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K-State Today

December 17, 2015

Broyles-González's book showcased

Submitted by Melisa Posey

American ethnic studies department head and university distinguished professor Yolanda Broyles-González (Yaqui/Rarámuri) was one of six Native American authors whose work was showcased during the 75th anniversary celebration of California's Native American Museum in Sacramento, California on Nov. 14, 2015. The museum event was both in celebration of the 75th year since its founding, and an event marking Native American Heritage month.

Broyles-González presented a lecture, "Decolonial Native American Visioning of the Americas," on her most recent book "Earth Wisdom: California Chumash Woman" published by University of Arizona Press and also did a book-signing event at the Native American Museum. The central focus of the book is the spoken testimony of a Native American Chumash woman elder from Central California named Pilulaw Khus.

Khus is a traditional Native American traditional elder and activist in California. In the world of academic book publishing this volume centered on a traditional Chumash woman elder is a first. Pilulaw' Khus's testimony became the first such book emanating from the vast Chumash homeland which extends between California's northern Monterey County to Santa Monica in the south.

Broyles-González was invited by the Manhattan Chapter of the American Association of University Women to lecture at their Nov. 9, 2015 event in honor of Native American Heritage month. Her lecture, "Native Women's Powers: Past, Present, Future," focused on Native American governance systems and women's powerful roles within those governance systems, which predate colonization. Broyles-González presented from her research on Zapotec Native women in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, demonstrating how women's social powers are institutionalized and guaranteed through the governance structure known as Gobierno Por Usos y Costumbres, translated as Governance Through Traditional Lifeways and Customs. She also brought examples of U.S. tribes that are similarly governed, through a system that features gender equality and institutionalized respect for all sexualities.