Ep 27: Latin America and Oceania with ’Inoke Hafoka and Tino Diaz

Educators ‘Inoke Hafoka and Tino Diaz join this episode to think together about the regions of Latin America and Oceania, their ideas, peoples, and relations. We discuss ancient, colonial, religious, and contemporary entanglements, as well as solidarity, and connections, in order to explore how to speak about and build on them. From food connections to black birding (Pacific slavery) that has led to descendants from each region ending up in the other in the late 19th to early 20th century. Additionally, we discuss concepts that we use to learn from and with each other in our local contexts, which inspires and assists learning more about ourselves. We suggest there are unique parallels and differences that can fill each other’s gaps through learning in relation and between our perspectives and positions.

Mentions: Margarita Satini, Terisa Siagatonu

Terms: Blackbirding (kidnapping and coercion of Pacific peoples into slavery), Testimonio (bearing witness/testifiying; Latinx and Xicana educators and activists have used testimonio as a teaching and activist tool to express collectively experienced realities), Borderlands (term coined by Gloria Anzaldúa in the context of the US/Mexico border to identify fragmented and connected identities that straddle material and metaphysical borders, which has been extended as a metaphor for the friction of permeable space between cultures, nations, peoples, identities, etc.), Nepantla (Nahuatl/Nawat word that means ‘middle’ or ‘in the middle’, which is used by borderlands and Chicanx/Latin studies and scholars to identify a state of ‘in between-ness’), Tā-Vā (see episode 15), Kumala/Kumara (Tongan/Māori words for sweet potato).