'Shifting the landscape' in an Indigenous –intercultural– Bilingual school in Mexico

Abstract

My research focus is an indigenous –intercultural– bilingual school, located in the diverse and unequal context distinctive of Latin America and other former ‘colonial’ countries (Mignolo, 2011; Walsh, 2015), within the ‘Third world’ (Escobar, 2011), and in the ‘Global south’ (Boaventura De Sousa, 2010). A geographical region perceived somehow as distant, or in the margins... I looked at Tosepan Kalnemachtoliyan (‘the school of all’ in Nahuat), an unusual indigenous bilingual school in the sierra de Puebla, Mexico. I was interested in the inclusion of their indigenous language and knowledge in the curriculum and in the positive reframing of the students’ indigenous identity; highly unusual in the Mexican context where discrimination and language shift are widespread. Using critical ethnography I extended and deepened my previous connection with the indigenous school and its community. I used three elements to shape my study: 1) the school’s language planning (based on the LP Onion of Ricento & Hornberger, 1996, and Hornberger & Johnson, 2007), 2) the school’s work towards Buen Vivir –an indigenous concept of ‘good life’ opposed to the Western notion of ‘development’ (Gudynas, 2012)– and 3) the representation of indigenous identity through the linguistic landscape (Said, 1999; Shohamy & Gorter, 2008). I argue that these three elements establish a trialogic interaction (in the sense of dialogue, and continual, mutual effect), and that it fosters a positive reframing of students’ indigenous identity. This, in turn, supports students’ school work, and a more symmetric interaction, less distant, between indigenous people and mestizos in the region. In other words, not only are the three mentioned elements helpful in understanding this indigenous –intercultural– bilingual school, but they are also central to the process of reframing indigenous identity through schooling in this site. I maintain that the particular trialogic interaction observed in the school, has the potential to illuminate a way to support indigenous bilingual schools in Mexico, and elsewhere, as they challenge the inequality indigenous students face in education, and the discrimination and exclusion indigenous communities have long endured.