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  • The Voice of Ckuri: The Revitalization of the Kunza Language in the Salta Puna Region, Argentina

    We agreed to meet at a linguistics conference in the city of Salta. Our common interests were joining the sessions on glottopolitics and sociolinguistics and scant opportunities to discuss current research on the country’s indigenous languages. We wondered whether the topic had made it on the research and academic linguistic event’s agenda, after the United…

  • School in Canada celebrating Orange Shirt Day

    #OrangeShirtDay: Boarding School Survivors Speak Out, Seek Truth and Healing

    September 30th or #OrangeShirtDay has become in Canada, and slowly in the US, a day of resistance and resilience for the intergenerational survivors of indigenous boarding schools—a cruel colonial practice of family separations and children forced “assimilation” into white Christian capitalist society that began in the 1860s and lasted for more than a century. It…

  • Greta Thunberg and Guardians of the Forest. Photo: @GuardianesBos

    Urgent Climate Action Requires Defending the Defenders: Indigenous Peoples at Risk

    Photo: Greta Thunberg and Guardians of the Forest, @GuardianesBos. As millions of children, youth, and their parents or mentors bravely take the streets around the world (in 150 countries!) this Friday, September 20, to strike for the climate; we at Awasqa have been thinking how it’s usually those who are most at risk who often…

  • Cineastas indígenas. Photo credit: Daupará

    Daupará: 10th Anniversary of an Indigenous Film Festival in Colombia

    For 10 years now, the nonprofit Daupará in Colombia that has led the diffusion of indigenous video and cinema as well as organized yearly festivals with the goal of “conserving, strengthening and disseminating the cultural heritage of indigenous peoples, with emphasis on audiovisual production and sovereignty, contribute to the fabric of their own communication, reaffirming…

  • As long grass grows Dina Gilio-Whitaker

    Book Review: As long as grass grows: The Indigenous fight for environmental justice, from colonization to Standing Rock

    SOURCE: Reproduced with permission of Journal of Political Ecology. Book Review: Gilio-Whitaker, Dina. (2019). As long as grass grows: the Indigenous fight for environmental justice, from colonization to Standing Rock. Boston: Beacon Press. Dina Gilio-Whitaker (Colville Confederated Tribes) is the policy director and a senior research associate at the Center for World Indigenous Studies and…

    Smallest Residents of Watershed Key Indicators of Overall Watershed Health

    CAPTION: Mya Fisher, a Hoh tribal member in the Quileute Tribe’s Youth Opportunity Program, scans a tub for macroinvertebrates sampled from Bear Creek. Photo: D. Preston. SOURCE: Northwest Treaty Tribes. The 20 treaty Indian tribes in western Washington are leaders in efforts to protect and restore natural resources in the region. At the heart of…

  • Weaving Memories: Cultural identity and sustainable development in the Bolivian highlands of La Paz and Oruro

    FROM THE EDITORS: Behind the magic of Andean weaving, there is science, a social commitment, cultural interaction, history, and community resilience. Based on historical documentation, scientists have found Andean weavings as old as 1400 BC that were woven at Acllahuasi (quechua for “House of the Chosen Ones”), Inca ceremonial centers where women were in charge…

    Mapuche Songwriter Shares Her Art as a Tool for Native Resilience

    Interview Carina Carriqueo, Mapuche singer from Argentina, by Awasqa, August 2019 Because there is something else which we do not consider and sometimes we forget, is that we are making history. Each one of us is making history, and behind us, on this path that we are marking, on this path, there are children, and…

  • Indigenous people literature / Translations of cultural experiences in writing

    SOURCE: Astrolábio Magazine nº 21 year II set. 2017, English translation: Awasqa Indigenous literature is marked by a narrative tradition with strong traces of orality, amplified by representation systems through graphics, which constitute another narrative, which differs from the strict concept of the printed word. Indigenous graphics are stories and information narratives with their language…