Hauntology, originally derived from the work of French scholar Derrida, derives much of its intellectual stock from European academic traditions, including an attachment to linearity and progression in which hauntings are marked by a kind of faded distance from the present, the ‘real’. To engage with the potent ideas of the ghostly and the haunting with an eye to developing Indigenous academic frameworks which engage our worldviews as primary, a reframing of ghosts is necessary. In order to provide a material heuristic in shifting the imagined otherness of the past and its ghosts, I have taken the University of Minnesota, Morris, and its history as an agricultural school and Native American boarding school, as an example of a cyclical haunting, one in which no distance or healing can occur without the understanding that what is present and past are coexistent. By engaging in the public discourse and publicity materials from each of these stages in the University’s history, I have demonstrated not only the sometimes subtle differences between these distinctive institutions, but also their overwhelming sameness in their position within the cycle of colonial violence. This provides a foundation for further interrogation of colonial conceptions within the framework of hauntology, and for the beginnings of a development of a new hauntological practice which engages seriously with the materiality and realness of its subject matter.

The legacies of mestizaje and Indigenismo have left some people of Mexican descent with complex ideas of identity that can simultaneously romanticize and erase Indigenous peoples. Many use cultural expressions, spiritual practices, or DNA testing to “reclaim Indigenous roots”, though often without community accountability, questioning, or awareness of critiques of appropriation. These claims, increasingly visible in digital spaces and literature, are rooted in settler colonialism and ideologies of racial mixture. This study addresses this phenomenon and asks: How can people of Mexican descent understand their distant connections to Indigeneity in a historically informed and ethically responsible way? This is a humanities field study that uses the interdisciplinary frameworks of decolonial and critical Indigenous studies to draw from scholars like Lourdes Alberto, Carolina Bloem, James Courage Singer, and others to examine potential challenges or perpetuation of colonial projects like mestizaje and Indigenismo. Through Reception Theory, I observe foundational texts to analyze how ideas of racial mixture and national identity influence present-day understandings of Indigeneity. I also use a deductive approach to Directed Content Analysis to analyze social media, guided through codes (categories) within my framework that look for patterns/themes of “Indigenous aesthetics”, Nahuatl, or Danza Azteca, and more. Ultimately, I argue that claiming Indigeneity as Chicanxs and US-born Mexicans can, unintentionally, contribute to the neglect of Indigenous struggles and experiences. The intent isn’t to dismiss previous work within conversation, but rather to include more perspectives and explore what it means to inherit this complex and colonial history.

The memories of the displaced are often unpreserved. In 1972, when the government of El Salvador announced plans to build the Cerrón Grande Dam and Reservoir, one of the country's largest infrastructure projects, it celebrated the dam as bringing development and improvement to the quality of life for the municipality of Chalatenango; however the subsequent flooding of communities would occur. My family’s ancestral community, Areneros, was among the 13,500 hectares of land flooded, with nearly 13,000 people displaced.

The early twentieth century ushered in an era of revolution in Mexico; yet, this postrevolutionary nation quickly sought to modernize itself into a global power. Mexican nationalism emerged as a mechanism of survival in response to American imperialism, driven by competing ideologies over who belonged to Mexico’s collective identity and how it should be constructed. My research suggests that cultural and political movements during this period reflected an idealized vision held by intellectuals who sought to define the nation through selective notions of belonging and racial unity. I assert that the nationalized and racialized project of propagating mestizaje (racial hybridity) functioned not only as a tool of cultural control but also as an attempt to unify Mexico’s vast diversity into a single identity. My study emphasizes, through an intellectual history of texts by José Vasconcelos and Manuel Gamio, that the project of mestizaje aimed to erase Indigenous and African ancestries to construct a collective identity centered on racial hybridity as the necessary foundation for their vision of postrevolutionary Mexico. Furthermore, my research aims to answer why both intellectuals viewed diversity as a threat to mestizo/a mobility in the immediate years after the Mexican Revolution. I approach this project through a qualitative historical analysis grounded in decolonial and racial formation theories, drawing primarily from primary texts by Vasconcelos and Gamio to examine why these two leading thinkers of elite Mexican society positioned mestizaje as central to national development while framing Indigenous and African identities as obstacles to modernization.