Browsing by Subject "Decolonization"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    17 Soils: Settling, Stealing, Stirring
    (2022-08) Linqduist, Stephanie A.
    Within 17 Soils: Settling, Stealing, Stirring I invite the viewer, especially those non-native like myself, to look at soil with new eyes. Using 9 soils from Mni Sota Makoce/ Minnesota and 6 soils from the Gorama Mɛnde chiefdom in Sierra Leone, I paint images of connection to earth. Through the lens of analog photography and digital manipulation, my frame wanders from the farming village in Mɔndema to my own backyard and public gardens in the Twin Cities. Within this text is a collectively written soil index, selected images, and essays describing my internal approach towards creating this installation of paintings and light bench.
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    Age of Concrete: Housing and the Imagination in Mozambique's Capital, c. 1950 to Recent Times
    (2015-05) Morton, David Simon
    This thesis is about what historically has been one of the greatest preoccupations for residents of Maputo, Mozambique: the securing of a place to live. For most, this has meant the construction of a house in the flood-prone informal areas of the city, known as the subúrbios, and the maintenance of that house over successive generations. To consider where people have lived is to explore how they have lived, what they have cared about, and what they have worked for, and so ultimately this thesis is about how housing has long embodied not just the “making do” of urban living – the emphasis of much of the scholarship on African cities – but also some of people’s most keenly felt aspirations. The period studied embraces the colonial and postcolonial eras in roughly equal measure, beginning in the late 1940s when Maputo, now a metropolis of some two million, was a small port city called Lourenço Marques. Because Maputo was one of the relatively few cities in Africa where explosive growth took place for a full generation while still under colonial rule, the city’s built landscape offers a window onto the changing dynamics of everyday life at very different historical moments. My research rests on a rigorous project of oral history, with interviews with approximately 100 individuals in Mozambique and Portugal over several years. Addressed are how people responded in the past to the ever-looming threat of removal; how they negotiated with landowners; and how they contended with neighbors with whom they shared an all-too-elastic boundary line. I investigate the myriad unwritten rules that governed space, how such rules were enforced, and how disputes were resolved, or not resolved. The result is to demonstrate how, through the medium of housing, urban Mozambicans not only gave specific content to their visions of modernity, but also to authority, governance, and the state – conceptions that took on a new relevance in the years after independence from Portugal in 1975. As a new state struggled into being, and focused on rural issues, the nature of urban citizenship was being shaped considerably from below.
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    Daḳota Iapi Ohna Ki Wáṡicu Etaƞhaƞ Ihduḣdayapi (Decolonization through Speaking the Daḳota Language)
    (2022-05) McKay, Neil
    The Daḳota people are the original people of Minnesota. We come from the area where the Mississippi and the Minnesota Rivers meet at what we call Bdote. The Daḳota language is currently on life support in Minnesota. Due to the effects of colonization, our number of speakers has continuously dwindled since the United States invaded our lands. The trauma caused by genocide, forced removal, decades of human rights violations all by the United States, its Euro-American citizenry and the church have had an effect on Daḳota language loss. We need a safe place to teach and learn Daḳota while at the same time being medicine to each other in ways that will empower our people. What follows are my reflections on twenty-five years of teaching and learning the Daḳota language myself, observing teaching and learning in a variety of environments, and visiting with other teachers and learners. Colonization has had a profound effect on the Daḳota people (and other Indigenous people) so it has had an effect on our relationship with each other through the Daḳota language. The personal observations and reflections as a Daḳota person and as an academic have given me insight into ways that the teaching and learning of the Daḳota language is a powerful a tool for decolonization. By creating a safe place to speak, learn and teach Daḳota through traditional values as well as using best methods for Indigenous language learning (revitalization), we get a larger picture of how to be medicine to each other when we are speaking/learning/teaching Daḳota. This thesis should be accessible to all Daḳota people and other Indigenous language learners and teachers. It is not intended for an academic audience only. In an ongoing effort to decolonize the academy or at least create places of decolonization within the academy, this is necessary to facilitate open discussion on creating and maintaining a safe place to teach and learn our languages.
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    Teatro Peruano en el periodo de conflicto armado interno (1980-2000): Estetica Teatral, derechos humanos y expectativas de descolonizacion
    (2011-06) Vargas-Salgado, Carlos
    The historical fact of the Internal war experienced by Peru beginning in 1980 has uncovered historical-cultural problems: inequalities, racism and coloniality, and deficient process of democratization. This Dissertation describes the relationship between internal war and the richness of Popular and Independent theater production in Peru during those years (1980-2000). Approach is multidisciplinary: Cultural Theory, Performance Studies, Literary theory, Transcultural critique, Hermeneutics of Human rights and Postcolonial and Decolonial theories. In Part I, it is discussed the ways in which cultural memory of the Peruvian conflict has been constructed and current debate remains between ideological versions of the historical facts. In Part II, the text proposes eight models of theatrical appropriation of the violent reality seen in the work of urban playwrights (Sara Joffré, Alfonso Santistevan, César De María) popular and independent collectives (Yuyachkani, Barricada), and producers affected directly by internal war (Lieve Delanoy, Movimiento de Teatro Independiente). In the Conclusions, I discuss the validity of terms like postmodernity and political art regarding the experience of Andean performances and independent theatre in Peru during the period of internal war. In this work, I suggest that a living memory of the social catastrophe was better preserved for collectivities that intervened actively in the discussion on violence throughout non-official narratives, such as independent theatre and popular Andean performances.