In these brief collecting histories, I have deliberately put together information not only about named collectors, but unnamed discoverers and collectors as well, drawing on our visits to the archives and stores, and augmented by contextual primary and secondary source research.
Closure, call to action or to be continued…
Their policy which ‘propose[d] to furnish indigenous communities with cultural elements of positive value, in the government’s view, as replacements for cultural elements which are valued negatively in the indigenous communities themselves’ (Alfonso Caso 1958, Human Organisation) reflected the gender order of the time.
After the political upheavals of 1968 a group of progressive anthropologists led by Guillermo Bonfil Batalla, whose definition of Indigenous people was as survivors who had managed to resist acculturation despite centuries of oppression, took over the INI’s leadership. Bonfil Batalla led the INI when the Plan Huicot was developed to serve Huichol, Cora and Tepehuano communities was developed for the Gran Nayar region. Soon 60 Indigenous Coordinating Centres were established across Mexico with the coordinator of each centre speaking for the state. This new indigenism promoted self-management: whereas in the past Indigenous school teachers had returned to their communities to encourage integration, now their role was to support cultural difference though bilingual education.
Publications related to women’s and maternal health with Wixárika communities by the author of this exhibition
Gamlin, Jennie B. (2013)
Shame as a barrier to health seeking among indigenous Huichol migrant labourers: An interpretive approach of the “violence continuum” and “authoritative knowledge”
Social Science and Medicine 97 75-81
Gamlin, Jennie B. (2023)
Wixárika Practices of Medical Syncretism: An Ontological Proposal for Health in the Anthropocene
Medical Anthropology Theory 10 (2) 1-26
Gamlin, Jennie B. (2020)
“You see, we women, we can’t talk, we can’t have an opinion…”. The coloniality of gender and childbirth practices in Indigenous Wixárika families
Social Science and Medicine 252, 112912
Jennie Gamlin and David Osrin (2020)
Preventable infant deaths, lone births and lack of registration in Mexican indigenous communities: health care services and the afterlife of colonialism
Ethnicity and Health 25 (7)
Jennie Gamlin and Seth Holmes (2018)
Preventable perinatal deaths in indigenous Wixárika communities: an ethnographic study of pregnancy, childbirth and structural violence BMC
Pregnancy and Childbirth 18 (Article number 243) 2018
Gamlin, Jennie B. and Sarah J Hawkes (2015)
Pregnancy and birth in an Indigenous Huichol community: from structural violence to structural policy responses
Culture, health and sexuality 17 (1)