The memories of the indigenous peoples of the Americas are not a static repository of the past, but a dynamic weave in which tradition and innovation coexist, converse, and mutually transform one another. This symposium proposes to explore how indigenous communities recreate, reinterpret, and project their memories in contemporary contexts marked by persistent coloniality, globalization, territorial disputes, cultural revitalization, and the emergence of new technologies.
\nThe central objective is to analyze the processes through which indigenous peoples articulate continuity and change in their ritual, artistic, linguistic, political, and territorial practices. The aim is to highlight indigenous agency in the production of knowledge, in the resignification of traditional and colonial iconographies, in the defense of their territories, and in the creation of new forms of cultural expression that engage with the present without relinquishing the historical depth of their memories.
\nThe symposium calls for research examining how tradition is reactivated and resignified in contemporary practices: from present-day indigenous art\u2014which reinterprets ancestral symbols and colonial visualities\u2014to community pedagogies for linguistic revitalization; from the ritual practices that sustain territorial memory to technological innovations that enable the creation of audiovisual archives, collaborative cartographies, and digital platforms for cultural transmission.
\nLikewise, the symposium proposes to reflect on the tensions between state policies of indigenismo, heritage-making, and multiculturalism, on the one hand, and indigenous epistemologies that assert autonomy, self-determination, and their own ways of understanding the world, on the other. In this sense, the symposium seeks to open an interdisciplinary space bringing together art history, anthropology, cultural studies, linguistics, archaeology, decolonial studies, and other disciplines interested in understanding the contemporary vitality of indigenous peoples.
\nIn keeping with the theme of the 59th International Congress of Americanists, “Tradition and Innovation: The Memories of the Americas,” this symposium proposes that indigenous memories not only preserve the past but also generate the future. Indigenous communities, far from being conceived solely as guardians of tradition, reveal themselves as active creators of new forms of life, thought, and aesthetic expression. Their capacity to transform tradition into innovation constitutes one of the keys to understanding the multiple temporalities that shape the Americas.
\nThis space seeks to bring together research that illuminates these dynamics and helps us understand how indigenous memories\u2014living, mobile, and creative\u2014contribute to imagining other horizons for the continent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"template":"","simposio_area":[70],"class_list":["post-11086","simposio","type-simposio","status-publish","hentry","simposio_area-pueblos-originarios-e-indigenismo"],"yoast_head":"\n