Decolonial Undergrounds presents Manuela Picq: Savages and Citizens: How Indige

Although Indigenous peoples are often perceived as standing outside political modernity, Savages and Citizens argues that Indigenous people have been
fundamental to how contemporary state sovereignty has been imagined, theorized, and practiced. Delving into European political philosophy, comparative politics from the South America to Africa, and contemporary international law, the book shows how the concept of indigeneity has shaped the contours of the modern state. The book argues that indigeneity is a political identity, that it is relational to modern nation-states, and that Indigenous politics are co-constitutive of modern states, even though they mark the boundary of the state. In showing how indigeneity is central to how the international system of states operates, the book forefronts Indigenous peoples as dynamic actors in contemporary world politics. With insights drawn from diverse global contexts and empirical research from Bolivia and Ecuador, the authors advocate for the relevance of Indigenous studies within political science and argues for an ethnography of sovereignty in anthropology.

Manuela Picq is Senior Lecturer in the Departments of Political Science and Sexuality, Women’s and Gender Studies at Amherst College (USA). She is the author of Savages and Citizens: How Indigeneity Shapes the State (2024, co-authored with Andrew Canessa) and Vernacular Sovereignties: Indigenous Women Challenging World Politics (2018) translated to Spanish by Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui. She has co-edited various books on sexuality in world politics and is Editor of the scholarly journal Public Humanities. Her work at the intersection of scholarship, activism and journalism in Latin America has shaped her political involvement with indigenous struggles for self-determination in Ecuador and led her to coordinate two electoral campaigns of Kichwa water defender Yaku Pérez Guartambel for presidential office. She was nominated a New Generation of Public Intellectuals (2018), featured in the FemiList 100 (2021) of women working in law, policy, and peacebuilding across the Global South, then received the International Studies Association’s 2024 Outstanding Activist Scholar Award.

CEL Eligible, Lunch will be served

On Manuela: https://www.manuelapicq.com/

Decolonial Undergrounds is a Five College Native American and Indigenous Studies speaker series devoted to the dynamic practice of anti-colonial resistance.