Indigenous children defy colonialism through art in a Zapotec community of Oaxaca, Mexico

This qualitative study aims to contribute to the recognition and validation of Indigenous ways of knowing (epistemologies) and being (ontologies) as displayed through multimodal and multilingual artwork created by children and youth in one Indigenous Zapotec community of Oaxaca, Mexico. The study shows how children and youth resort to Indigenous ways of knowing to recreate their present realities and to negotiate their multiple identities. Through art production, children and youth are able to uncover and challenge colonial discourses that have historically devalued most or all that is Indigenous. The study also sheds light on the reciprocal and dynamic connection children and youth have with nature and with their surroundings, which plays an essential role in the shaping of their collective identity and in the process of decolonizing their minds and spirits. The research proposes a method of analysis informed by Indigenous epistemologies of the Indigenous Nahuatl people of Mexico in conjunction with principles of critical theory which recognizes the historical oppression that European colonization brought to Indigenous peoples of the Americas.