Survivance, a term coined by Gerald Vizenor, expresses sentiments of Indigenous self-determination, imagination, and existence. Western society and its ways of knowing the world often fail to acknowledge Indigenous experiences, identities, and histories. For this reason, this thesis aims to discuss the role of contemporary Native American art as an act of resistance to the dominant Western historic narrative in the Southwest.
In this thesis, I conduct a transnational analysis of the racialized hierarchies I observed during my research at La Clínica, a midwifery school and birth center on the U.S.-Mexico border. The discourse surrounding La Clínica couches the border space and the clinic in benevolent terms, but interviews with students of color reveal complicated racial and class politics that mediate the clinic and their experiences learning and working there. Students of color are thus motivated to form and create varying modalities of agency in order to define their experiences on their own terms, to express gratitude, and as a vehicle for survival in a predominantly white institution.
Obesity is a prevalent health risk among American Indian populations in the Southwest. The purpose of this research is to identify educational and culturally appropriate methods to lowering the rate of obesity among Native populations. Nutrition education is one systematic approach to educating individuals about healthy eating habits. This study evaluates preliminary data gathered from members of the Acjachemen tribe regarding their current approaches to well-being. Through survey instrumentation, the results identify personal perceptions regarding nutrition education, wellness, and tribal involvement. The outcome of this study reveals a gap between nutrition vocabulary and health awareness. This finding demonstrates that using a tribal-centric framework to improve nutrition education can be beneficial for the Acjachemen community. These preliminary findings will be useful for creating a Native health cookbook geared towards Acjachemen tribal members.
Obesity is a prevalent health risk among American Indian populations in the Southwest. The purpose of this research is to identify educational and culturally appropriate methods to lowering the rate of obesity among Native populations. Nutrition education is one systematic approach to educating individuals about healthy eating habits. This study evaluates preliminary data gathered from members of the Acjachemen tribe regarding their current approaches to well-being. Through survey instrumentation, the results identify personal perceptions regarding nutrition education, wellness, and tribal involvement. The outcome of this study reveals a gap between nutrition vocabulary and health awareness. This finding demonstrates that using a tribal-centric framework to improve nutrition education can be beneficial for the Acjachemen community. These preliminary findings will be useful for creating a Native health cookbook geared towards Acjachemen tribal members.
Starting in the 1970s the United States began to demonstrate an interest in expanding their economic market far beyond their national borders. This process soon got the name of Globalization. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is the third agreement the United States signed into effect. This free trade agreement liberalize trade between Canada, the United States, and Mexico. Before and after the negotiations much debate existed as to the potential success and the set backs of this agreement. To this date debate exists, however more evidence is available as to the success of this economic policy. In this paper, I explore the negative effects that Mexico has endured as a result of NAFTA. I examine the economic, public health, and environmental impacts of this agreement. Furthermore, I dive into a series of labor strikes that took place in the later part of 2015 and earlier part of 2016 around the Lexmark Maquiladora. I examine the reality that laborers in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico experience on a daily basis. I examine this case study through a post-colonial lens. Looking at the “left-over” entanglement from Colonialism. My goal in researching this topic is to analyze the potential effects that developing countries like Mexico, might face upon integrating their economy into the Global Market. More specifically what can a developing country suffer upon entering a free trade agreement with an industrialized, imperialist country like the United States.
A long history of unregulated roundups and slaughter of the wild horses roaming the American Southwest inspired the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971. This strong piece of legislation guaranteed protection and proper management of the horse and burro herds on public lands. This thesis discusses the aftermath of the protection act, including the successes and controversies surrounding wild horse management today. Time spent training formerly wild horses during the Summer of 2016 informs this multifaceted discussion.
After the United States annexed Northern parts of Mexico in 1848, a novel legal code was imposed on a region that had a distinct property system. Mexican and Spanish land grants were not afforded the same protections under this imposed code of law, which led to extensive land dispossession. Communal lands were particularly vulnerable, and many lost access to critical resources when these lands were deeded to become private property. La Sierra, a historical commons that is part of the Sangre de Cristo Land Grant, although it shares this same fate, diverged from other cases of communal land loss in a unique and unprecedented way, when in 2002 the Colorado Supreme Court awarded back particular historical use rights to the heirs of the Sangre de Cristo Land Grant. The victory was significant and the result of decades of commitment and struggle by the heirs of the land grant. The decision did have its shortcomings, however, one being that use rights were awarded back to individual land owners, leaving the heirs of the land grants to reconfigure communal land governance with out the support of a legal infrastructure that underpinned the historic commons. Despite these legal flaws, this thesis examines how members of the land grant community are working to “re-perform” La Sierra, in ways that allow it to behave like a commons despite its legal classification. This examination rests on the assertion that a unique connection to landscape, land ethic, systems of communal governance, and ultimately conceptions of property are connected and need to be understood in a context in which property is not just an object, but a performance.
This Senior Thesis is centered around three spaces in the Southwest of the United States— the U.S. Mexico Border (in The Rio Grand Valley, Texas and San Diego, California), The Mission District (San Francisco, CA) and Chicano Park (Barrio Logan, CA). This Thesis in organized in three chapters— one for each place. These spaces are united by their significance to those who identify as Chicano— a Mexican-American identity with political roots. I recount my experiences in these spaces— what I saw, smelled, felt, heard— how bodies moved, connected, and engaged— what my presence meant/means. I then investigate the dynamics of each space— focusing particularly on the power, subversion, and resistance of art. In discussion, I draw from scholars’ work on performance, body and spacial politics as well as my own experience as a dancer and choreographer. I am interested in investigating space and bodies. I want to understand the meanings these entities have, take on, or are forcibly given. I argue that in the three spaces I focus on this Thesis, we witness what I call “a choreography of reclamation”. This is a process of reordering, challenging and shifting space and the entities within both physically and emotionally.
