Brenda Nicolas, global & international studies assistant professor, has received a $17,500 grant from the Institute for Citizens & Scholars to support her work on Indigenous communal practices.

Funding supports completion of her book manuscript, Pueblo Autonomy: Indigenous Communal Practices Across Settler Colonial States, in which she writes about the racial, gender and identity experiences of Indigenous Mexican diasporas. Her work explores how Indigenous Oaxacans in California assert their autonomy, self-determination, and survival across the U.S. and Mexico, told through the stories of four generations of transborder activism beginning in the 1960s through today. She argues that through their involvement in traditional dances, Oaxacan brass bands, and immigrant hometown association, Zapotecs shape their Indigenous identities in ways that disrupt Latinidad and romanticized ideas of Indigeneity.

“These forms of communal practices of belonging confront state notions of Indigenous ‘authenticity’ in the U.S. and Mexico that view Indigeneity as static and dead in migration,” she says.

Nicolas has a bachelor’s in sociology and Latin American studies from UC Riverside, a master’s in Latin American studies from UC San Diego, a master’s in Chicano/a studies from UCLA, and a Ph.D. in Chicana/o and Central American studies from UCLA. She joined UCI in 2022 following two years as an assistant professor in the Department of Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies at Loyola Marymount University (LMU) in Los Angeles.

Funding for this work began in June and runs through December.