“If We Don’t Do It, Nobody Is Going to Talk About It”: Indigenous Students Disrupting Latinidad at Hispanic-Serving Institutions

Abstract

Hispanic and Latinx are terms that conflate ethnicity, race, and nationality and complicate our ability to generalize what it means for Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs) to serve such a diverse student population. Latinidad has also privileged mestizo narratives that obscure enduring colonialities of power and perpetuate the invisibility of Indigenous Peoples. Conceptually framed by Critical Latinx Indigeneities, this study documents the testimonios of 10 Indigenous Mixtec/Ñuu Savi, Zapotec, and Nahua students at HSIs in California. I highlight issues of racialization and Indigenous misrepresentation within Latinx-centered curricula and programming and the ways participants engaged in fugitive acts of learning to claim new forms of visibility on campus. The findings raise important implications for HSIs, including Latinx programming that disrupts colonial perspectives and creates more nuanced understandings of diasporic Indigeneity within Latinx communities.