ABSTRACT
A challenge facing Zapotec teachers in multicultural bilingual schools in Oaxaca, Mexico, is a persistent colonial and Eurocentric system of national education curriculum that places greater value on Western, monolingual, epistemological knowing-about knowledge over profound, community-based, ontological, Indigenous knowing—a knowledge that is vital to the maintenance of the Zapotec language and way of life (Przymus, Ruiz Jiménez, & Pérez García, in press). A “decolonial” (ontological) way of thinking that values and legitimatizes Indigenous categories of thought can lead to decolonial education models, such as community-based teaching approaches to literacy development (Francisco Antonio, 2015, p. 1). The literacy teaching methods, shared within, derive from and honor community-based xkialnana, local ontologies that work to develop Zapotec literacy/identity development and challenge normalized/official/colonial knowledge acceptance at schools. Questions of language planning and policy remain, however, as Zapotec teachers struggle to find ways to infuse the Zapotec language in curricula in meaningful ways, amid critique and concerns from parents that doing so slows down literacy instruction in Spanish. This microethnographic case study of two native Zapotec teachers at two Zapotec bilingual schools, addresses both ways to achieve decolonial teaching and solutions for including meaningful Zapotec literacy instruction that builds community-based xkialnana among youth and keeps mensajes de los abuelitos alive.
