Intro: Dr. Nēpia Mahuika’s September 26th workshop titled “Oral History and Indigenous Peoples: Rethinking Oral History, Methods, Politics and Theories” highlighted the intricate histories and traditions of indigenous communities that the academic field of oral history has begun to recognize. Dr., Mahuika is the author of soon to be published book Rethinking Oral History and Tradition from the Oxford University Press.
“How do you pronounce ‘Anahí’? It’s a question that I’ve been grappling with in my journey of decolonization and re-indigenization in oral history.
My name is Anahí: it’s an indigenous name. I come from Andean Quechua ancestral lands, regions known today as Ecuador. My agrarian culture is on my maternal and paternal side, with a deep connection to the natural world. This connection manifested through Pachamama. She is an ancestral deity whose oral stories we were surrounded by to explain the growing seasons and harvest patterns. My name comes from the legend of an Andean daughter of a chief. When a rival tribe or Spaniards (the stories differ depending on the source) came to their village and took her hostage, they tied her to a tree and burned her, revealing the ceibo tree in her ashes.
These are the stories I was nurtured in. These and others are legitimate histories for indigenous communities around the world, but the problem is that people don’t know how to listen to them and in turn, value them.
When I first came to the United States in 2002 with only a few English words in my vocabulary, I had no knowledge that the ‘h’ in English made a sound contrary to the silent ‘h’ in Spanish. I sat down in class on my first day of second grade, and the teacher, a white woman, proceeded to call attendance. I didn’t realize she got to my name until some of my classmates nudged me. What came out of her mouth was not my name. I tried to protest, shaking my head and saying my name in Spanish and looking around the room for help. But all my teacher said was “no sweetie, in English we pronounce the ‘h’” (a translation I later got from my classmates). I sat frozen, literally unable to say how wrong that was. I forced myself to speak English until the accent in my mouth was gone. I moved on from the shock, telling myself that I needed to assimilate.
As I got older, I began to realize how problematic my mindset was: I was colonized. How could I reconstruct my identity to decolonize myself?
I began defining decolonization as the process of deconstructing colonial thought and the dominant narratives that it imposed. In this process of discovering my own story, I began challenging my own identity and began the transition into embracing my indigenous name at the discomfort of others.
My passion for oral history stemmed from finding this voice for myself, and for others in my community. Our identities should be celebrated, not shunned. I wanted to decolonize myself to elevate these histories silenced by dominant discourses. Challenging colonial systems to me came in the form of storytelling.
Dr. Nēpia Mahuika, a Ngāti Porou, Fulbright scholar, and current convenor of History at the University of Waikato, New Zealand, made the distinction between “decolonizing” and “re-indigenizing”. I had been throwing the word “decolonize” around in the environmental justice oral history work that I do, that I never stopped to think how to take that further into “re-indigenizing”, the process of not only recognizing but valuing and reinstating the indigenous knowledge systems I know. Even through the mention of “colonize”, I was centering white supremacy and colonization, the oppressor rather than liberation.
Photo credit: Anahí Naranjo
Mural of person playing quena flute in an urban street in Otavalo, Ecuador.
In the words of Dr. Mahuika to remove the word “colonize, you have to fill it with something”. Through re-indigenization, I want to fill it with our stories.
To be visible in oral history, if we are from a marginalized community, we must reclaim the right to define ourselves by embracing the diverse ways in which we tell stories. Oral histories are an intricate part of the livelihoods of many communities, and we must recognize the contributions of indigenous communities in the oral history academic field that we are part of today.
The process of decolonizing and indigenizing is for indigenous and non-indigenous communities alike.
We must all question our methodologies and ask the question “whose voice is present in this space, whose isn’t, and why is that?”. We must ask ourselves, “whose native land am I on, and what stories were and are present here?”
I am Anahí, and today I embrace the stories of my ancestors and reclaim my identity in the field of oral history. Through decolonization and a push to re-indigenize the spaces around us, our thoughts, and identities, we are steps closer to a joined process of healing from histories that have silenced indigenous narratives for so long.
Anahí Naranjo (she/her) was born and raised in Quito, Ecuador and migrated to Ridgewood/Bushwick (Lenape Ancestral Lands) in 2002. She is part of the 2019 OHMA cohort, where her planned thesis will focus on the impacts of climate change on Andean agrarian identities, and how those narratives can serve as a form of environmental activism.
This post represents the opinion of the author, and not of OHMA.