This symposium focuses on the conjunction among Indigenous, Black, Chicanx, queer, and feminist legal scholars, artists, and activists who are working to create more inclusive and just political frameworks across North, Central, and South America. In the Cuna language of Panama, Abya Yala means “land in full maturity” and has become a term of respect to refer to the Americas called for by the people living there. 

By analyzing movements across Abya Yala, participants will assess points of possibility, contradiction, and challenge, to build upon and contribute to these exciting collaborations. Weaving music, art, and culture together with attention to legal, institutional, and structural formations, the symposium delves into the issues that have been taken up by plurifeminisms over the past two decades, including indigenous sovereignty, democracy, plurinationalism, anti-extractivism, violence, sexuality, reproductive rights, and the relationship between music, art, curatorial practice, and activism. How do arts and legal practitioners work in concert to build consensus across difference and implement radical imaginaries of possibility.   

The two-day symposium will be anchored by an opening night reception featuring an evening music encuentro and three public panels on the UW Seattle campus. 

Spanish/English language interpretation will be available throughout the symposium.

May 24: wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ – Intellectual House 

2:00 – 4:00 pm | Panel 1: Feminismo Comunitario:Feminista Hip Hop/Futurismo Feminista 
This panel bridges recent developments in Chicanx and Andean grassroots feminist praxis and features feminista hip hop artists, law activists, museum directors, and curators remaking the art and politics of blackness and indigeneity in feminista music movements.  

5:00 – 8:00 pm | Reception and Music Encuentro 

May 25: Simpson Center for the Humanities 

10:00 am – 12:00 pm | Panel 2: Lessons Learned from Ecuador’s 2008 Constitution 
This panel brings together three leading figures in Ecuador’s 2008 constitutional reform process to reflect upon their experiences, as well as ways that indigenous, feminist, LGBTQIA, and other movements been able to use constitutional innovations in ongoing struggles for change and transformation.  

1:00 – 3:00 pm | Panel 3: Anticolonial Feminisms and Indigenous Land Defense 
This panel explores anticolonial feminisms, focusing specifically on the role of Indigenous womxn in defending the right to land and life against capitalism, patriarchy and settler colonialism.
 

Panel guests

Maylei Blackwell (UCLA, Two-Spirit scholar activist of Cherokee and Thai heritage)

Cristina Burneo (Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Ecuador)

Gabriela Cano aka Black Mama (Hip hop artist, Chachi, Ecuador)

Caye Cayejera (Hip hop artist, Ecuador)

Cristina Cucuri (Coordinator, Network of Kichwa Women's Organizations of Chimborazo, Ecuador)

Mónica Chuji Gualinga (Deputy Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, Indigenous Peoples Rights International, Ecuador)

Amy Lind (Director, Taft Research Center, University of Cincinnati)

Betty Ruth Lozano Lerma (University Baustisa, Colombia)

Dian Million (University of Washington, Tanana Athabascan)

Kalilah Rampanen (Nuu-chah-nulth, Woodland Cree and Finnish)

Representative (Gremial de Pescadores Artesanales)

Gladys Tzul Tzul (Founder, Amaq’, K’iche’ Maya)

Elizabeth Vásquez (Proyecto Transgénero, Ecuador)

Photo Credit: Cristina Chiquín, @cristinachiquin