“Is this my Inheritance?" An Exploration of Mexican, Chicanx, and Indigenous Claims to Belonging

This presentation interrogates Latinx claims to Indigeneity and inheritance through a case study of Nahuatl language classrooms. First, identifying a gap between academic and popular discourses, I compare how the concept of Indigenous inheritance is employed in both scholarship and social media. I examine how colonized, detribalized, and displaced communities pursue ancestral traditions as a refusal of assimilation and white supremacy. Second, I analyze the Nahuatl classroom in which Indigenous Nahua teachers and the Mexican mestizo and Chicanx students interact. I conclude by theorizing two potentials in Nahuatl language learning: will it maintain race/class hierarchies or become a site of decolonial solidarity?