Welcome
Welcome to the companion website for the upcoming exploratory seminar Indigenous Peoples, Gender Justice, and Legal Pluralism in the United States, Mexico, and Guatemala. We are very excited for the seminar and we look forward to seeing everyone soon. Please feel free to explore this website. We will strive to make sure that the most up-to-date information is installed. Thank you.

Seminar Leaders


Lynn Stephen
Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences
Director, Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies
University of Oregon
Email: stephenl@uoregon.edu
Website: http://anthropology.uoregon.edu/profile/stephenl/


Shannon Speed
Director of American Indian Studies
Associate Professor of Gender Studies and Anthropology
University of California-Los Angeles
Email: sspeed@aisc.ucla.edu
Website: http://www.aisc.ucla.edu/about/staff/sspeed.aspx

Exploratory Seminar

This exploratory seminar brings together junior and senior researchers from four countries and five different universities and research centers to advance a trans-regional research collaboration focusing on indigenous women’s access to justice in the United States, Mexico, and Guatemala. Participants are primarily indigenous and Latina scholars. The program and the research it advances suggest how indigenous women navigate challenging legal, economic, political, racial, and organized crime environments—often in situations of extreme violence and human rights violations—in their quest to achieve gendered justice. We draw on intersectional gender theory, testimony and oral histories, transborder thought, and indigenous epistemologies. Case studies focus on domestic violence, gendered asylum, political asylum, Native court systems and practices, and collective reparations for military and paramilitary violence at national and international levels. This seminar sheds light on how to assist indigenous women to gain access to a variety of legal venues and ensure that the results advance gender justice and equity. Our work advances global understandings of indigenous women refugees and the challenges they face in overlapping legal systems. The participants in the project have been working with a common investigative framework together for the past three years, and, individually, each has an established track record working with indigenous women.