In this dissertation, I investigate cross-cultural perspectives of Indigeneity through Danza and powwow communities in the Southwestern United States. Exploring sonic and corporeal intersections between identity, place, and decolonizing strategies, I demonstrate how Indigenous peoples dismantle settler colonial narratives and negotiate their sovereignty. Founded in present-day México, Danza is a multi-generational, music, dance, and spiritual group practice that draws from Mesoamerican intertribal rites of passage ceremonies and Conchero traditions. In the context of Danza in this region, talking circles were my primary entry into research–a decolonizing strategy for community building and revisiting contentious topics between powwow participants, dancers, and community. Talking circles provided spaces for conflict resolution in terms of detribalization, feminist interventions, and questions of Indigenous belonging. By centering critical relationality narratives for danzantes and Two-Spirit women through methods of autoethnography, dancing, listening to local communities, and virtual connections, I examine: 1) How do danzantes practice and reflect communal and individual praxes of Indigeneity in powwow spaces? 2) How has Danza in powwow hubs changed intertribal relations in the Southwestern United States, including gendered notions of Indigeneity and decolonial praxis? 3) How can hybrid autoethnography inspire decolonizing, feminist perspectives in future Danza and powwow spaces and the academy?Unpacking the variations and tensions concerning what it means to be Indigenous—and which groups get to claim it—reflects understanding the gendered sociopolitical histories among Danza and powwow participants from differing Nations. My decolonizing, feminist approach joins an ongoing dialogue documenting Danza history, politics, and its emergence as a decolonizing movement. Drawing from BIPOC feminist praxes of refusal and relationship-building, I expand discourse on Indigeneity and explore how Indigenous worldviews are relational and reciprocal avenues for self-determination and to combat dominant colonial structures like xenophobia and homophobia. My findings on fostering decolonial interpersonal relationships go beyond Southwestern powwows to extend to Native hubs and spaces online—a global powwow network —and further demonstrate why critical feminist and Two-Spirit perspectives are crucial in ethnographic music research.

This short video honors the history of our Live-Oak and Sycamore Trees by sharing our fight to save the trees but then losing them to create space for the Student Success Center (SSC) building. The wood from the Live-Oak is in the process of revitalization through its use in the creation of a mural/wall installation inside the SSC. We center our plant, animal, and elemental relations with this location and the accompanying video.

#IndigenizeUCR Campus Walking Tour - Náqma Kélawatem

Video by Dr. Jessica Gutierrez Masini (Premiered on December 6th, 2023)

See the Native American Student Programs (NASP) Office at 229 Costo Hall at the University of California, Riverside, for a physical brochure and more information.

Our piece, modeled after a talking circle, is a materialized envisioning of decolonizing writing and publishing. By: Jessica Margarita Gutierrez Masini (Detribalized accomplice)1, William Madrigal (Cahuilla, Luiseño), Josh Gonzales (Xictlaka-Mexika), Cuauhtémoc Peranda (Mescalero-Apache/Mexica-Chichimeca), and Joshua Thunder Little (Oglala Lakota).

Since the mid-1970s, the indigenous ritual dance known as Danza has had a profound impact on the self-identification and concept of space in Xicana communities, but how is this practice received in the powwow space? My project broadly explores how student-organized powwows at UC Davis, UC Riverside, and UC San Diego (UCSD), are decolonizing spaces for teaching and learning about Native American identities. Drawing on Beverly Diamond’s alliance studies approach (2007), which illuminates the importance of social relationships across space and time, as well as my engagement in these powwows, I trace real and imagined connections between Danza and powwow cultures. Today, powwows are intertribal social events organized by committees and coordinated with their local native communities. Powwows not only have restorative abilities to create community for those who perform, attend, and coordinate them, but they are only a small glimpse of the broader socio-political networks that take place throughout the powwow circuit. By inviting and opening the powwow space to indigeneity across borders, the University of California not only accurately reflects its own native student body who put on the event, but speak to the growing understanding of "Native American" both north and south of the United States border. Ultimately, I argue an alliance studies approach to historical ethnography and community-based methodologies in music research are crucial, especially in the case of indigenous communities, who are committed to the survival and production of cultural knowledge embedded in music and dance practices.

This issue focuses on the theme of decolonizing ethnomusicology; and, as the contributors to this issue advocate, decolonizing ethnomusicology is as pressing a concern and project as it has ever been. Thus, I hope that you will appreciate the various critiques and perspectives presented here, consider them with and against your own work and experiences, and reflect on what it means to bring decolonizing knowledges and praxes into the spaces we negotiate on a daily basis.