Weaving Queer Indigenous Research Methodologies of Resistance and Dignity

Presenter: Mario A. Gómez Zamora is a scholar of queerness, gender and sexuality, migration, memory, Latinx and Latin American studies, dance studies, Indigenous performances, and P’urhépecha studies. He earned his PhD and M.A. in Latin American and Latino Studies with emphasis in Anthropology at UCSC, a master’s in teaching history at Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo, and a B.A. in Secondary Education with a concentration in History at Normal Superior Juana de Asbaje in Michoacán. Mario is a first-generation P’urhépecha and mestizo scholar (the son of a mestiza mother and a P’urhépecha father) originally from Tangancícuaro, Michoacán, where Mario was raised by his grandparents, aunties, and sister. For over a decade, Mario has collaborated with P’urhépecha youth and elders in the recollection of oral histories in his community of origin, which culminated in the publication of the multilingual book Entre el Recuerdo y la Memoria: Historias de Patamban. As a UCLA Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow, Mario is working on his book project Queer P’urhépecha Histories and Performances Beyond Borders, where he explores the cultural tensions that queer Indigenous P’urhépechas face when participating in their communities’ traditions and ceremonies in both sites of the border. His scholarship and poetry have been published by Wicazo Sa Review, Pasados, the Historical Institute of the University Michoacana Press, the Autonomous University of Nuevo León, Los Angeles Review of Books, and one of his last articles, “Breaking Queer Silences, Building Queer Archives, and Claiming Queer Indigenous P’urhépecha Methodologies,” published by the Genealogy journal, won the Most Thought-Provoking article in Native American and Indigenous Studies.