Otros, Saberes ― Collaborative Research on Indigenous and Afro-descendent Cultural Policies

The seven essays presented mainly in Spanish and Portuguese are based on six projects of the Otros Saberes Initiative, a project of the Latin American Studies Association aimed at promoting Afro-descendant and indigenous collaborative research between civil society and academics and focused on research topics of interest to both and those that civil society organizations feel are important, as well as aiming to increase the presence of civil society-based intellectuals in the association. In the projects, researchers from the US and Latin America examined the resources of the Frente Indigena de Organizaciones Binacionales for developing gender and generational equity in its leadership; the challenge of making Afro-descendant presence in Colombia visible and influential in public policy; the use of oral history to document the multiple dimensions of Afro-Puerto Rican identity and challenge the Puerto Rican myth of racial democracy; the generation of knowledge and systems of organizing knowledge that stem from what people know, learn, and teach in daily life; mapping, claiming, and facilitating the restoration of the territory of the Miskitu Indian community of Tuara in the Atlantic coastal region of Nicaragua; and training young Wajapi researchers to document the diversity of local histories and knowledges, develop Wajapi models of knowledge production, and compare these to Western epistemologies found in various disciplines. An additional essay (in English) details methodological issues in the projects. Annotation c2014 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)