| This dissertation examines the relationship between "indigenously controlled" education and cultural preservation among the Wixaritari, or Huichol, of the Sierra Madre Mountains of Jalisco, Mexico. Studies of indigenous identity and schooling are still lacking in anthropological fieldwork. While such studies have, in the past, focused on native education in the United States, there has been little research done on the impacts of indigenous-controlled education on the enculturation process of Indian youth, particularly in Latin America, and whether such educational environments really serve to fortify indigenous identity, and if so, how it is done. Recently, there has been resurgence in ethno-nationalism or self-determination among the indigenous peoples of Mexico and Latin America. This study examines the role of so-called indigenous-controlled community schooling in fight of these larger pan-Indian movement goals, showing that indigenous people are themselves divided over the process of cultural preservation due to their own changing sense of ethnic identity. Conflict results, creating a reliance on notions of an "imagined community" to unify social actors in a drama of power-knowledge relationships in which intellectuals, not traditionalists, control the educational process, channeling knowledge to meet the goals of the "imagined community" which may or may not be shared by all social actors. |
