Adriana Rodriguez & Anna Pedrolli
Abstract:
The workshop aims at linking theory with practice by engaging with interculturality, plurilingualism and collective rights of indigenous peoples from the Americas, specifically from Ecuador. These critical engagements provide a new perspective on social, institutional and individual manifestations of multilingualism and human rights in an interdependent world. These objectives offer new insights into how we can negotiate interdisciplinary research in the humanities that is also transnational and – in this case – decolonial.
Bio:
Adriana Rodriguez Caguana has completed a master's degree in human rights and holds a PhD in international law. Her research focuses on legal pluralism, interculturality and language rights. She teaches at the Department for Human Rights (Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Quito) and at Ecuador's first indigenous university, Amawtay Wasi, among others. After the latest uprisings in Ecuador and the accompanying backlash by the government and military against the protesters, she has contributed to an application to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights for protective measures for the Kichwa indigenous people due to the alarming human rights situation in the country. She is accompanying the process convened by the Commission for the Waorani to investigate the events following massacres of isolated indigenous peoples. Together with Christina Korak, she is investigating the role of female academics in the expulsion of the Summer Institute of Linguistics and, in the current collaborative project ‘Remembering_Resistance. Women's Translations of Territorial, Linguistic and Cultural Rights’ (Joint Excellence in Science and Humanities, ÖAW), they are examining the importance of peace and abundance of resources for hunter-gatherer communities.
Anna Pedrolli holds a PhD in Cultural and Social Anthropology from the University of Milano-Bicocca. Between July 2023 and September 2024, she conducted eight months of ethographic research in Ecuador with a focus on the rights of nature and their social impact, working in Quito with academics, legal expers, and former judges of the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court and among the communities of the Manduriacos Valley, Imbabura. She is Cultrice della materia in Public Comparative Law at the University of Torino, board member of the Italian Section of the Instituto Imberoamericano de Derecho Comparado, member of the MOTH Course Alumni Network at New York University, and member of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA).
Timetable
10:00 – 12:30
Part 1: “Interculturality: European vs. Latin American perspectives”
Presentation: Juxtaposing European Theories on interculturality with Latin American theories (Welsch vs. Walsh); relation between language, cosmovisions and collective rights; backgrounds of Ecuador’s and Bolivia’s constitutions (struggles for bilingual intercultural education, indigenous uprisings); contested terms and indigenous philosophies in the Carta Magnas (Sumak Kawsay, Sumak Quamaña); collective and linguistic rights and their significance for international case law (nature as a legal subject, Río Atrato-case in Colombia, examples from Indian High Courts)
Group exercise: comparison of Austrian constitution to Ecuador’s: What terms and concepts express interculturality, plurilingualism and collective rights?
12:30-14:00 Lunch Break
14:00-16:30
Part 2: “The Tagaeri-Taromenane as ecosystemic peoples and the Case before the Inter-American Court for Human Rights”
Presentation: Introduction to indigenous peoples in isolation worldwide and their relation to the ecosystem (how do these peoples express their determination to stay in isolation?); history of the Waorani and Tagaeri-Taromenane; explaining the case with special attention to interpreting and translating between different cosmovisions and differing legal philosophies (indigenous law vs. national/international law); insights from Adriana’s work representing Conta, a previously uncontacted Tagaeri woman
Group exercise: Analysis of interpreting scenarios from the case against extracts explaining the lives of indigenous peoples in isolation and recent contact
For questions, please contact centeramericas(at)uni-graz.at