Sanctuaryscapes in the North American Southwest

Abstract

This article reclaims the historicity and sanctity of sanctuary as a dynamic cultural and spiritual practice and Indigenous survival strategy cultivated in regions of refuge and rebellion in the Americas. Tracing heterogeneous configurations of sanctuary in the North American Southwest during the Spanish colonial period, it compares the institution of church asylum with cross-tribal Indigenous sanctuary place-making and traditions of radical hospitality. As Indigenous people became refugees in their own homeland they capitalized on their knowledge of the landscape and banded with other persecuted and displaced peoples in “sanctuaryscapes,” vast autonomous regions and insurgent urban centers where new pan-Indigenous solidarities and identities emerged. Locating sanctuary practices within specific regional cartographies and social relations substantiates diverse autochthonous traditions of sanctuary that dramatically reorient and revitalize the origin stories that animate and also validate contemporary sanctuary movements and practices.

Biopower: Forum on the Actuality of Benjamin's 'Critique of Violence' at Its Centenary, Part IV

“…European and North American Sanctuary practices herald from Christian and Medieval jurisdiction over asylum claim, whereas Indigenous and African anticolonial resistance used Sanctuaryscapes of shifting networks and regions to evade and fight genocidal rule (Villarreal 2019). Church Sanctuary involved vestigial ecclesiastical authority and immunities where eternal salvation remained in the hands of clergy but was confined to church property.…”

Huida, cimarronaje y santuario: genealogías críticas para deseurocentrar la historia del refugio en el Atlántico Negro

“…Las muchas prácticas de cimarronaje relatadas en este artículo atestiguan una historia muy distinta de la progresista liberal, encapsulada en el mito de la Underground railroad y su retrato de huida bajo el cobijo de las democracias liberales (Sayers 2012). No solo existían otras rutas de huida hacia el Caribe (Chinea 2009), México (Mareite 2018) y las comunidades indígenas (Villarreal 2019), sino que las comunidades cimarronas existentes en los propios territorios esclavistas representaban lugares santuario para los esclavos fugitivos. En otras palabras, en los cuatro siglos de existencia del cimarronaje, la libertad -como huida, autodeterminación y construcción de vida-fue practicada por los cimarrones (Roberts 2015).…”

Sanctuary in Countries of Origin

“…As Aimee Villarreal (2019: 48) notes, there is scant literature on sanctuary and asylum in non-Christian and non-Western societies. Generally, the historical references to the origins of sanctuary refer to medieval England or other European countries, but rarely mention examples from the Global South, where colonial histories also shaped practices of sanctuary by churches, chapels, cemeteries, convents, monasteries and hospitals, or by indigenous communities resisting assimilation (Villarreal 2019).…”