Representations of Yaquis in the Recognition Era

Abstract

By using Foucauldian critical discourse analysis along with Stuart Hall's theories of representation, I investigate the meanings that Yaqui representations reproduce and how they develop a discourse of Yaquinesss: the set of terms through which Yaquis came to be understood as subjects in Tucson. With the recognition era as a timeframe-the years between the onset of publicly visible Yaqui political action in Tucson in the early 1960s, to the early 1980s after official Yaqui recognition in 1978-this project argues that a discourse of Yaquiness during the recognition era expanded to include various meanings that reconstituted the Yaqui community and its survivance efforts. While a discourse of Yaquiness can be traced back to Tucson media representations that positioned Yaquis as marginal non-citizens, during the recognition era Yaqui self-representations emerged and circulated along with earlier meanings, sometimes rearticulating and challenging them, to reproduce the Tucson Yaqui community as an economically, politically, and culturally autonomous entity. I use Gerald Vizenor's definition of survivance as an active sense of presence over absence to interpret how the community's political, economic, and cultural initiatives assert Yaqui futures. This project identifies a discourse of Yaquiness through analyzing how Tucson print media representations reified Yaquis as marginal, non-citizens. However, Yaqui self-representations have also played a role in Yaqui survivance by accompanying and challenging the meanings produced by Tucson print media. This project examines how Yaqui representations added meanings to a discourse of Yaquiness that transformed as the community practiced survivance during the recognition era.