‘Learning to read and write is to defend yourself’: Exploring Indigenous perspectives and reimagining literacies for self-determination in Mexico

Abstract

This study considers some of the ways in which engagements with literacies are embedded in social practices and produced and enacted through distinct ethnolinguistic and cultural histories. Drawing on research with learners and facilitators in an adult literacy program for Indigenous language speakers in Mexico, the findings reveal various meanings, values, and uses attached to literacies, including as a defense, a necessity, access to full knowledge, to express oneself, and to learn from one another. The study concludes that literacies are connected to the broader project of Indigenous self-determination