In this 90-minute workshop, participants will be invited to explore the challenges associated with how cultural identities often collide and overlap when educators work in culturally complex environments. To initiate the discussion, three uninvited guests on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded lands of xʷməθkʽwəy̓əm (Musqueam), sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish Nation), and sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh Nation) will share their experiences working to uphold and support meaningful educational processes for Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.
María José Athié Martínez, Áurea Vericat Rocha, and Sam Rocha are Mexican with mestizo backgrounds relating Indigenous realities and identities in complex ways. Their intersecting positionalities as mestizaje (Anzaldúa, 2021) and curriculum mestissage (Donald, D., 2009) often collide with others in the educational settings where they work. Their trajectories have made them challenge the concept of “allyship”. Instead, they highlight the need and importance of learning from each other’s histories and perspectives in educational settings.
Following this introduction, Alicia de Alba Ceballos will contribute her expertise on the complexities of identity to enrich the conversation.
Following the introductory section, workshop leaders will guide participants through a critical thinking process, identifying core philosophical underpinnings and relating these to their teaching experiences. Participants will be encouraged to share their experiences and reflect on the complex histories and current realities of Canada, toward fostering culturally responsive classrooms and connections with Indigenous communities. By reflecting on their identities and challenging their thinking, participants will be inspired and supported to adopt new and more ethical approaches to education.
Facilitators
María José Athié Martínez
Born in “La Gran Tenochtitlan,” commonly known as Mexico City, María José was raised in Mayan territory near Cancun, where she spent her childhood playing in mangroves, Caribbean beaches, and jungles. She grew up listening to radio broadcasts in the Mayan language, more often than in Spanish. María José watched her hometown transition from a small fishermen’s town to a bustling tourist destination. Her traditional Mexica name is Kuatochitl.
María José has a rich mixed ancestry, tracing her heritage back to various parts of the world. Her maternal grandmother, María del Carmen Duhart Mead, was born in Mexico City, in 1922 to refugees from France and England, who fled during World Wars I and II. María José’s maternal grandfather, Horacio Martínez Romero, retold stories about coming from the north of Turtle Island, he was born in Chilpancingo, Guerrero, México in 1918 to Enrique Martínez Guevara and Josefina Romero de la Cadena, Indigenous from Turtle Island, and from Ayala Anaya (South America) and black heritage. Josefina Mayra Gabriela Guadalupe Martínez Duhart, María José’s mother, was born in Mexico City in 1959. Her great-grandfather on her parental side, Alejandro Athié Saad, came to México from Bekarim, Lebanon in late 1800. Alejandro married Manuela Carrasco, a Madrilenian Spanish Refugee from the Civil War and the two World Wars. Carlos (Habibi) Mauricio Athié Carrasco, María José’s grandfather, was born in Mexico City in 1911 and married Luz María Lambarri Baquedano, born in 1917 in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico, whose Basque family migrated to México in 1790’s. Juan Ignacio Athié Lambarri, María José’s father, was born in México City in 1955.
As an educator and facilitator, María José has spent over 20 years developing educational projects in collaboration with Indigenous communities and Elders. She was involved in the development of curricula such as the literacy curriculum in Purepecha and Spanish (simultaneously) and the curriculum for all the Purepecha’s schools in Michoacan, Mexico. Additionally, she was involved the curriculum development of the only two Indigenous-Intercultural Universities (led by community members), which are private and public, of the nine of its kind in Mexico. Maria Jose is one of the first authors on Intercultural Education in Mexico and was the expert author in Indigenous and Special Education in the compilation that the UNAM created in 2012 to provide advice at the beginning stage of the presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto.
Maria Jose is a PhD candidate in Curriculum Studies at the University of British Columbia and a non-invited visitor to the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) ancestral Territory. For her dissertation, she worked with seven non-Indigenous teachers from the Greater Vancouver area (grades 3 to 12) who are integrating Indigenous perspectives and reconciliation acts into their classrooms. Using the Aztec/Meshika dance as a metaphor for reconciliation, María José created a framework where participants move together in a circle of trust, making mistakes and overcoming them collectively as a group. This process fosters understanding, respect, reflection and solidarity among all involved.
Áurea Vericat Rocha
Áurea was born and raised in Mexico City, with Mexican and Spanish ancestry. Her maternal heritage comes from Teotitlán del Camino in Oaxaca, possibly linked to the Mazateca Nation, while her paternal side hails from Catalonia, specifically Tortosa near the Ebro delta. She was given the name Mixtzin by the Chichimeca Elder Inocente Morales Baranda.
Áurea is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Education Cross-Faculty Inquiry Program, occupying space on the Unceded, Traditional, and Ancestral xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Territory. As a proud member of Indigenous Early Years Kinship (ieyk.org) and founder of ICEDAR (Indigenous Collaborative for Education, Development, Advocacy, and Research, icedar.org), she works to support the revitalization of Indigenous worldviews and advance Indigenous self-determination.
With over 20 years of experience in Mexico, Áurea worked on revitalizing Indigenous games and languages, focusing on young children’s education and fostering their Indigenous identities through projects in marginalized Indigenous communities. This journey taught her the importance of building relationships and collaborating with schools, Elders, and rural and urban communities to support Indigenous culture revitalization.
In her pursuit of early childhood education, Áurea worked as the First Nations Pedagogies Network’s Provincial Coordinator, hosted by BC Aboriginal Childcare Society (BCACCS). Her doctoral research celebrates and documents Indigenous early childhood educators’ practice and pedagogical leadership, informing Indigenous Professional Development programs. Through collaboration and relationship building, Áurea’s work aims to contribute to Indigenous-led research that respects and upholds Indigenous peoples and communities as equal partners in knowledge production.
Samuel David Rocha Montaño
Samuel was born in Brownsville, Texas, near the Rio Grande River, which became the official land border between Mexico and the United States in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, ending the Mexican-American War. This treaty impacted both sides of his Mexican-American family.
Samuel’s maternal Montaño family arrived in Rio Arriba County, New Mexico in the mid-1800s after leaving their jobs as soldiers on the Camino Real. They became shepherds and members of the Catholic sect of “penitentes.” The first Pedro Montaño of their colonial family line sailed as a Basque soldier in the Spanish army in the early 1500s. Their land has been a crossroads for Apache, Pueblo, Kiowa, Navajo, Comanche, and Ute peoples for generations and is the location of the Jicarilla Apache Reservation. Samuel’s maternal family moved to Cortez, Colorado in the early 1980s, where they opened the first Mexican restaurant in Montezuma County.
Samuel’s paternal family bears etymologically Portuguese last names which offer some clues about their origin. They worked as horse and cattle hands, vaqueros, on La Reforma ranch near San Isidro, Texas from at least the late 1800s. Since the Bronze Age, that land was the territory of the Coalitecan peoples whose disappearance is not well understood. The Lipan and other Apache tribes arrived after they lost the Comanche Wars in the 1700s. Samuel’s paternal family was first informed of their US citizenship during the World War II draft. His great-grandmother, Margarita Tijerina, was a Lipan Apache who, like many Apache women of that time, married a Mexican man, Crecencio Rocha, and avoided relocation. After the ranch owner’s lease was not renewed, his paternal family moved to Pharr, Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley where they worked as seasonal migrant and bodega workers.
Samuel is one of the few, if not the only, Mexican-American philosophers of education in the enrolled membership of the Philosophy of Education Society in its history. His work in Philosophy of Education has been in phenomenology. Samuel hopes to engage in the philosophy of race through the concept of mestizaje and ecological philosophy through “ecological personalism.”
