Mixtec Sacred Landscape: 500 years of resilience of the Ñuu Savi people
Join us for a lecture by visiting researcher Omar Aguilar Sánchez, PhD.
April 18, 11 AM - 12:15 PM
Maguire Art Museum - Great Hall
During the last 500 years, the communities of the Ñuu Savi (People of the Rain) have created, according to their time, the mechanisms to protect their territory and with it their way of life and well-being. This has been so because the Ñuu Savi have created and maintained a spiritual and reciprocal relationship with the land and the territory, as mean of subsistence, but also the space where the community organizes itself, works and enjoys. In short, the Ñuu Savi territory is at the same time a sacred landscape of resistance and struggle to persist in this globalized world.
Durante los últimos 500 años, las comunidades del Ñuu Savi (Pueblo de la Lluvia) han creado, acorde a su época, los mecanismos necesarios para proteger su territorio y con ello su forma de vida y su buen vivir. Esto ha sido así porque el Ñuu Savi ha creado y mantenido una relación espiritual y de reciprocidad con la tierra y el territorio, su medio de subsistencia, pero también el espacio donde la comunidad se organiza, trabaja y disfruta. En pocas palabras, el territorio Ñuu Savi es al mismo tiempo un paisaje sagrado, de resistencia y lucha por persistir en este mundo globalizado.
Brief Biography: Omar Aguilar Sánchez, PhD.
Omar Aguilar Sánchez is a Mixtec researcher from Oaxaca, Mexico. He has a PhD from Leiden University, the Netherlands and is an archeologist graduated from the National School of Anthropology and History, Mexico. He focuses on the study and understanding of the historical and cultural heritage of the people of Ñuu Savi (People of the Rain or Mixtec People), with a special focus on the Mixtec pictorial manuscripts or Mixtec codices. He won the 2016 INAH Award, the National Youth Award in 2019 and the 2021 INAH Award for his doctoral dissertation. He has given talks in Europe (The Netherlands, England, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Poland), United States, Suriname and México, and he has written articles in Mixtec, Spanish and English. He conceptualized and co-created the app Códices Mixtecos. He is co-founder of the Colectivo Nchivi Ñuu Savi (People of the Community of the Rain) and director of the digital project “Códices Mixtecos”. Furthermore, he is director of the program Ñuu Savi culture and language in The Americas Research Network (ARENET), member founder of the Universidad Autónoma Comunal de Oaxaca (UACO) and a member of the National System of Researchers of Mexico since 2022. His documental, “Ñii Ñu’u: Sacred Skin” has been presented in international film festival, as “In our own words” in Warsaw (2023) and the “Mother Tongue Film Festival” in Washington D.C (2024). He has collaborated with projects focus on the endangered language and museums as the Smithsonian Institution, the British Museum, Warsaw University, Leiden University and Yuku Saa community museum in Oaxaca. In this 2024, Aguilar is invited to present his work to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
This event is free and open to the public thanks to our sponsors:
