reading content that is associated with/identifies a community of people.