Sanctuaryscapes in the North American Southwest

Abstract

AbstractThis 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.