Rethinking Who We Are Through A Decolonizing Lense

[Music]

i i’m so grateful to be here with you

tonight

i cannot start this talk by first

acknowledging that we are in

unsurrendered occupied territory of my

cousins the lenape hawking people

you might be wondering who are the

quechua who are the aymara who am i

you see me right here

were in my polyera with so much pride

and speaking my indigenous language

quechua

but it hasn’t always been like that

growing up in peru

i was told

that i was mestiza

i didn’t see myself as indigenous

for people who are not familiar with

this term mestiza means to be of mixed

heritage

specifically between spaniard colonizers

and indigenous people

and it is a term that comes all the way

from the caste system

imposed during colonization as a way to

uphold white supremacy

meaning it was seen as better than being

indigenous but not as good as being a

spaniard or european

it has been hundreds of years and

somehow this term is still being used

in society as a way to identify

ourselves

all i knew about my ancestry was that my

family like many others took great pride

in our great great grandfather who was a

spaniard

i also knew i had a great grandmother

who was black

we didn’t talk about that and of course

i had some inca ancestors but they’re

extinct so

i was just mestiza

the experiences i had what i heard

what i saw everything pointed out that i

was mestiza and i believed it

until i came to new york

the most diverse city in the world where

people didn’t see a mestiza in fact

i would often get confused as mexican

ecuadorian amazonian

native american

that rang on me

i started questioning who i was

and

i have this identity crisis

i think many of us have been there

and i needed to know who i really was

for myself

educating myself about mestizahe led me

to learn about blood quantum which is a

way to measure how indian you are

and was created as a mechanism for

cultural genocide

and the more i learned the more i

realized

that i was in fact a detribalized

indigenous women

colonialism took away our lands

our religion

our customs

there is a reason i didn’t know i was

indigenous there is a reason i didn’t

know my native language there is a

reason i didn’t know i was quechua and i

mara

my grandparents spoke our native

languages

later in life they had to learn spanish

but because of systematic racism and

discrimination they didn’t pass it on

only 200 years ago indigenous languages

were spoken in its majority in countries

like mexico

by now

indigenous languages are in danger all

around the globe

so i decided to learn my indigenous

language

i started to take in classes immerse

myself in my culture

travel to the andes

and started learning my history told by

my people

from this beautiful journey of discovery

i have learned that you can’t love

what you don’t know

i remember thinking at some point in my

life in changing my indigenous last name

kispe

because i was thought

that it was too indigenous

and people would look down on me

it wasn’t until a year ago that i found

out

that kispe is quechua and it means the

crystalline and brilliant waters from

our apples

or glaciers

i fell in love

the moment i started this journey of

learning my history

and listening to my heart

was the moment i started to love myself

i felt confident in my skin

i started appreciating my features

but most importantly

i knew who i was

i adopted the name quechua sisa

as a way to reclaim my identity

i also started sharing my journey on

social media and surprisingly people

felt connected with it

i came to realize

that we all have been listening to

a narrative about indigenous people told

by one side of history which inspired me

to create an instagram

series called native voices

where i started to having live

conversations with indigenous people

from different nations like mapuches

from the south

ketra from the andes

dine navajo from the north

in order to learn more about

us

what a better way to learn about

indigenous people than by us teaching

them

as an artist

and as a storyteller

reconnecting to my indigenous heritage

gave me a greater mission

i recognize that a reason i didn’t see

myself as indigenous for most of my life

was because i believed in the

stereotypes i saw on tv

in film in the media

having no image has a detrimental impact

having a negative image has a

detrimental impact and even having a

false positive images

then people have superiority complexes

film is such a powerful medium

representation is important

it is a way to teach and to educate

so i have made it a point in my art to

tell stories

that break stereotypes

stories that not only serve an honor

reality but also inspire us to do better

as such i’m currently producing the

second season of vive quechua a youtube

channel by quechua that teaches our

culture through our language

so every people has their own unique

story

it is important to understand that we

all have been affected by colonialism

no matter where you’re from

there is a history of colonization

and it carries lots of trauma

no matter

if you were colonized

or settler

our society is still in the process of

ridding itself of white supremacy and

patriarchy let’s remember in the u.s

segregation was legal until 1950s

women gained the right to vote

only 70 years ago and native americans

were in the right to vote in every state

until 1962.

the last residential indian school

didn’t close until 1997.

these are realities that our

grandparents

parents

and even we have lived through

and we are still living through the

consequences

of

colonialism that mindset has been

normalized

it has not only affect how we perceive

ourselves

but also how we interact with each other

it affected me

growing up i believed

that i was less

because of

because i was taught

that my features

my skin color my last name my

indigeneity were not beautiful

this beauty standard

left no room to appreciate the beauty of

diversity

so as a teenager i consider

having a nose job

i avoided the sun

i tried to distance myself from my

indigeneity

and i thought

that no matter what i would do

i would never be enough

but

peeling away

the layers of my colony’s mind

i

came to

realize how valuable indigenous ways of

viewing the world are

for example in quechua language

there is only one pronoun for women and

men

bye

this tells us so much about the mindset

of gender roles

what does it mean to be a woman or a man

both have an important

role in our communities

women were also warriors and they would

also work in the field just like men

and pai

is not only the pronoun of people

but also other animals

we don’t have an exploded relationship

with animals or extracted relationship

with the earth

our diet is mostly vegetarian respecting

the cycles of life

indigenous people make up less than five

percent of the total human population

and support about 80 percent of the

global

biodiversity

when learning quechua i found out that

there is no word for nature

in fact we consider ourselves nature

and earth is our mother

pachamama

whom we treat with love and respect

another aspect that struck me the most

it’s that there is no word for friends

or friendship

in ketchup we call each other brother

and sister because we believe we are a

family

which gives us a sense of reciprocity

just

think

how much those mindsets

could change our life

there certainly changed mine

after learning this i remember seeing a

homeless person in the subway

and

just thinking

how did we fail

this person

as a society

for him to end up there

there is a history

there is a cause

there is a system behind that

just like mass incarceration mass

immigration

missing and murder indigenous women

addictions poverty hunger

club may change broken treaties

detention center

slave labor

and the list

continues

colonization carries trauma and affects

all of us

meaning there is no group of people in a

position to save others because we all

have been affected by it

it is important to look straight in the

eyes

of this painful

uncomfortable

but important history

we need to have the courage

to learn and be accountable

our global society has been influenced

by these colonized minds for centuries

knowing and accepting where and who you

are

can prepare us to move forward on a path

of collective healing the reality we

live in

is the result of how we perceive

ourselves

collectively and how we interact with

each other

so i’m here to remind you all

that our history

your story

didn’t begin with colonization

indigenous is a global term

and we all

have indigenous

roots to somewhere

i challenge you to rethink who you are

through a decolonizing lens

breaking the stereotypes that society

places upon who we are

are important in order to shape

our future and enrich our lives

i can assure you

that the greatest gift you can give to

yourself

is knowing where you come from

at the end we are all interconnected

we are brothers and sisters

one

with

thank you