Animal Artifacts and Narratives of the Mesoamerican Clay-Figurine Project 
Ethnic Studies Pedagogies
https://ethnicstudiespedagogies.org/ARCHIVES/
Garcia & Hernandez (2023)

Abstract

Animals and animal knowledge have played a significant role in helping to shape the health and well-being of humans since time immemorial. Animals provide food, important resources, and an allegory of lessons vital to our own Native way of existing. In this essay, we (Instructor Garcia and Curator Hernandez) share with readers an assemblage of clay-figurine artifacts in the shape of animals and their accompanying student narratives. We do so to demonstrate how life’s trials and traumatic experiences find resolve and positive meaning through the animal spirit. Modeled as a living archive of intergenerational testimonials in a Los Angeles area community college—Rio Hondo College—this praxis-oriented and critical reflection essay situates human health and wellbeing, reverence, and sobriety as essential to the Ethnic Studies project.