Gatherings at the Crossroads:
Abya Yala & Activism

This event is organized by Five Colleges, Inc. and Five College NAIS faculty and is made possible with Mellon Foundation funds.
It is free and open to the public. The Symposium is an in-person event only.

Located in the Kwinitekw Valley, the Five College Consortium is composed of Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke
and Smith Colleges and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Abya Yala refers to the continent of the Americas in the language of Kuna/Guna peoples. It can be translated as “land in its full maturity” or “land of vital blood.” The concept emerged toward the end of the 1970s in the Kuna territory of Dulenega, Panama, when Kuna activists won a lawsuit to stop the construction of a shopping mall: they employed the term Abya Yala to refer to the American continent in its totality. As Kiche' Maya scholar Emil' Keme has relayed, when influential Iymara leader Takir Mamani met with Kuna authorities, they told him,“Everyone uses the name of America for our continent, but we hold the true name Abya Yala,” a message they asked him to share. Along with others, Mamani “spread the message in various gatherings and international forums, asking Indigenous representatives and organizations that instead of using the names of ‘America’ or ‘Latin America’ they use Abiayala to refer to the continent in their official declarations.” 

Since the 1980s, Indigenous movements increasingly refer to the Americas as Abya Yala, enacting an Indigenous locus of cultural and political expression to decolonize epistemologies. Emil’ Keme has recently proposed “Abiayala as a transhemispheric Indigenous bridge” which can foster dialogues that “could potentially lead us to develop” and renew “political alliances.” In this symposium, we are gathering together activists/writers/scholars from Indigenous homelands in the Northeast with those from across Abya Yala to foster dialogue and potentially, create alliances. Abya Yala represents the many crossroads that connect the Indigenous peoples of the continent, including the Connecticut River Valley.

^{Emil’ keme: “Arech kak’asi’k le Abiayala rajawaxik ne kakam le Americas. Utzukuxik jun ajwaralikil winaq chi kab’e chi naj / Para que Abiayala viva, las Américas deben morir. Hacia una Indigeneidad transhemisférica / For Abiayala to Live, The Americas Must Die. Toward a Trans-Hemispheric Indigeneity.” Native American and Indigenous Studies Journal 5:1 (2018)}

 

5pm              Cookout at Book and Plow Farm (see address below)

                                Pampa mesa (potluck) with Corn Roast and Cheese Bar, followed by a Reading in the new Pavilion

 

6pm               Reading by Indigenous Writers

                                Welcome and introductions by Brandon Castle, Amherst College Project Coordinator,
                                Mapping Native Intellectual Networks of the Northeast

 

                         Writers include: 

                                       - Carlos Flores Quispe, Quechua, PhD student at University of Massachusetts, Amherst

                                       - Madeleine Hutchins, Mohegan storyteller and scholar

                                       - Irma Álvarez Ccoscco, Quechua poet and language activist

                                       - Heid Erdrich, Turtle Mountain Ojibwe poet, artist, curator

 

 

 

9am           Welcome and Opening Remarks

                                  - Kathleen Brown-Perez, Brothertown Indian Nation, Chair of Five College NAIS Certificate Program and faculty in                                              Commonwealth Honors College, University of Massachusetts Amherst

 

                                 - Troy Phillips, Chairperson and commissioner of the Massachusetts  Commission on Indian Affairs (MCIA) and
                                   Sub-Chief and Council member of the Hassanamisco Indian Tribe

     
                                - Michael Elliott, President of Amherst College

 

 

9:30am       Morning Panel

                                  - Linda Coombs, Author and Historian, Wampanoag Tribe of Aquinnah

 

                                  - Emil' Keme, K’iche’ Maya scholar and activist, Professor of English, Emory University

 

11am            Break 

 

11:15am      Conversation with Graduate Students:
                     Knots That Unite Us: Transnational Indigeneity, Materiality, and the
                     Abya Yala Confluences

                                   - Chimaway Lopez, Chumash, PhD Student in Native American Studies, University of California, Davis

 

                                   - Kohar Avakian, Nipmuc, PhD student in American Studies, Yale University

 

                                   - Carlos Flores Quispe, Quechua, PhD student at University of Massachusetts, Amherst

 

                                   - Facilitator: Daniela Narváez Burbano, Lecturer in Spanish at Amherst College

 

12:15pm       Lunch for all Symposium participants

 

1:30pm         Afternoon Panel

                                   - Kahente Horn-Miller, Kahnawake Mohawk, Associate Vice President, Indigenous Teaching, Learning and Research                                          and Associate Professor of Indigenous Studies, Carleton University

 

                                  - Rosa Chávez, Kiche’/Kaqchikel Maya poet, artist and activist

 

                                   - Natali Segovia, Quechua, Legal Director of Water Protector Legal Collective            

      

                                   - Facilitator: Anika Lopes, President of Ancestral Bridges

 

4:00pm         Boundless Exhibit Tour by Mead Art Museum Guest Curator Heid Erdrich, 
                        Turtle Mountain Ojbwe, and Reception at the Mead Museum

 

Symposium Venue on Thursday, Oct. 12:

Book and Plow Farm

425 South East Street

Amherst, MA 01002

Note: The path to the farm from East Street is an uneven rocky dirt road.

 

Symposium Venue on Friday, Oct. 13: 

Amherst College Powerhouse

10 East Drive Amherst, MA 01002

Event Parking Lots: 

 

Parking Lots

Only the following parking lots have been approved for participation in the NAIS Symposium:

Amherst College Dickinson Parking Lot

90 Dickinson Street

(corner of College St. and Dickinson St.)

Amherst, MA 01002

 

Overflow Parking Lot:

Alumni House Parking Lot

75 Churchill Street

Amherst, MA 01002

Kohar Avakian  is a Native, Black, and Armenian artist, visual storyteller, and a graduate Student at Yale University from Worcester, Massachusetts, the ancestral land of her tribe, the Nipmuc Nation, and home to one of the oldest Armenian communities in the U.S. She holds a B.A. in History, modified with Native American Studies, from Dartmouth College and is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in American Studies at Yale. As a descendant of genocide survivors still awaiting reparations, she has experienced the unparalleled power of learning about other peoples’ histories through their own eyes. Adding vibrancy and color to her life as a graduate student, photography, oral history interviews, and multi-media art (digital collage, drawing, ceramics) have provided her an outlet to explore the intersection of race, reparations, memory, and kinship in the 21st century.

 

Kathleen A. Brown-Pérez is a faculty member in Commonwealth Honors College and University of Massachusetts Amherst, and chair of the  Five College NAIS Certificate Program with an appointment in the anthropology department. In the anthropology department, she teaches the senior honors thesis seminar "Conquest by Law: The Use of Law to Subjugate and Marginalize in the U.S." In Commonwealth Honors College, she teaches "Ideas that Change the World" and "Criminal Law and Justice." Brown-Perez has a law degree and MBA from the University of Iowa and is licensed to practice law in Arizona and Massachusetts. Previously a corporate attorney in Boston, she now limits her legal practice to consulting with law firms that are suing the federal government on behalf of tribes. A member of the Brothertown Indian Nation (Wisconsin), her research and publications focus on issues of federal Indian policy and law, including sovereignty, identity, and federal acknowledgement.

 

Rosa Chávez is a Guatemalan poet, artist, & activist of Mayan K’iche Kaqchiquel origin who has studied social sciences, cultural management and cinema and audiovisual performances. Rosa works enthusiastically and passionately with women and movements in Guatemala as the program coordinator with JASS. She has more than 15 years of experience working in community art processes and organizations for the Mayan movement. Rosa enjoys co-creating with other artists, feeling nature, drinking tea, enjoying music, and dancing a lot. Being aware of the history of her people and healing the history of her body, fills rosa with the energy necessary to work and fight with passion and in collective, for a bountiful life with other women, communities, and peoples.

 

Linda Coombs (Aquinnah Wampanoag) is an author and historian from the Wampanoag Tribe of Aquinnah, and lives in the Wampanoag community of Mashpee on Cape Cod, MA. Coombs began her museum career in an internship at the Boston Children’s Museum, and later working there in the Native American Program.  She and her colleague Paulla Dove Jennings (Narragansett) wrote children’s books for a museum series highlighting aspects of southern New England tribal cultures. Coombs also worked for 30 years in the Wampanoag Indigenous Program (WIP) of Plimoth Plantation, including 15 years as WIP’s Associate Director; and 9 years at the Aquinnah Cultural Center.  Presently she does independent museum consulting and cultural presentations.

 

Michael A. Elliott ’92 is the 20th president of Amherst College. A distinguished scholar of American literature and culture of the 19th and early 20th centuries, he has published widely on the history of fiction in the United States, Native American literature, and practices of public history. He holds a B.A. from Amherst College and an M.A. and Ph.D. in English and comparative literature from Columbia University.

Prior to being appointed to the presidency of Amherst in 2022, Elliott was a faculty member and administrator at Emory University for 24 years. From 2016 to 2022 he served as interim dean and then dean of Emory College of Arts and Sciences, the university’s core undergraduate division and home of the liberal arts. In this role, Elliott spearheaded critical work to establish race and inequality as a signature research and teaching strength of Emory and made significant advances in enhancing faculty diversity. He also increased support for undergraduate research and garnered substantial philanthropic support for need-based financial aid.

 

Heid E. Erdrich is a writer from North Dakota who curates art exhibits, teaches, researches, and collaborates with other artists. She’s Ojibwe, enrolled at Turtle Mountain. Her most recent book of poems is Little Big Bully. Heid E. Erdrich ​is the author of numerous collections, including Little Big Bully (Penguin, 2020); Curator of Ephemera at the New Museum for Archaic Media (Michigan State University Press, 2017) and four other collections. She edit​ed​ New Poets of Native Nations (Graywolf Press, 2018). ​Heid has received two Minnesota Book Awards, as well as fellowships and awards from the ​Library of Congress, ​National Poetry Series, Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, Loft Literary Center, First People’s Fund, and others. 

Heid has taught ​writing for decades​, both as a professor and in community mentorships​. She has visited dozens of colleges and universities, libraries, and tribal and cultural institutions as a guest speaker and teacher.​ Most recently, Heid served as the 2022 Elliston Writer-in-Residence for University of Cincinnati, and ​she​ taught a term in Native American and Indigenous Studies at Dartmouth College. ​Her keen interest in visual poetics and ekphrasis arises from her interdisciplinary art and curatorial work. ​Heid has produced short films and installations, and curated dozens of exhibitions of Native American art. Heid is currently a guest curator for Amherst College’s Mead Museum working on Boundless, an exhibit of art and text, for 2023-2024.  

 

Kahente Horn-Miller (Kahente means “she walks ahead”) (Kanien:keha’ka/Mohawk) received her doctorate in 2009. She is a mother to four daughters and Aksotha (grandmother). Currently she is an Associate Professor in the School of Indigenous and is the inaugural Assistant Vice-President, Indigenous Initiatives.

Dr. Horn-Miller research and teaching is centered in the development of Haudenosaunee-specific research and pedagogical practices. Her research interests include Indigenous methodologies, Indigenous women, identity politics, colonization, Indigenous governance, and consensus-based decision making. Her governance work and community-based research involves interpreting Haudenosaunee culture and bringing new life to old traditions. Her performance piece We are Her and She is Us, is a modern telling of the Haudenosaunee story of creation that centres on Sky Woman and her fall to earth.

Dr. Horn-Miller co-Chaired the Carleton University Strategic Indigenous Initiatives Committee which resulted in Kinàmàgawin, Carleton’s revitalized Indigenous strategy. In 2018 she initiated the Indigenous Collaborative Learning Bundles project which is successfully increasing Indigenous content in classrooms across disciplines.

 

 

Emil’ Keme, a.k.a. Emilio del Valle Escalante, is an Indigenous K’iche’ Maya scholar and activist and a professor in the Department of English at Emory University. He is a member of the Maya anti-colonial, binational collective Ix’balamquej Junajpu Wunaq’. 

While at Radcliffe, Keme is working on a monograph, tentatively titled “Abiayala, a Trans-hemispheric Indigenous Manifesto,” in which he examines Indigenous struggles for self-determination in various parts of Abiayala (the Indigenous ancestral name of the Americas). Through comparative analyses, his work aims to highlight the potentialities of building trans-hemispheric Indigenous alliances by critically exploring the field of Indigenous studies, settler colonial borders, Indigenous forced migration, Indigenous approaches to environmental justice, and Indigenous women and LGBTQ2s+ rights. 

Keme is the author of Le Maya Q’atzij/Our Maya Word: Poetics of Resistance in Guatemala (University of Minnesota Press, 2021), which won Cuba’s prestigious Premio Literario Casa de las Américas in 2020, and Maya Nationalisms and Postcolonial Challenges in Guatemala: Coloniality, Modernity, and Identity Politics (University of New Mexico Press, 2009). He has also published edited volumes and numerous articles on Indigenous rights. Keme volunteers as a cultural advisor for the International Mayan League, in Washington, DC, an Indigenous women–led organization that works for the rights of Indigenous migrants from South America in the United States. He earned an MA and PhD from the University of Pittsburgh.

 

 

Anika Lopes is President of Ancestral Bridges. As an artist and sculptor who graduated from the New School University, she found herself interning with Horace Weeks, one of the first Black men to own a hat factory, Peter & Irving, in the Garment District of New York City. Lopes and an ex-partner eventually took over the factory and revamped it, and she found overnight attention when the R&B artist Usher commissioned a hat from her in 2005 and wore it on a popular MTV show.

When she returned to the Kwinitekw Valley in 2019, Lopes began directing that passion for connecting people to a different purpose: to uncover and bring to light the Black and Indigenous history of generations of Amherst residents, including some who played a direct role in the events that were eventually commemorated as Juneteenth. Through efforts to “daylight” some of that long-neglected history — through historical events, museum exhibits, her role as President of a foundation she called Ancestral Bridges — Lopes is connecting past with present and providing not just a clearer sense of history, but new opportunities for young BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) individuals today.

Lopes founded Ancestral Bridges in June 2022 to bring together stakeholders to elevate economic and cultural opportunities and build a more equitable future for regional BIPOC individuals. According to its mission statement, Ancestral Bridges receives grants of money and land and leverages these to celebrate BIPOC arts and culture, enable first-time home-ownership opportunities, and raise the potential of BIPOC and disadvantaged youth. Some of the activities it supports include telling the stories of local ancestors through interactive history walks, art exhibits, and music events; educating about wealth generation and developing internships, programs, and workshops for BIPOC youth and families; and enabling local BIPOC wealth generation by receiving gifts, grants, and other resources to benefit BIPOC futures.

 

 

Chimaway Lopez is a PhD Student in Native American Studies at the University of California, Davis. Receiving his degree in Environmental Studies and American studies from Amherst College, Chimaway Lopez has looked to explore the growing intersection of Indigenous studies and Environmental studies. Grounding his research within his lived experience in Chumash maritime culture, Chimaway believes that engaging with marine policy and science through Indigenous methodologies will be crucial to navigating the ecological and ontological disaster of the Anthropocene.

 

 

Troy Philips serves as Chairperson of the Massachusetts Commission on Indian Affairs.  As a commissioner, Troy’s fundamental role is to assist Native American individuals, tribes and organizations in their relationship with the state and local government agencies as well as to advise the Commonwealth in matters pertaining to Native Americans. Troy serves on the Hassanamisco Elders Council, the Tribal Council and is a member of the Nipmuc Medicine Society.  When not working on tribal affairs, Troy is employed by an environmental company, US Ecology, as a field chemist.  In his free time, Troy enjoys boating, fishing, hiking, attending powwow and spending time with his family.Troy resides in Seekonk, MA with his wife, Lisa.  He is the father of 4 children (3 sons, 1 daughter) and is the proud grandfather of Nipmuc granddaughter, Maliah May. His area of responsibility as a sub-chief is intra-tribal relations and mediation.

 

 

Daniela Narváez Burbano is a Lecturer in Spanish at Amherst College. She is originally from Quito, Ecuador. She graduated with a B.A. in Applied Linguistics for Language Teaching from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador (PUCE). Daniela is a member of the interdisciplinary linguistic research project Oralidad Modernidad which since 2009 aims to study indigenous languages in Ecuador. Daniela entered the Ph.D. program at UMass Amherst in the fall of 2017. She is interested in sociolinguistics and Linguistic anthropology, emphasizing language contact, identity, and language ideologies. Her current research focuses on raciolinguistics and mock languages of Andean Ecuadorian Spanish and Kichwa. She has also worked with minority groups from Cañar living in New Jersey and Northampton, and researched their linguistic diaspora.

 

 

Carlos Flores Quispe is a second year Ph.D. student in Hispanic Linguistics at UMass Amherst. He is a native speaker of Quechua from Bolivia. He comes from an expert weaving family in the village of Candelaria, Chuquisaca, Bolivia. He has a bachelor’s degree in languages, focusing on Quechua, Spanish and English from the San Francisco Xavier University of Chuquisaca, with an undergraduate study in Sociology from the University of Hradec Králové in the Czech Republic, where he also taught Quechua. He is interested in contributing to the revitalization of the Quechua language through social media@carloskires, weavings, pedagogical teaching materials and designing experiential learning for children and adults. One of his publications is Bolivian Quechua Verbal Art collection is archived in The Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America (AILLA) and The Importance of Weaving From Generation to Generation in the ReVista Harvard Review of Latin America.

 

 

Natali Segovia (Quechua) is an international human rights attorney, who currently serves as Executive Director of the Water Protector Legal Collective, an Indigenous-led legal organization that grew out of the #NoDAPL resistance at Standing Rock and today, continues to provide legal support and advocacy for Indigenous Peoples, the Earth, and climate justice movements. Natali’s legal work focuses on the protection of the Earth and defense of those facing repression for their resistance work and activism. Over the past 15 years, her international work has focused on addressing human rights violations as a result of extractive industry and mass development projects in rural, “unseen” areas in countries including Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil. Natali holds a law degree from Arizona State University and dual degrees in Political Science and Latin American Studies from Columbia University.
 

Participation in any of the events (opening reception, Symposium, and Mead Art Museum tour/closing reception) require registration

using the form below. Registration is free and open to all.

 

_{Header Artwork: La Autonomía es la Vida, la Sumisión es la Muerte, produced by Convergencia Grafica MALLA with the Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative. Amherst College Library Archives & Special Collections, Native American Literature Collection}