This session explores the convergences between Chicana and Indigenous futurisms and ecofeminist thought, examining how cultural production, spiritual praxis, and ecological resistance imagine futures beyond colonial constraints. Papers investigate how Chicana futurist art reclaims the domestic sphere as a site of ontological transformation, using domesticana aesthetics and Anzaldúa's coyolxauhqui imperative to create new realities through artivism and indigenous ceremony. The session expands to Andean Indigenous futurism, tracing the transterritorial journey of Mama Coca as a sovereign more-than-human elder whose ceremonial migration enacts a radical unbordering of state, body, and ecology. Finally, a decological analysis of slow environmental violence reveals how autoimmune disease and ecological devastation demand integrated frameworks drawing on ecofeminist theology, necropolitics, and decolonial spiritual praxis. Together, these contributions illuminate how embodied, relational, and more-than-human epistemologies generate futures grounded in survival, reciprocity, and collective flourishing.
Chicana futurism art offers a path of subversion and survival in the domestic realm. This presentation argues that the cultural production of queer feminist artivist Debora Kuetzpal Vasquez empowers Chicanas to reclaim their indigenous past and creates a new ontological reality for the present and future that bypasses colonial constraints. Through analyzing Vasquez’s artwork—“Citlali: Hechando Tortillas y Cortando Nopales en Outer Space” and “Citlatli: Cuando Eramos Sanos”—I explore how Chicanas negotiate being healthy (sanos), sacredness, and ecological pride in domestic spaces. I also address Vasquez’s role leading public art workshops and indigenous virtual ceremonies, highlighting how her multi-modal practices cultivate feminist community and promote decolonial strategies. Utilizing Amelia Mesa-Bain’s domesticana and Gloria Anzaldúa’s coyolxauhqui imperative, I show that Vasquez advances Chicana feminist cosmology, kitchen-based relationality, resistance to coloniality, and creates a new reality for Chicanas.
This paper explores the "transterritorial" future of Andean Indigeneity through the figure of Mama Coca—the "Rebel Hoja." Moving beyond colonial violence, I position Mama Coca as a shapeshifting migrant and sacred elder whose endurance mirrors the Andean diaspora. Engaging Wilson’s (2008) Research is Ceremony, I explore how relating to Mama Coca as ayllu (relative) and ceremonialist enacts a radical "unbordering" that disrupts modern migrant narratives. By centering Cabnal’s (2010) theory of Cuerpo-Territorio and engaging Indigenous speculative storytelling (Dillon, 2012), I argue that future flourishing requires a Kincentric Ecology (Salmón, 2000) recognizing plants as wisdom-keepers. This work challenges human-nature extractivism, moving toward a relational ayni (reciprocity) that honors the agency of more-than-human kin in the building of Indigenous futurisms. Through this lens, Mama Coca becomes a sovereign protagonist in the restoration of memory and territory across borders.
This paper argues that autoimmune and non-communicable diseases must be understood as forms of slow violence generated by environmental coloniality, requiring an integrated analysis that brings together environmental justice, necropolitics, embodied testimony, and decolonial spiritual praxis. Methodologically, the essay employs a decological approach that situates the researcher’s own embodied experience of endocrine disruption as an epistemic lens, in dialogue with ecofeminist theology, indigenous research paradigms, and environmental health sciences. Drawing on sources including Rob Nixon, Achille Mbembe, Elaine Nogueira-Godsey, Ivone Gebara, and interdisciplinary biomedical research, the paper analyzes the Lake Apopka case to show how racial capitalism produces ecological and physiological harm while erasing the spiritual and communal dimensions of suffering. The contribution advances a theopoetic and ecopeotic framework for reimagining ecorelationality, calling for spiritual-political praxis that honors embodied knowledge as a site of resistance and collective survival.