The
term “Abya Yala” in Kuna Tule language (Panama) means “Land in its full
maturity”. The Kuna peoples believe that there have been four cycles of life
that have developed the planet earth:
Kualagun Yala, Tagargun Yala, Tingua Yala and Abia or Abya Yala. Today, we are
living in the last cycle. After the Kuna
people won a lawsuit to stop the construction of a shopping mall on their land,
San Blas Panama, they indicated to a group of reporters that they employed the
term Abya Yala to refer to the American continent. After listening to this
story, Takir Mamani, the Bolivian Aymara leader and one of the founders of the
indigenous rights movement Tupaj Katari in Bolivia, suggested that indigenous
peoples and indigenous organizations use the term Abya Yala in their official
declarations to refer to the Americas in its totality. He argues that “placing
foreign names on our villages, our cities, and our continents is equivalent to
subjecting our identity to the will of our invaders and their heirs.”
Therefore, renaming the continent would be the first step toward decolonization
and the establishment of indigenous peoples’ autonomy and self-determination.
Since the end of 1980s, many indigenous intellectuals and organizations have
embraced Mamani’s suggestion, and Abya Yala has become a way not only to refer
to the continent, but also a differentiated indigenous locus of cultural and
political enunciation.
In this spirit, the Duke and UNC-CH’s Abya Yala Working
Group (AYWG) aims to create spaces and develop activities where we discuss
issues related to the indigenous worlds, be they political, religious, cultural,
literary or linguistic.
