Indigenous Future-making versus the Westminster-modelled State: Exploring the Joys, Pains and Dreams of Maya women and Youth (on their terms)

Abstract: Indigenous communities continue to be negatively racialised and are exposed to structural violence. Particularly, Maya peoples residing in Belize's southern Toledo District persist in conflicts provoked by the Western developmental paradigm that promotes mining, logging in support of capitalist processes that are indicative of extractive industries for natural resource exportation. Critical scholarship has identified capitalist extraction via Western development to correspond with sustained elements of colonial power. Research also illustrates that conventional Western development negatively impacts the wellbeing of Indigenous communities, particularly women and youth. Outcomes of this developmental conflict for Maya peoples are inadequate access to health services, wildlife destruction, restrained access to traditional medicines, threats to Indigenous traditions. Consolidation of state power, colonial-capitalism, and Westminster-modelled governance has led to violations of Free, Prior and Informed Consent, reduction in land access, reduced resilience, gender-based violence and attempted annihilation of cultural identities. More data about experiences and concerns of Indigenous women and youth is required within the region - this project contributes to theoretical conversations in critique of Western-centric paradigms for capitalist development and builds on empirical literature surrounding the Maya peoples struggle for autonomy.
This research will contribute to scholarship on Indigenous self-determination, grassroots development, socio-spatial processes of racialization, and construction of sustainable futures via participatory research with Maya communities in Belize. Through collaborative and community-based methods, I will explore experiences, relationships with land, and conceptions of wellbeing specifically for Maya women and youth. This research's impact directly aims to raise awareness of Maya on the terms and preferences of Maya community members. My project will highlight the political agency of Maya women and youth by illuminating their joys, dreams and struggles via desire-based approaches that prioritise Respect, Responsibly, Reciprocity and Relevance (the '4 R's) in relation to research with Indigenous people.
My research is supported by the Maya Leaders Alliance and the Julian Cho Society - organisations motivated to sustain the long-term wellbeing, and mobilization of communities for their rights, education, and research initiatives. The projects qualitative design includes participatory action and ethnographic methods, primarily photovoice, art-based envisioning, walking interviews, focus groups, and collective reflection. These methods will be undertaken with 50 Maya participants over an extended period of fieldwork in Belize. Through exploring personal stories and realities of Maya women and youth by utilising dream-based methods within the setting of workshops and ab'inks (communal assemblies), data will emphasise Indigenous experience.
Framing will develop a critical interrogation of Belize's Westminster-modelled state. Foucauldian discourse will be put into conversation with emancipatory postcolonial critique to analyse state power and Indigenous governance. Drawing from decolonial and Indigenous literature will build critique on the way Maya realities are impacted by neoliberal governmentality and Western-centric development. This research will illustrate the lived experiences and "dreamed-of" futures of Maya communities (on their terms and preferences) who are responding to colonial-capitalist modernity and a Westminster-modelled state.