In Feb. 2014, Jorge Cuéllar served as an electoral observer in the Salvadoran presidential elections. Pictured with world-renowned indigenous rights activist Rigoberta Menchu. On September 22-23, SalvaCultura news editor and doctoral student Jorge Cuéllar participated as part of a Yale delegation of indigenous students to the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples hosted at United Nations in Manhattan. As part of this excursion, Cuéllar served the role as observer of the deliberations and proceedings, and was witness to energetic and moving presentations by important political and indigenous leaders such as Rigoberta Menchu, Evo Morales, Oren Lyons, Enrique Peña-Nieto, Sauli Niinistö, among others.
State leaders addressing the general assembly expressed their renewed commitment by their respective national governments to the needs of indigenous communities, indigenous leaders expressed the importance of education in preparing communities for future challenges, as well as a respect for tradition, cultural memory, and political autonomy. These talks showcased a variety of perspectives that, in sum, suggested that another indigenous future is possible.
The purpose of this inaugural World Conference was to provide a meeting ground for indigenous communities and state representatives throughout the world to pursue and realize the objectives and rights outlined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples originally adopted in 2007.
The World Conference was paired with an off-site event organized by a group of faculty and students from NYU, Columbia, and Yale to discuss “Genocide Denial in North American Popular Culture.” Introduced by news editor and journalist Aura Bogado of Colorlines, the panel discussion included presentations from activist Ellen Gabriel and scholars Audra Simpson, Andrew Needham, and Ned Blackhawk. The brief talks touched upon the urgent issue of the disappeared indigenous women in Canada and the legal justifications for this femicide, dependency on the energy production in native territory, cultural amnesia as a depoliticizing trend in contemporary indigenous life, as well as the oft-neglected American Indian holocaust of North America.
Tasked with running the open mic and Q&A session at the close of the event, Cuéllar delivered some brief comments connecting the abovementioned issues to similar phenomena taking place in Mexico and Central America. Following some of the comments made earlier by Rigoberta Menchú, Cuéllar introduced migration as a problematic to genocide studies, shared stories about the increasing political assassinations of indigenous leaders in Honduras and El Salvador as a direct attack on the self-determination of native communities, as well as reasserting the importance of the never-ending femicide against Mayan women in Guatemala.
The purpose of this inaugural World Conference was to provide a meeting ground for indigenous communities and state representatives throughout the world to pursue and realize the objectives and rights outlined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples originally adopted in 2007.
The World Conference was paired with an off-site event organized by a group of faculty and students from NYU, Columbia, and Yale to discuss “Genocide Denial in North American Popular Culture.” Introduced by news editor and journalist Aura Bogado of Colorlines, the panel discussion included presentations from activist Ellen Gabriel and scholars Audra Simpson, Andrew Needham, and Ned Blackhawk. The brief talks touched upon the urgent issue of the disappeared indigenous women in Canada and the legal justifications for this femicide, dependency on the energy production in native territory, cultural amnesia as a depoliticizing trend in contemporary indigenous life, as well as the oft-neglected American Indian holocaust of North America.
Tasked with running the open mic and Q&A session at the close of the event, Cuéllar delivered some brief comments connecting the abovementioned issues to similar phenomena taking place in Mexico and Central America. Following some of the comments made earlier by Rigoberta Menchú, Cuéllar introduced migration as a problematic to genocide studies, shared stories about the increasing political assassinations of indigenous leaders in Honduras and El Salvador as a direct attack on the self-determination of native communities, as well as reasserting the importance of the never-ending femicide against Mayan women in Guatemala.
What are the growing communities of Mixtec, Maya, and Zapotec peoples doing to our conceptions of “indigenous North America?” Migration of indigenous peoples from the south is changing the makeup of areas in North America, for example as the P’urhépechas have done to the Coachella Valley or as the Piscataway Indian Nation has done through the opening of their lands as sanctuary for indigenous migrants from places like El Salvador, Guatemala, Paraguay, Colombia, Mexico, Peru.
Articulating the linked histories and struggles of the indigenous Americas, Cuéllar’s comments opened the floor to a more expansive and generative discussion of the struggles of contemporary indigenous life. SC
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