Research events
from June 4, 2026 to June 5, 2026
Published on May 27, 2026– Updated on May 27, 2026
Colonialité et autochtonie dans les Amériques
Venue: ENS Ulm
Conference organised by Lissel Quiroz du laboratoire AGORA, Willy Delvalle, doctorants, Chaire Géopolitique du Risque (ENS), République des Savoirs, Yuwey Henri, Nation Kalin'a Tilewuyu, poète, écrivaine, penseuse et militante et Ana Carolina Delgado Teixeira, professeure, Université Fédérale de l'intégration Latino-Américiane (Brésil)
Since the 16th century, the category "Indian" and its derivatives "Amerindian" and "indigenous" have designated the situation of the colonized, dominated, racialized, exoticized. The categorization of peoples created by European colonists is the substrate on which a process of racialization and the creation of races was built. As the Mexican anthropologist Guillermo Bonfil Batalla (1972) points out, "Indian" is a supra-ethnic category that says nothing about the groups it understands but rather says about the relationship of subordination. The Indian, as a colonial category, was born when Christopher Columbus invaded the island of Ayiti, renamed Hispaniola to establish the domination of the Catholic Monarchs over the island. Before 1492, Abya Yala was made up of hundreds of very diverse peoples and societies, each with its own social and political identity. The invasion of Abya Yala by the Europeans was soon followed by the colonizing violence and genocide of 90% of the continent's population. Some regions, such as the Caribbean, will struggle to cope with the violence of the colonial shock of the first decades of the invasion of the continent. Indigenous peoples living in Santo Domingo, Cuba, were decimated by a bloody and violent European occupation. In Mexico, this becomes systematically marked by the rejection of the other, conceived by the colonist as "the same", destined to be incorporated as something into a dominating totality. In the territories where colonization arrived later, it was not until the middle of the 19th century that Indigenous peoples returned to their pre-colonial demographic level. The subalternization of Indigenous peoples did not end with the independence of the 19th century. In fact, except in the case of Haiti, there is no decolonial revolution in the Americas. The colonists sent home are replaced by their descendants, born on the American continent. In some areas, such as French Guiana, decolonization never happened. And even Haiti, having experienced an apparent decolonization of power, this came at the cost of the new financial and commercial dependencies imposed by the former metropolis and the United States through debt.
This conference aims to explore this painful, forgotten and silenced history. To know the past in order to better heal it and repair the colonial wound. The objective will also be to make visible the anti-colonial struggles, the political and cultural resistance to coloniality, both past and present. The indigenous creation of new projects and concepts, as in the case of the notion of Abya Yala, Buen Vivir, ancestral future, and alternative forms to the modern nation-state of social organization, characterized by direct democracy and political autonomy, are likely to foreshadow the realization of the entirely "American" utopia evoked by Quijano. Or the highlighting of an ongoing process of production of a new historical meaning embodied by indigenous peoples. The conference aims to make these theoretical and practical contributions visible in a trans-American dialogue.
Since the 16th century, the category "Indian" and its derivatives "Amerindian" and "indigenous" have designated the situation of the colonized, dominated, racialized, exoticized. The categorization of peoples created by European colonists is the substrate on which a process of racialization and the creation of races was built. As the Mexican anthropologist Guillermo Bonfil Batalla (1972) points out, "Indian" is a supra-ethnic category that says nothing about the groups it understands but rather says about the relationship of subordination. The Indian, as a colonial category, was born when Christopher Columbus invaded the island of Ayiti, renamed Hispaniola to establish the domination of the Catholic Monarchs over the island. Before 1492, Abya Yala was made up of hundreds of very diverse peoples and societies, each with its own social and political identity. The invasion of Abya Yala by the Europeans was soon followed by the colonizing violence and genocide of 90% of the continent's population. Some regions, such as the Caribbean, will struggle to cope with the violence of the colonial shock of the first decades of the invasion of the continent. Indigenous peoples living in Santo Domingo, Cuba, were decimated by a bloody and violent European occupation. In Mexico, this becomes systematically marked by the rejection of the other, conceived by the colonist as "the same", destined to be incorporated as something into a dominating totality. In the territories where colonization arrived later, it was not until the middle of the 19th century that Indigenous peoples returned to their pre-colonial demographic level. The subalternization of Indigenous peoples did not end with the independence of the 19th century. In fact, except in the case of Haiti, there is no decolonial revolution in the Americas. The colonists sent home are replaced by their descendants, born on the American continent. In some areas, such as French Guiana, decolonization never happened. And even Haiti, having experienced an apparent decolonization of power, this came at the cost of the new financial and commercial dependencies imposed by the former metropolis and the United States through debt.
This conference aims to explore this painful, forgotten and silenced history. To know the past in order to better heal it and repair the colonial wound. The objective will also be to make visible the anti-colonial struggles, the political and cultural resistance to coloniality, both past and present. The indigenous creation of new projects and concepts, as in the case of the notion of Abya Yala, Buen Vivir, ancestral future, and alternative forms to the modern nation-state of social organization, characterized by direct democracy and political autonomy, are likely to foreshadow the realization of the entirely "American" utopia evoked by Quijano. Or the highlighting of an ongoing process of production of a new historical meaning embodied by indigenous peoples. The conference aims to make these theoretical and practical contributions visible in a trans-American dialogue.
