Ñañapura: Embodied Resistance to Epistemic Erasure and Extractivist Development among Kichwa Women in the Ecuadorian Amazon
This interdisciplinary project examines Indigenous Kichwa women’s resistance to extractivist development in the Ecuadorian Amazon through ethnographic research, documentary practice, and collaborative forms of digital knowledge production.
Drawing from Indigenous feminisms, environmental humanities, and decolonial theory, this project explores how Kichwa women mobilize collective practices of care, reciprocity, and territorial defense to challenge extractivist policies and epistemic erasure. The project centers ñañapura—meaning “among sisters” in Kichwa—as a framework for understanding Indigenous feminist praxis grounded in collective responsibility, embodied knowledge, and relational forms of political action.
Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2023 and 2024, this project combines interviews, audiovisual documentation, cultural analysis, and collaborative methodologies to examine how Indigenous women generate alternative forms of knowledge production and environmental resistance.
Digital Humanities Methodologies
- Collaborative documentary production
- Ethnographic fieldwork
- Digital storytelling
- GIS and territorial mapping
- Audiovisual media
- Public humanities
- Qualitative interviews
- Visual and media analysis
My Role
I conducted ethnographic fieldwork in the Ecuadorian Amazon during 2023 and 2024, collaborating with Kichwa women activists, community leaders, and women’s collectives through interviews, participant observation, audiovisual documentation, and cultural analysis. I developed the conceptual framework of ñañapura and produced interdisciplinary research combining documentary practice, environmental humanities, Indigenous studies, and collaborative forms of digital scholarship.
Collaborative Documentary Project
As part of this research, I collaboratively developed a documentary project with Kichwa women in the Ecuadorian Amazon to amplify Indigenous women’s voices, environmental struggles, and community-based forms of knowledge production. The documentary explores the intersections of extractivism, territorial defense, Indigenous feminisms, and cultural preservation through audiovisual storytelling and collaborative media practices.
Documentary Trailer
A preview trailer for the collaborative documentary project is available below. The documentary is currently in post-production and ongoing collaborative editing.
Kichwa Language and Cultural Immersion Project
This project emerged from my intensive Kichwa language study in the Ecuadorian Amazon through the Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship funded by the U.S. Department of Education. The program included 140 hours of immersive language instruction and cultural engagement during the summers of 2023 and 2024.
Visit The Kichwa Project Website
The project explores the relationship between Indigenous language revitalization, cultural preservation, and identity formation through experiential and community-based learning. Through language study and cultural immersion, this project examines how Kichwa language practices sustain ancestral knowledge systems, collective memory, and Indigenous epistemologies within contemporary social and political contexts.
This experience also contributed to my broader research on Indigenous feminisms, environmental humanities, and collaborative methodologies in the Ecuadorian Amazon.
Digital Humanities Methodologies
- Language documentation
- Cultural immersion
- Ethnographic observation
- Public-facing scholarship
- Indigenous language preservation
- Collaborative research
- Multimedia documentation
My Role
As a FLAS Fellow, I participated in intensive Kichwa language instruction and cultural immersion in the Ecuadorian Amazon during the summers of 2023 and 2024. I documented my experiences through research notes, photography, footage, and public scholarship while developing linguistic and cultural competencies that continue to inform my interdisciplinary research and collaborative work with Indigenous communities.
Kichwa Diaspora, Language Revitalization, and Mobility in the United States
This project examines the Kichwa diaspora community in Queens, New York, focusing on how Indigenous migrants and younger generations sustain cultural identity, language revitalization, and community formation outside of Ecuadorian territory.
Drawing from sociolinguistics, migration studies, Indigenous studies, and digital humanities methodologies, this research explores how mobility shapes linguistic practices and identity formation among Kichwa-Ecuadorian-American communities navigating multilingual environments across English, Spanish, and Kichwa.
The project investigates how younger generations negotiate cultural continuity, intergenerational memory, and Indigenous identity while creating new forms of belonging within transnational and urban contexts. Building on Jan Blommaert’s concepts of “orders of indexicality” and “polycentrism,” this research analyzes how Kichwa diaspora communities challenge traditional linguistic and social categories by producing new cultural and communicative spaces.
This project also examines the relationship between migration, intergenerational trauma, and Indigenous language revitalization, highlighting how younger Kichwa generations actively reclaim language, traditions, and ancestral knowledge as forms of cultural continuity and resistance.
Digital Humanities Methodologies
- Qualitative interviews
- Ethnographic research
- Language documentation
- Oral history
- Migration and mobility studies
- Public humanities
- Community-based research
My Role
I developed and conducted qualitative research with members of the Kichwa diaspora community in Queens, New York, focusing on language revitalization, identity formation, and intergenerational experiences of migration. Through interviews and ethnographic observation, I analyzed how multilingual practices and mobility contribute to the preservation and transformation of Indigenous identity in diasporic contexts.