Reclaiming the Matriarchy: Chicana Feminism and Revolutionary Mothering

Reclaiming the Matriarchy: Chicana Feminism and Revolutionary Mothering

August 15, 2020 | 10am-12pm PST/ 1pm-3pm EST
2 HR ONLINE WORKSHOP

Description:
This talk will address the particular challenges of raising empowered Latinx and Indigenous children in a heightened xenophobic environment that continuously renders Latinxs as criminals, refugee children as subhuman and Indigenous people as invisible. Chicana feminism provides a toolkit for decolonization based on Indigenous philosophies, embodied remembrances of surviving colonization and imagined collective futures that are more liberatory than the present. Applying creative learning and elaborating on contributions to The Chicana Motherwork Anthology, published last year by the University of Arizona Press, this workshop will help parents apply Chicana feminist theory to their healing journeys and their parenting philosophies and praxis. Delving deeply into theory and offering testimonio, the workshop will address how to connect decolonial feminism to career, activism, self-growth, revolutionary motherhood and creative work.
Workshop participants will gain:

• A better understanding of Chicana feminist theories through engagement with the classic texts.
• ​An understanding of how colonial gendered violence can impact parenting children from marginalized identities.
  
• Philosophical knowledge of Mesoamerican goddess reclamation to help us access an ancestral Xicanista feminism.
  
• Strategies to rematriate a home through the institution of a matriarchal partnership and parenting philosophy.
  
• Strategies for decolonizing and overcoming the virgin-whore dichotomy in our worldview and in our child-raising.
  
• Practice in owning and using the power of testimonio to document and decolonize. 
  
• The opportunity to create poetry for self-healing through a trauma-informed Xicanista poetry exercise.

To Register: 
Course fee : ​$85
Send Payment:
Venmo: @EriJohnson, CashApp: $EriGJohnson, or Paypal: paypal.me/BirthBruja
>>>>Be sure to include your email and the course title in the notes!<<<<

Once payment is received, you will receive an email confirmation within 24hrs with further information. Email eri@birthbruja.com if you do not receive your confirmation email.

NonRefundable: All payments are nonrefundable.

Scholarships:
There are limited scholarships available for BIPOC.

To apply, email Eri@BirthBruja.com with a short share about who you are and why you want to attend and be sure to add "Reclaiming the Matriarchy Scholarship Request" in the subject!

About the Facilitator:
Dr. Gabriela Spears-Rico is a Pirinda-P’urhepecha Indigenous feminist poet and scholar who
serves as an Assistant Professor of Chicano Latino Studies and American Indian Studies at the
University of Minnesota Twin Cities. Her research explores how representations of indigeneity
in Mexican popular culture inform understandings of race and ethnicity among Mexicans and
Chicanxs. Dr. Spears-Rico is currently working on her first book, Mestizo Melancholia and the
Legacy of Conquest in Michoacan. This work engages performance theory, critical race theory
and feminist theory to examine how ‘going native’ functions in Mexico and what instances of
cultural appropriation reveal about the technologies of mestizaje among people of Mexican
descent. She authored “Decolonial P’urhepecha Maternalista Motherwork as Pedagogy,” in The Chicana Motherwork Anthology (University of Arizona Press, 2019) and “Transnational
Indigena Mothering from Michoacan to Mni Sota Makoce” in Transnational Latinx Perspectives
on Ana Castillo (forthcoming with Pittsburg University Press). An award-winning poet and
performance artist, her poetry has been published in Sing: Poetry from the Indigenous
Americas (University of Arizona Press, 2011), Poesia mexicana en la frontera norte (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico Editoriales, 2011) and Agenda (Unisa Press, 2019). She mothers a fierce Ojibwe-Dakota/Xicanita named Miskozi and currently serves as the Chair of the Women’s Indigenous and Native Caucus for MALCS.