"Decolonizing the Self: Learning Land, Unlearning Empire ": Leny Mendoza Strobel and S. Lily Mendoza

This event is part of our "Philosophies of the South" series.

In this conversation, Leny Mendoza Strobel and S. Lily Mendoza reflect on their respective journeys from decolonial theory into Indigenous studies and practice. Drawing on their shared work with the Center for Babaylan Studies, a movement for decolonization and indigenization among diasporic Filipinx, they explore how reclaiming Indigenous knowledge systems, ancestral wisdom, and embodied practices can transform understandings of self, community, and belonging. The discussion considers how diasporic Filipinx and other communities grapple with histories of colonial dispossession, work toward accountability to the land (and those land’s original peoples) both in the homeland and in the diaspora, re-learn Indigenous ways of knowing, and re-imagine futures grounded in relationality, wholeness, and collective care.

Leny Mendoza Strobel is professor emerita in American Multicultural Studies at Sonoma State University and a Founding Elder at the Center for Babaylan Studies. Her work has focused on the process of decolonization and re-indigenization. Most recently, she facilitates a local place-based cohort with the vision of "repair and reparations" with local indigenous communities.

S. Lily Mendoza is a professor of culture and communication at Oakland University and the Executive Director of the Center for Babaylan Studies.

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